Weird outline numbering in Microsoft Word 2008

Question

This is quite a weird question, as I think I am asking the opposite of what most people want to try and achieve with outline numbering in Microsoft Word.

The outline numbering associated with the styles "Heading 1" and "Heading 2" are fine and working as normal, but the outline numbering associated with all the heading styles from "Heading 3" onwards are broken.

Here is a summary of how they look:

1
1.1
1.2
2
2.1
3
3.1
1.1.1
1.1.2
4
4.1
1.1.3

So you can see that while the first two headings are numbering correctly down the document, the third level heading doesn't restart and it doesn't have the correct 1st and 2nd level numbering - they all have '1.1' as a prefix.

These are all controlled by the heading styles and I have tried every combination of options in the outline numbering section of the styles. Short of building a whole new template, recreating all my custom styles and then pasting the text across, I really don't know what to do. Before I try that, does anyone know what is going on here?

Answer 1

Word 2007 has several interesting 'enhancements' to how Outline Numbering works. It is unclear so far on exactly how it is broken for you, but visually it looks like you may be able to right click and "Continue Numbering" on the 1.1.1 number; they may just have 'restarts' applied.

Answer 2

I'm going to reveal my age, but I've been having similar problems with MS Word ever since MS Word for Mac 6.0. MS Word 5.1 was the last edition I used in which I didn't have this problem. I'm trying to use MS Word for Mac 2011 and I'm having this problem right now.

Unfortunately, though I love Libre Office for just about everything else I use it for, I've had unpredictable results with the outlines in Open Office and Libre Office as well. It appears that perhaps the OpenOffice/LibreOffice folks copied the disfunctionality of outlines from their closed-source cousin.

I haven't found a fix yet, though I sorely need one.