Forum Discussion
Numbering and bullets in Word docs keep disappearing
When working as a team on Word files within SharePoint, I constantly have problems with things like heading numbering disappearing (or changing from numbers to bullets), bullets going missing or bull...
Curious if anyone ever helped you find a solution to this? I'm having the same problem and struggling to find the workaround. From what I can tell, the problem occurs because (at least in our case), the template is actually launching from a locally synced version of the company sharepoint folder. When I create a document based on this template the document template path becomes c:\Users\(myusername)\(synced sharepoint library folder name\template.dotx. When a colleague enters the same document (which also resides in sharepoint and is accessible to all parties) his/her version of the document is still pointing to the local template on my C drive, and obviously his/her computer is not finding that path. I haven't found a way to attach a document template in word to an actual network location (that doesn't include a local c drive and username in the path), so essentially every time a different person opens the file, it breaks. I do find it strange that this only applies to the automatic bullets and numbering, while not affecting the styles. Especially considering that the auto numbering and bullets in this template have been associated with styles in the template. I also was under the impression that word only calls to the template file when you first create the new document (or go to use in building blocks, etc.), so I'm not sure why it seems to happen repeatedly.
Would love to hear if anyone has found the solution for this, as it is killing the usability of otherwise very useful templates we have created.
Thanks
cdarrowNo, nothing yet. Hoping that it might get some traction because every company I've worked at has this problem so it's got to be an issue that deserves attention as it wrecks the usefulness of it.
I don't think the document losing the connection with the template affects it: I have mine linked to templates in SharePoint and they stay fairly solidly connected even though the bullets and numbering goes haywire.
I sync my SharePoint locations to OneDrive so I too have the template linked to somewhere on my local drive initially, however in each template I have a macro that changes the link to the SharePoint location (and updates the styles, which fixes the numbering and bullets again, at least until the next time multiple authors cause it to drop off).
You can link it directly to the SharePoint location if you view the site in Explorer view (which you can only do from Internet Explorer), then drag the folder containing the template into your quick access. Once there you can browse to it in the template dialog and attach the template that way.
