Disable the automatic numbering/bullet system in Word 2010 for already finished docs

[DSpider]

I'm having some trouble with Word 2010 (SP1). I'm trying to replace an automatic number/bullet list with regular text throught an entire book. I have unchecked:

"Automatic numbered lists" from File tab –> Word Options –> Proofing -> AutoCorrect Options -> AutoFormat As You Type and
"Automatic bulleted lists" from File tab –> Word Options –> Proofing -> AutoCorrect Options -> AutoFormat

...except it only seems to work for new stuff I type, not for already processed text (ie. the stuff I got from ABBYY FineReader).



If I press the Delete key at the end of #2 I get this:



The "III. " part gets cut off. And here's what I would like to happen:



Meaning NO frigging automatic numbers!

Notice the sans serif font in the first two images. I want continuous text, not some stylized BS, dammit! If I choose Clear Formatting, ALL the numbers and/or bullet points disappear!

[DSpider]

1. Open the VBA editor (Alt-F11) and go to View -> Immediate Window (Ctrl-G)
2. Type "ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText" (without the quotes) and press Enter

Voilà!

For convenience, here's a macro:

Sub Auto_Format_convert_list_numbers()
'
' convert_list_numbers Macro
' Macro created 10/8/08 by WJ Shack
'
ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText
End Sub

I hope they add a checkbox or something to FineReader. Because with scanned text and OCR it's more of a nuisance if anything.

[shearclass]

I have registered for this forum purely to thank you for this DSpider!

I have spent hours googling this today in relation to a mail merge, I've been tearing my hair out!

Thanks so much!

[pallbearer]

Thank you, DSpider, and everyone else.

This auto-numbering "feature" also causes me an enormous amount of grief. I use OCR to computer-translate whole books into English, and the auto-numbering garbles the text badly.

Could anyone explain how to batch-convert a large number of OCR'd documents this way? Or a way to simply disable auto-numbering from being applied in the first place?

I wonder which program is inflicting this auto-numbering crap on us - Abbyy (as part of its text processing) or Word?

I see no need for "automatically" numbering anything. What is so difficult and time-consuming about typing a number in front of a paragraph? It seems like an utterly useless "feature" in the first place. Undoing its formatting mistakes is guaranteed to waste far more of people's time than it allegedly saves to begin with.

As an aside; Abbyy (like Word, and most other products in a "capitalist market") has a number of seriously irritating flaws that could easily have been avoided or fixed, but deliberately weren't, so that they could always count on selling "improved" versions every couple of years.

[DSpider]

Bullet and numbered lists have their purpose. Sometimes you just want to select a few paragraphs and press a button - which usually allows you to select the font or style for the numbers. Most people don't care about it, but if done right, having them as plain text gives you much more control over how they look, how they're aligned, etc.

Originally Posted by pallbearer

Could anyone explain how to batch-convert a large number of OCR'd documents this way? Or a way to simply disable auto-numbering from being applied in the first place?

Use the above macro. Maybe set a hotkey (or hotkey combination) to it, like Shift+Num0 or something. This way, you can simply open a document, hit the assigned hotkey and the numbered lists become regular text. It would take about 5 minutes for 50 documents, assuming you run the macro every 6 seconds (10 documents per minute).

1. Double click a document to open it.
2. Shift+Num0 to run the macro.
3. Ctrl+S to save it.
4. Ctrl+W to close it.

^ See what I did here? I selected the text and used the forum's automatic numbering list. Much easier than writing the numbers and indenting and spacing them myself.