Heading numbers

[sinbad]

I don't know if I'm just not doing this right, or whether Publisher doesn't support multi-level heading numbers yet.

I have a simple document with a number of "Heading 1" and "Heading 2" titles. I want these to be hierarchically numbered, i.e. 1, 2 for top-level headings, 1.2, 1.3 etc for second level. I can get this to work if the Heading 1 and Heading 2 styled text is within a single text frame, but if I use different text frames across different pages, the numbering always resets to 1 regardless of what options I pick in the Paragraph formatting area. I saw a Name and Global flag in the properties but these didn't seem to do anything.

Is global multi-level numbering supposed to work yet?

[Dave Harris]

It is intended to work, but when I tried it I found it buggy. The second level would go to "2.2", "3.3" when it should have been "1.2", "1.3". I've logged this to be fixed.

However, the global part did seem to work. I set Restart numbering to Manual Only, and unticked Restart numbering now, and ticked Global. The list name needs to be the same for all the headings; the default empty name is sufficient. Also be aware that the numbering ordering between frames depends on their z-order (in the Layers panel), not their x/y position on the page.

I'm using Mac. Are you on Windows? There may be bugs in the text style editor on Windows, so it can be worth checking in the Paragraph panel that the style was applied as expected.

[sinbad]

Thanks for the reply. I can get the top-level global numbering working across text frames now - I had no idea it was based on the Z rather than the x/y position in the sequence.

I can't get the second level working though, when I set it to Level 2 and changed the text format to be Level1.CurrentLevel, it showed "0.1". It didn't seem to matter whether it was above or below the parent text frame in the layers. Perhaps this is a variant of the problem you've already reported, although I couldn't get it to recognise any parent heading I don't think.

[Dave Harris]

Actually my problem was due to the list text having the current level twice, instead of level 1 and level 2.

Showing as "0.1" usually means that the list is referring to a level that doesn't exist. For a multi-level list, you need all the levels to use the same name. It's tempting for the "Heading 1" style to use a list named "Heading 1", and the "Heading 2" style to use a list named "Heading 2", but that doesn't work. You need them both to use the same name for the list. Eg "Headings".

[sinbad]

Ah I thought I had done that but I forgot to check the "Global" on the Level 2 style as well. It's a bit fiddly to use right now but seems to be working, thanks.