Naming Numbering Sequences (Word 2003)

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If memory serves me, can’t we (as word users) create numbering sequences and save them? For example. If I’m preparing interrogerities and answers and I want to autonumber the interrogerities AND auto number the answer that follows.

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You may be able to use the SEQ field – see Field codes: Seq (Sequence) field – Word – Microsoft Office Online.

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Worked Perfectly! Thank YOu!

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You could also use cascading styles with numbering. I use two styles, Interrog and Response. Interrog is associated with level 1, where the Number Format is “Interrogatory No. 1:”. Style Response is “Response No. 1”, where “1” is the previous level, Level 1. Style for following paragraph is Respone for Interrog, and vice versa. All the user needs to do is set the first style (Interrog), and hitting Enter automates everything from that point on. If the text must be in a separate paragraph from the “label”, I use Interrog, InterrogText, Response and ResponseText, cascading similarly.

Note: You must use VBA if your wording exceeds 30 characters (for example, Response to Interrogatory Number 1). SP3 of Word 2003 won’t accept more than 30 characters under any circumstances. With SP3, I reverted to SEQ codes, as Hans suggested, and wrote a macro (shortcut key Alt-Z) which does the same thing as Enter in the styles version.

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Hans: It did work perfect until we got to 50 SEQ numbers. Now it’s crashing. Is 50 the limit? Can we use a new SEQ name and start it at 51?

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A sequence should be able to continue far past 50. As a test, I duplicated a SEQ field over 7,000 times. Updating took a few seconds but it worked correctly. Perhaps you should save the document, then quit and restart Word.

You can let a sequence start at a specific number by using the r switch. The fields

{ SEQ Dada r 51 }
{ SEQ Dada }
{ SEQ Dada }

will display as follows when you hide the field codes and update the fields:

51
52
53

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This was very helpful. I’ve been using it a lot since this post. But now I have a problem. My SEQ number style is “A,B,C” and using the “r A” does not work for restarting the sequence. The result is “0”. What am I doing wrong?

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A, B, C… is just the way the sequence is displayed. The actual values are 1, 2, 3 etc. regardless of the way these numbers are displayed. In other words, A stands for 1, B stands for 2 etc.
To restart the sequence at A, you must in fact restart at 1, therefore use the switch r 1

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