Today I decided to write a document for a customer about some work I have done for them.

I thought it would be a good idea to use Microsoft Word on the system I'm using for the development. It is from Office 2007.

Not too surprised that things look all different since I used MS-Access for a while now and it has this same new "weird" look.

What I ran into, however, is a wall when it came to creating styles with nested lists. You know, a usual document with points:

1.
1.1
1.2
1.2.1
1.2.2
2.
2.1
2.2
etc.

And I could create lists, but not nested lists. In other words, it would not work at all.

I searched the Internet and they mentioned clicking on the Nested List button. Hmmm. What Nested List button?! I cannot find it!

So at least I had the incredible idea of looking for Styles. I found all the things as in the previous versions with the AA and drop down to choose your style. Up to here, nothing new. I decided to reformat my points since I used a list and that would not show in my Table of Content (which I expected, I have to say.)

Here I show a sample of nested lists in Word 2007. I got that to happen once I selected the Nested List icon in the Main menu. Now when that icon appeared, I have no clue. I added different things to my panes and at some point it was there. Apparently it was not the Styles that made a difference.

Until then, I tried with the Numbering context menu without any success. That simply reverts you to a simple, non-nested useless list.

Another gotcha, if you look at the Numbering menu, as it is opened, you can notice that it shows a selection (the orange box around the 1, 2, 3 list.) And sure enough, we're using a numered list and it looks like that list, but NESTED. In other words, if you click on that square you mess up your selection. Period.

Okay... and what about that other menu? Well... it looks similar to the Numbering, but with nested list. Just like in the good old days. So I went ahead and clicked on the first one that looked like the one I wanted. Now I went to the first sub-point (1.1 in the sample) and made the same selection. It did not work too well... Then I went to the 3rd sub-point (1.2.1) and made the selection in a different way: I clicked the square at the top-right instead of the one in the library list. Guess what... It worked better for that 1.2.1 sub-sub-point than the 1.1 sub-point.

Yes. That means, even though the menus show you all sorts of current selection, it was the other one. After a little while I noticed that when I'd click on point 1.2.1, point 1. would also get greyed out. But not point 1.1 and 1.2. So I redid the selection, always using that box appear before the library list. Now all the points would go grey. (Well... don't forget to copy the current selection to the style, otherwise it won't work but just and only with these points you applied that style to!)

So, step by step:

1. Find the way to get that "Nested List" icon (see the bullet, list + nested list buttons in the menu?)

2. Use the Nested list and choose the one you want

3. Go to your other Headers and apply the same Nested list by clicking on the one at the top by itself

4. Each time you change a header, don't forget to do Update Style with Current Selection

I assume you have headers.

Note that I have not seen anything in the Style window that would possibly let you select a Nested List style with a click in there. So the only way would be through the Update Style with Current Selection which sounds really weird if you ask me. And yes, that means you cannot edit your Headers and tweak the nested lists in there. They are NOT accessible there! Only in that Nested List drop down can you do something of the sort...

See also: Multi-level lists in MS-Word... The new way!?