Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

After reading docs and forums and googling for quite some time I found a post where the advice was that the only way to have multiple outlines in a document was to use a distinct outline format for each. That sounded like a serious conflation of structure and function, and coincided with my observation that changing the start number for one outline changed the start number for all of them. Unfortunately I haven't been able to re-locate the link. I'm not sure which browser I was in, and my history list in both chrome and firefox is very long today...

So, having found the topic covered and the functionality already described as not available in a forum, I filed this issue: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=124484 (evidently it got double submitted somehow not sure how hence the duplicate).

However, I then got a response that more or less accused me of trying to use bugzilla for support, which I never do. So if "all is possible" as the bugzilla response claims I'd love it if someone here could point me to the OO documentation that describes how to do the following:

Create Several outlines within the same document AND set a different start number for each outline.

I put a lot of effort into the issue description and provided a sample document there. Please read those before responding here.

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

I'm not sure I understand what you're doing/looking for; something like this, maybe:

That looks right, but even looking at the document you posted, I can't tell how you achieved it. Also, I would be interested to know where in the documentation this is found because if it's not documented then it should be... at a minimum it's not easy to find in the documentation.

Clicking on random stuff in your document out of desperation, I finally discovered that for some reason there is a separate start numbering at under paragraph styles.... HOW is that not under numbering and bullets?? why on earth would I look in paragraph styles to change the numbering if there's an option that says "numbering and bullets" right in the context menu (and the menu up top, and in the button bars, and EVEN in the paragraph section of the properties side bar which takes you to the bullets and numbering dialog instead of the paragraph level control.... I know they don't intend to mislead the user, but it sure would be hard to do a better job of it.

Even knowing where to find it in the program I still can't find documentation for this feature. One would expect to find it here: "numbering;manually/by styles" but that only describes the bullets and numbering interface, and how to make a global change to a paragraph style, and fails to mention the paragraph level option under Format > Paragraph... > Outline and Numbering (or Context Menu > Paragraph... > Outline and Numbering

The third bullet point of that help item would appear to specify a cryptic way of changing the format for just the present paragraph (relying on selected text to signal one behavior vs the behavior for simply placing the cursor in the text), except it seems that it doesn't operate at all as described because if I follow those instructions, and change the start number it does the same document wide thing as before.

Note that the help topic "paragraph styles;numbering" leads to the very same help page again failing to document the feature.

Ok it seems that there is a rather subtle bug in the documentation here. If you search on "numbering" using find in the help and ignore the first 47 results, (21 of which have the word "Number" or "Numbering" in them), and happen to choose the "Format" then **ignore** the "Bullets & Numbering" link and click "Paragraph" instead, then you get a link to "Outline & Numbering" which describes this page.

This page can be found more easily by clicking on Format > Paragraph... > Outline & Numbering and clicking the help button, but of course this won't help if you don't know where to find it in the first place.

Basically all roads to this feature in the documentation force you to ignore one or more options that are clearly labeled as pertaining to numbering and select "paragraph" instead. No user who is trying to look for documentation for how to do something with numbering will ever find the correct documentation unless they already know where it is.

Before I open another ticket, Does anyone not think this is a documentation bug?

My suggested fix would be to put a Related Pages link to this feature on the page found at "numbering;manually/by styles" in the help index.

Here's what I did:

First, I defined a list style with your settings:

• Click in one of the lists (say under "Steps" on page 1)
  Open the Styles & Formatting window (F11)
  Switch to the list styles category
  Click on the rightmost button and choose "New Style from Selection"
  Give it a name: _UseCase_Steps
  OK

Next I removed all the existing list formatting (F12) and applied the new list style.

Finally, I reset the number sequence as necessary, using either the pop-up toolbar (re-start numbering at 1), or Format > Paragraph > Outline & Numbering > Numbering > Restart at this paragraph: YES; Start with: 4

The numbering re-start is a paragraph property (I suppose) because it's not shared it among different lists; it has to be set as needed.

I find the list numbering to be quite powerful and easy to work with once you see how it works, but it's not easy to figure out on your own and it's easy to get off track and make a mess of it as well. It's much more understandable (to me at least) using list styles exclusively.

Using a list style means that all the list configuration is in one place and all lists are consistent. It also means that all the lists share the same numbering sequence, so each separate list has to have the numbering re-started--a small price to pay.