bullet points in word disappear

[impything]

hi everyone, I have word for mac 2004 and am working with a large
document, which has many bulleted sections. I just highlight the
sentences and click on the bullet point icon to create a bullet list. I
keep on working and everything looks fine, I save and close the
document and when I get back to it, all the bullet points are lost...??
The text is there, but no bullet point, no indent, nothing that
separates the text from the rest....

Has anybody got any suggestions?

thanks
IP.

[John McGhie [MVP - Word and Word Macintosh]]

Hi Nancy:

Check Tools>Templates and Add-ins... I think you will find you have
"Automatically update styles on open" turned ON.

If you have, each time you open the document, it updates the style from the
template. If the style you are using does not contain bullets, it will take
them off.

The Bullet Point icon is probably the *worst* way to do bullets in a complex
document.

Instead, use Format>Style and apply the List Bullet style. Modify it to
your requirements. Look up Styles in the Help to see how to do this.

A style is simply a named collection of formatting. There are various kinds
of style, and they can contain all the formatting settings Word is capable
of. You can apply styles with a single click.

Styles are a much more reliable way of formatting a document: you should get
into the habit of using styles exclusively when formatting complex
documents.

Hope this helps

On 27/10/06 1:59 PM, in article
1161921590.1...@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com, "impything"
<nancy...@yahoo.com> wrote:

--

Please reply to the newsgroup to maintain the thread. Please do not email
me unless I ask you to.

John McGhie <jo...@mcghie.name>
Microsoft MVP, Word and Word for Macintosh. Business Analyst, Consultant
Technical Writer.
Sydney, Australia +61 (0) 4 1209 1410

[Clive Huggan]

Hello Nancy,

Further to John's excellent advice, if you work *often* on documents with
lots of bulleted paragraphs, you can save a huge amount of time by (a)
formatting your entire document with styles, and (b) applying styles via
keyboard shortcuts.

For example, I apply a bulleted style by keying Command-Shift-s followed by
two letters that I have chosen to represent this particular style (I chose
"sb", meaning "sub-paragraph, bulleted", but it can be whatever you're
comfortable with).

Techniques like this improve my efficiency by about 20 per cent.

If the above is applicable, take a look at some notes on the way I use Word
for the Mac, titled "Bend Word to Your Will", which are available as a free
download from the Word MVPs' website
(http://word.mvps.org/Mac/Bend/BendWordToYourWill.html).

See "Styles and templates -- the keys to consistency and saving time", on
page 86; and within that section "The minimum you need to know about styles"
on page 97.

[Note: "Bend Word to your will" is designed to be used electronically and
most subjects are self-contained dictionary-style entries. If you decide to
read more widely than the item I've referred to, it's important to read the
front end of the document -- especially pages 3 and 5 -- so you can select
some Word settings that will allow you to use the document effectively.]

Cheers,

Clive Huggan
Canberra, Australia
(My time zone is 5-11 hours different from the US and Europe, so my
follow-on responses to those regions can be delayed)
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On 27/10/06 10:44 PM, in article C1683C65.4F838%jo...@mcghie.name, "John

[RobG]

To learn about bullets and numbering in Word, there is a terrific
article here:

<URL: http://word.mvps.org/faqs/numbering/WordsNumberingExplained.htm
>

If you are using Safari, re-load the page a few times to get the text
to display. There's a link to a PDF version that you should download
and use as your bullet bible :-)

--
Rob