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Most everything you need is built in and can be easily modified. You could create a new set of styles, but for our purposes, Word’s existing heading styles, Heading 1, Heading 2, and so on, provide a good foundation. Admittedly, this advice isn’t always practical, but it’s the best way to start if you can.
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It can be done, but changing styles that are already in use almost always has far-reaching repercussions. Working with an existing document and all its in-use styles can be troublesome. If possible, open a new document to create your numbered style. Note: This article is also available as a PDF download. To avoid surprises, follow these 10 steps to add a numbering scheme to a style. Unfortunately, that can get you into even more trouble, if you don’t know what you’re doing. Or you can opt for the more efficient solution and create and apply a numbered style. You can enter the numbers manually and hope nothing changes - lots of luck with that one. You have two choices when faced with the task of numbering headings in a Word document. If you want to incorporate automatic numbering in your document headings, the quickest and most foolproof route is to create a custom style. 10 steps to creating a numbered heading style in Word
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