While automation is usually a good thing in our documents, sometimes we need to go a little lower tech. Automatic numbering in Microsoft Word certainly makes life easier and helps keep complex documents better formatted than plain text, but sometimes what we need, especially if we are sharing content with others using different applications, is just plain text.
Automatic numbering uses a type of field codes and normally you can select text and use the keystroke Ctrl + Shift + F9 to convert field codes to text. But automatic numbering that appears at the beginning of paragraphs (as opposed to ListNum field codes which can be converted with the keystroke combo) is not affected by the magical Ctrl + Shift + F9. So what can we do to easily convert automatic numbering? Well there are two easy answers.
Option 1 - WordPad
Any text you select from your Microsoft Word document and paste into WordPad will strip the automatic numbering and present a text version of the numbers. So you could copy the text from Word to WordPad and back again.
Option 2 - Do it immediately
If you have never used Macros in Microsoft Word or gone into the Visual Basic Editor this option may seem daunting, but it’s really simple if you just follow the steps:
- While in the document you want to strip the automatic numbering from (and I suggest you work on a copy of the original document) press Alt + F11 to open the Visual Basic Editor.
- From the menu, choose View, Immediate Window (it may already be open when you go into the editor).
- Place your cursor in the Immediate Window, type “ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText” (without the quotes) and press Enter.
- From the menu, choose File, Close and Return to Microsoft Word.
That’s it. When you look at your document you will see that the numbering is now plain text.
