Real World Computing
Bullet proof
When you use a new bullet in a document, that bullet is shown in the dropdown list of bullets, alongside the Bullet Library in sections called "Document Bullets" and "Recently Used Bullets". You can right-click on items in those sections and choose "Add to Library" to make that choice available in all subsequent documents. You can right-click on any bullet in the "Bullet Library" and choose "Remove" to remove that bullet from the library if you don't want it to be suggested again. If you press Enter to start a new item in a bulleted list and immediately press Tab, the new item is indented and the bullet changes to show the difference in levels. If you change the bullet on any item, you actually change it for all items at that level, but there's no easy way to change the bullets for all levels at once. Word will cycle around between spot, circle, square, and back to spot again for each new level unless you set the bullet for each level manually.
You can also adjust the indentation of the bullet and the text. By default, Word will indent bullets by 0.63cm and the text by 1.27cm (in and in respectively). If you want to change this space, right-click on the bulleted paragraph and choose "Adjust List Indents..." from the context menu. This displays a small dialog box where you can change the position of the bullet and the indentation of the text, and specify whether the bullet is followed by a space, a tab character or nothing. Again, these settings work level-by-level for a multilevel list, so you'll need to perform this action once again for each level in your list.
I can't find a way to change the default indentations. They appear to be hard-coded into the application rather than being settings in a template. If you want better control over the indentation of your lists it's best to customise the List Bullet and List Number styles (and their level 2-5 variants), and use those rather than the standard bullets and numbering buttons. Using these styles will also help you keep bullets and numbering consistent.
Numbering follows the same pattern as bullets: you can click on the numbering button and then just type. Alternatively, select some paragraphs and then click the numbering button - the dropdown arrow shows you several variations of numbering schemes, and you can choose one from the library or define your own. You can add or remove items from the library by right-clicking on the items in the gallery. Both defining new numbering schemes and adjusting indents works for a single level at a time. If you add new levels to your list by pressing Tab before typing the text, Word will cycle round the common numbering schemes of "1.", "a.", "i.", and back to "1." again. If you define your own numbering scheme then in addition to Arabic numerals, Roman numerals or letters in upper or lower case, you can specify ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd) either as abbreviations or as full words, or cardinal numbers in words (One, Two, Three). Also, when numbering as opposed to bulleting, you can break or join lists or renumber items. Right-click on a numbered paragraph and choose "Restart at
A step up from numbered lists is Multilevel Lists, which in Word 2007 get their own button. Click this and you get a gallery of choices for different numbering or bullet schemes. Hover over one of the options and the thumbnail will expand to show more detail. Study the pictures carefully, because there are subtle differences in the way the numbering schemes work. In the List Library section, the first three choices (after "None", which removes any existing numbering) are analogous to those I've discussed, except that they set the bullets or numbering for multiple levels at once. The first choice, for instance, sets levels 1-9 to be "1), a), i), (1), (a), (i), 1., A., i.", whereas the second choice uses the legal numbering system "1., 1.1., 1.1.1.".
