There is some weird interaction with tables and muti-level lists that I run into intermittently.

It has happened twice tonight.

Essentially, I have a List Bullets styles 1-5 which indent in an orderly, style-conforming way when I press alt-shift-L/RArrow. I followed the tutorial that always gets linked to on forums like these for defining this.

These list bullets left-indent in increments of 0.25″. So List Bullet = 0″, List Bullet 2 = 0.25″, List Bullet 3 = 0.5″, etc.

When I am inserting and (un)indenting these inside tables, eventually I will notice that the indents aren’t looking right. I will check the styles and (in this instance), List Bullet 2 is suddenly 0.47″.

At no point have I deliberately altered a style definition. In fact, I have “mark formatting inconsistencies” turned on, and will periodically select anything that deviates from rigid style conformity and clear direct formatting at both the paragraph and character level. I am really trying to do Word right.

I can’t even begin to understand why these styles would redefine themselves, but I’m somewhat convinced it has something to do with tables. It seems that whenever I use anything that involves nesting of some kind within a table, my document becomes “haunted” and nondeterministic. I long ago found out to NEVER use style headings in tables, as that seems to be even worse at filling my document with poltergeists.

Why would my list bullet styles ever, ever redefine themselves like this?

I can handle some MS quirks if I can select everything and hit ctrl-q and ctrl-space to restore order. But I don’t know how to approach this.

​There is some weird interaction with tables and muti-level lists that I run into intermittently. It has happened twice tonight. Essentially, I have a List Bullets styles 1-5 which indent in an orderly, style-conforming way when I press alt-shift-L/RArrow. I followed the tutorial that always gets linked to on forums like these for defining this. These list bullets left-indent in increments of 0.25″. So List Bullet = 0″, List Bullet 2 = 0.25″, List Bullet 3 = 0.5″, etc. When I am inserting and (un)indenting these inside tables, eventually I will notice that the indents aren’t looking right. I will check the styles and (in this instance), List Bullet 2 is suddenly 0.47″. At no point have I deliberately altered a style definition. In fact, I have “mark formatting inconsistencies” turned on, and will periodically select anything that deviates from rigid style conformity and clear direct formatting at both the paragraph and character level. I am really trying to do Word right. I can’t even begin to understand why these styles would redefine themselves, but I’m somewhat convinced it has something to do with tables. It seems that whenever I use anything that involves nesting of some kind within a table, my document becomes “haunted” and nondeterministic. I long ago found out to NEVER use style headings in tables, as that seems to be even worse at filling my document with poltergeists. Why would my list bullet styles ever, ever redefine themselves like this? I can handle some MS quirks if I can select everything and hit ctrl-q and ctrl-space to restore order. But I don’t know how to approach this.  Read More

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