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After attempting to insert a TOC and failing miserably (Word generated garbage entries) I deleted the TOC (using the "Remove TOC" functionality).

Now, the first couple of H1 headings, which are numbered, have blanks where the number should be. Curiously, the numbers reappear if I turn on "show paragraph marks".

With paragraph marks OFF:

enter image description here

With paragraph marks ON:

enter image description here

I spent 20 minutes Googling (I usually have pretty good Google-fu) but came up with nothing. I've tried reapplying H1 and examining the list numbering options... Word clearly thinks the heading is numbered, but the number doesn't display unless "show paragraph marks" is on.

More importantly, when I print or export to PDF the numbers don't show up for those H1s (the first two) regardless of the "show paragraph marks" setting at the time of printing/export.

Is this going to be a case of rebuilding the document by copy/pasting everything to a new document or is there a quicker fix?

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  • I think the most convenient way is to use the Format Painter to apply the correct heading format to the wrong headings.
    – Viki Ji
    Sep 23, 2021 at 7:32

1 Answer 1

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You have "hidden" as font formatting for your numbering.

First, numbering should be set up attached to styles and set through the define new multilevel list dialog. For more on this, see my answer to this question or Shauna Kelly's page.

For the level that is hidden, you need to switch off (uncheck) that font attribute as shown below:

screenshot

Clicking the button to show paragraph marks also shows hidden text. It shows "non-printing formatting marks."

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  • Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I was using unmodified styles from the default theme, and how it got that way I have no idea, since it was working until I deleted the garbage TOC. Also, it's highly unintuitive that to modify the current style you actually have to ask it to "Define new multilevel list...".
    – Ex Umbris
    Sep 24, 2021 at 22:03
  • The thing is that the format of numbers is controlled in this dialog, not in the style. See also shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/numbering20072010.html. Sep 25, 2021 at 16:24

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