Anyway, the topic at hand is one of great importance. My friend Bryan wanted to tweak some of Word's bullets/numbering behavior. As my friend Dan who works on this feature can tell you, I hate it. I think it's stupid and unintuitive, especially when it comes to accidentally formatting the paragraph mark and silly tab behavior inside tables. BUT, it does have its perks. For one, it's crazy powerful, and given enough time, you can bend it to do anything. Additionally, you can change bullets into people's heads! It is those two aspects we'll address today.
Bryan messaged me the following:
"I really want my bullets to default to all the way left justified and lessen the indent between list levels. Is there any way to do this?"
Reading between the lines, it's obvious that he'd also like to have the bullets be little cut-outs of his head, so we'll throw that into the mix, too. So that's our task. 1) Left justify the bullets, 2) Lessen the indent between list levels, and 3) Turn at least one level of bullets into Bryan's head. I'll be reporting on this as more of a live broadcast and less of a tutorial because I don't actually know the best way and because my frustrations along the way might help someone else avoid them. Who knows?
Let's get started.
Ok, so I'll fire up Word and see where we are. Let's type some text, then put a bulleted list below it.
So far so good. On my "Home" section of the ribbon (all the stuff up top in Office), the Bullet button is now selected, but there doesn't appear to be any way to change the indent when I click the little arrow dropdown. Odd. I do, however, see "Define new bullet...", which might be coming back later (if you mind profanity, don't listen to more than three seconds of that link, though it is really good) in our story! Ok, so that's a no go. What about the button next to it? Those might be useful. The dropdown on the Numbers button seems to give me just about as much as the Bullets one (nothing), but the Multilevel list! Now here's something! Let's try to... define a multilevel list?
Alright, I think we're getting somewhere. This dialog has everything I think we need. I can define alignment AND (potentially) save myself some work from having to edit every single level with "Set for All Levels". We'll see, though.
OH MAN. "Set for All Levels" totally did what I thought it might! That's a win! I told it to first "Set the Bullet/Number position for first level" at 0" (no indent), then put the text at .25", then .5" for each additional indent level. And I think that works pretty nicely. Let's test.
Ok, ok, the text is now left aligned. Let's see if we can tighten it up a bit. Changing that additional indent level to .25".
Nice. I think we all know what this call for (hint, it's Bryan's head). BRYAN'S HEAD! The part we've all been so eagerly anticipating. So, going back to the Bullet button dropdown, let's Define a New Bullet. Luckily, I happen to have a cropped picture that I stole from Bryan. Perfect. Let's try to Define a New Bullet. We'll select "Picture" from the options, then "Import" (Office.com? Seriously? Nothing cool could come from that.). Aaaaand... dang, it totally worked. For each bullet level, if I just select it, then click on the Bullet button dropdown, I can change the bullet to the Bryan head by just clicking it. No pain. Nice.
But now, how to save this? I mean... this document is great and all, but I obviously want to make this my default. It's too beautiful not to be featured. Multilevel List's Define New List Style (right under the Define New Multilevel List, where we first made the list) looks promising. I'll give it the name "GetRichOrDieBryan" (puns, refuge for the destitute) and tell it make new documents based on this template.
Now, the true test. I'll restart Word, create a new doc, and hit the Bullets button. Ah, well it turns out that just does a normal list. The Bryan head is saved in my bullet history though, so I can now make and bullet an ad hoc Bryan head. Sweet. However, I want that list I just made. The Numbered List, worthless in this quest, also has nothing for us. BUT, at long last, when we open up the Multilevel List, our best friend in the whole world, shining as a beacon before us is Bryan's cranium. Clicking it sets makes our list look just as beautiful as it did before.
So there you have it. If you want to use this now, you can click the Multilevel List button, then select Bryan's head (or whomever's head you chose). Perhaps there's a way to make it some default, so we get the list with one click, but two isn't bad. If you'd like the actual Word file with this custom list inside, you can grab it here. Perhaps someone can tell me if it works on other computers?
Anyway, that's that. Post back if these steps don't work for you, and we'll investigate. I consider this an hour well spent, and I really hope none of you read far enough to get to this point.
-Jake
Brilliant. I love it.
ReplyDelete