Working with Styles and Multilevel List

Styles are the most important feature in Microsoft Word. Styles are nothing more than a named
definition of how text should appear, because everything that you do in Word has a style attached.
The definition of a style is two-fold. First, you can think of a style as a set of pre-defined formatting
instructions that you can use repeatedly throughout the document.

Let's say each heading in a document must be centered, uppercase, bold, and a slightly larger font
size. Each time you need to apply formatting to the heading, you have to go through the entire
process to get the text the way you want it. If you store the formatting commands in a style, you can
apply that style any time you need it without having to do all of the reformatting.

Another example, you can best understand this by comparing your text to water (this is your
content). The appearance of the water depends on the attributes of the container in which it is
placed. If you place it in a glass it will look one way; if you place it in a jug, it looks a different way.
The relationship between text and styles is no different; if you change the style that has been
applied to text, then the appearance of the text automatically changes."

Possibly more important however is that styles are used to "tag" or identify parts of a document. An
example of this is whether text is part of a heading, a footnote, a hyperlink, or body text. These are
all examples of styles in Word.

Figure 1 - Common Styles in Word

Style we can see it in Word, Home tab

Figure 2 - Style Location

Create a Style

Select

Select

Define Style Name

Select
 Summary of style
parameters are
shown here

Select

Select any of this

option and Update
based on Need

Following Styles are used in GAC

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Appendix H1

Appendix H2

Appendix H3

Appendix H4
What doesn't work
You can't use Word's Numbering feature to generate a multilevel numbering system, even if
you use built-in heading styles. Figure A shows a document with two styled heading levels:
Heading 1 and Heading 2. You can apply the Numbering option (in the Paragraph group) and
Word will number the headings consequently, but the feature ignores different levels; if you
expected 1, 1.1, 2, 2.1, and 2.2, you might be surprised. If you select the entire document
first, Numbering not only ignores the different levels, but it also numbers the paragraphs!

Figure A

Word's Numbering option can't handle multilevel headings.

The easy way

If you use built-in heading styles, applying a multilevel list style is as simple as a few clicks.
First, position the cursor anywhere in the document. Then, click the Multilevel List option
and choose an option (Figure B). As you can see in Figure C, two quick clicks and you're
done!

Figure B
Choose one of the built-in multilevel options from the gallery.

What's important to note is that the List Library collection displays styles linked to the built-
in heading styles. If one of these works for you, you needn't go any further.

Figure C
It took two clicks to apply this multilevel numbering scheme.

Tweak it
The default options are adequate most of the time, but you might want to customize the
results a bit and that's where things can get a bit confusing. The options are straightforward,
but there are a lot of them; Word can handle up to nine levels!

To modify the options, click the Multilevel List option (in the Paragraph Group). Word
selects all lists currently in use in the List Library. You'll see two options below the gallery:
Define New Multilevel List and Define New List Style. Use the first to create and save a
stable custom list style. You'll use the second to change list styles. You can also use the latter
to create a new style. So, what's the difference? The Define New List Style option lets you
name a style, so you can share, modify, and delete it later. Most users will never need this
option. Now, let's move on: choose Define New Multilevel List. Figure D shows the
resulting dialog.

Figure D
Open this dialog to create a new multilevel list.

Now you're ready to choose settings that will reflect your numbered heading needs:

1. Select the level you want to modify. You can change one, a few or all of the levels.
2. Select a numbering format to apply to the chosen level, adjust the formatting; adjust
the spacing and aligning, and so on.
3. Repeat the above for each level you want to change.
4. Click OK when you're done.

To save the list style to a template so you can use it with other documents, select the list in
the document. Access the Multilevel List dropdown and choose Define New List Style. Enter
a descriptive new and select the New documents based on this template (at the bottom). Once
you click OK, the multilevel list style will be available in all new documents.

SEE: 10 all-purpose keyboard shortcuts to boost your Word efficiency (free PDF)
(TechRepublic)

An example

Let's use what we've learned to modify the built-in style applied earlier (Figure C).
Specifically, we'll change the numbering style for both levels and indent level 2. To begin,
click anywhere inside the list area, and then do the following:

1. Click Multilevel List in the Paragraph group, and then choose Define New Multilevel
List.
2. Select 1 in the Click level to modify list to choose the first level.
3. From the Number style for this level dropdown, choose I, II, III, (Figure E). We're
done with level 1.
4. Select level 2 and change the number style to l, ll, lll, as you did for level 1.
5. Click the Font button, choose Italics, and click OK.
6. In the Aligned at control, enter .50. (Figure F).
7. Click OK to see the new list attributes in Figure G.

Figure E
Alter level 1.

Figure F
Alter level 2.

Figure G
We reset only a few options, but substantially changed the look of the headings.

Notice that the Font option (when you applied italics) changes only the number, not the
heading text. To update the heading text, modify the heading style as you normally would.
Word assumes you want all Heading 1 and Heading 2 styles included in the new numbering
scheme. If you want to omit a heading level from the scheme, don't use a built-in heading
style to format those headings.

There are lots of options. For instance, you might reduce the amount of space between the
number and the text by changing the Text indent at setting. Or, you might center the heading
by choosing Center from the Number alignment dropdown. For even more options, click
More to expose several more settings. You could use the Apply changes to option when
setting level 1 to the I, II, III numbering style instead of changing it for each level.

To add new levels to the list, simply use a lower level built-in heading style. For a visual
review of the document's structure, display the Navigation pane: Click the view tab and check
Navigation Pane in the Show group.

This feature is easiest to use when you combine it with Word's built-in heading styles.
However, you can map a custom heading style to the multilevel numbering feature—it just
takes more work. Word handles nine levels, but any document with more than four levels
should receive a serious developmental edit. More than four becomes confusing and perhaps
worse, unreadable.
Multilevel number headings are easy to implement, even if you don't want to use Word's
built-in heading styles. Simply link the levels to custom text styles—it couldn't be simpler.

Numbering a document's headings is easy in Word. It offers both single-level and multilevel
numbering schemes. Both are easy to implement ifyou rely on Word's built-in heading styles.
If you're not familiar with this feature, you can read How to create multilevel numbered
headings in Word 2016 to learn more.

But you might not always want to use the built-in heading styles that make this feature so
seamless. The built-in styles might already be in use. Or you might be working with an
existing document that uses custom styles for headings. Regardless of the reason, you can
link custom text styles to multilevel list styles. It's easier than you might think and can be
accomplished with two quick steps:

1. Create custom heading (text) styles if necessary.

2. Link each level in a multilevel list to an appropriate custom style.

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I'm using Office 365 (Word 2016 desktop) on a Windows 10 64-bit system, but this feature is
available in earlier versions. The multilevel list options used in this article aren't available in
the online 365 browser edition. For your convenience, you can download the demonstration
.docx and .doc files, or you can work with your own content.

Step 1: Create custom heading styles

Ideally, you'll have a plan before you create your document and apply the custom multilevel
styles as you go. That's not always practical though. For our example, we'll use a simple
document with two headings levels styled as Normal. (Word can accommodate up to nine
levels.)

The first step is to create the custom text styles (if necessary). The simplest way to do so is to
format existing text as follows:

1. Select the existing text. In this case, let's format the first header, Video.
2. In the Font group, choose 16 from the Font Size dropdown.
3. Click Bold.
4. Choose a dark blue from the Font Color dropdown.
5. Click the Font group's dialog launcher and check the All Caps option in the Effects section
and click OK.
With the text formatted, you're ready to create a new style as follows:

1. Right-click the formatted text. Doing so will display the mini-toolbar.

2. At the far right, click Styles.
3. From the dropdown list, choose Create A Style (Figure A).
4. Name the custom style Custom Level One (Figure B) and click OK. The name is probably too
long, and you'll see why soon.

Figure A

Create a new style.

Figure B
Name the new style.

Repeat the process to create the second level by selecting the Professional heading in the
document. Name it Custom Level Two. Set this style's font attributes to size 12, light blue,
and italics. Feel free to create as many custom styles as you like; we'll work with just these
two. Figure C shows the two new styles in the Styles gallery. Currently neither thumbnail
displays a numbering scheme. Adding the numbering scheme is next.

Figure C

The Styles gallery displays the custom styles.

Before we move on though, notice that the gallery displays only a small portion of the style
name. When naming styles, meaningful name are important, but so are short names that you
(or your users) can see. Now, let's link the custom styles to a numbering scheme—in this
case, a multilevel list style.

SEE: Cost comparison calculator: G Suite vs. Office 365 (Tech Pro Research)

Step 2: Link each level to appropriate custom style

With your custom heading styles in place, you're ready to link them to a new multilevel list
style. To begin, click the Multilevel List option (in the Paragraph group) and choose Define
New Multilevel List (at the bottom). If the button in the bottom-left corner of the resulting
dialog displays More, click it to display additional options. This dialog contains all the
options you need to format the number component of your custom style. (In step 1, you
created the text style.)

As mentioned, Word supports nine levels, but you'll seldom need more than a few. There's a
preview pane to the right of the level list. You'll want to explore the many options further, but
we'll modify the number's formatting and style for levels 1 and 2 and then link them to
Custom Level One and Custom Level Two, respectively.

To begin, always select the appropriate level in the Click Level To Modify list; we'll begin
with 1. We want to display similar descriptive text for each level: L1 and L2. They mean
nothing to the actual document, but the addition will make it easy to discern the applied styles
and levels visually. To enter the text, click to the left of the 1 and type L1, including a space
to separate the text from the number. Click to the right of the ) character and press Backspace
to delete it. Do not delete the number (the result of a field code) or your numbering scheme
won't work.
Next, choose a style from the Number Style For This Level dropdown. There are many to
choose from, but we'll select the first Roman numeral option. Word will update the preview
in the Enter Formatting For Number option and the preview pane.

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You can change the number's position, alignment, and much more. Explore those options at
another time; you'll be surprised at how much you can do.

Your last step is to link level 1 to a custom style. To do so, click the Link Level To Style
dropdown and find Custom Level One, as shown in Figure D.

Figure D

Link level 1 to the custom style Custom Level One.

Now you're ready to format level 2. From the Click Level To Modify list, choose 2. Add the
descriptive text, L2, and delete the ) character. From the Number Style For This Level
dropdown, choose lowercase alpha characters. Finally, from the Link Level To Style
dropdown, choose Custom Level Two. Figure E shows these settings.
Figure E

Configure level 2.

You could continue to define levels, but we don't need to because our document uses only
two. Click OK to return to the document.

As you can see in Figure F, the two headings we used earlier to create the custom text styles
display the new multilevel list numbering style. Simply choose the remaining headers and
click the appropriate styles from the Styles gallery, as shown in Figure G. Notice that both
custom styles now display a numbering scheme.

Figure F
Previously styled text displays appropriate numbering.

Figure G

Apply the custom styles to apply numbering.

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PDF)

Tweaking
It's possible that the results won't be exactly what you wanted. In my option, our choices here
are confusing and inconsistent—that's where a plan can help. For now, level 2's number is a
bit confusing. It includes both levels, but there's no separation to denote the different levels.
You can fix that by displaying a period character between the level numbers as follows:

1. Click anywhere inside a level 2 header.

 2. Click the Multilevel List option (in the Paragraph group) and choose Define New Multilevel
List. We're not really going to start over, so don't worry.
3. Options in the resulting dialog default to the currently applied multilevel list.
4. Select level 2.
5. Click in the Enter Formatting For Number control, between the a and the 1—don't delete
either because they're both the results of field codes. Just click between them. Or if you
don't want to include numbering from level 1, delete the 1.
6. Press the period character (.) on the keyboard (Figure H).
7. Click OK. Figure I shows the updated headings; they now contain a period character between
the level 1 and level 2 numbers.

Figure H

Enter a period.

Figure I