Office & productivity software forum: How to convert automatic numbering to normal text in Word?

...Tools>Auto Correct Options>Auto Format As You Type.
Under Apply As You Type", uncheck Automatic Numbered List.
Check or uncheck others as you like. Stay around there. You may find it interesting to find Word's many, plenty options!

Yeah, at this point I'm just typing in numbers to match the automatic numbers and then turning off numbering. Is there a way, in a macro, to actually pick up the automatically generated number for a particular paragraph?

Thanks,
Drew

Do you have some idea of what term I would search for to find that?

Thanks,
Drew

This thread is more then a year old, but maybe someone will find this posting still.
We had the same problem with unwanted automatic paragraph numbering in Word. Especially with scanned text and OCR it's a nuisance.
See this nice little addin:
http://www.editorium.com/listfixer.htm.
It costs $29,50 or so. It works and even gives several options.

This was very helpful, saved tons of time.
Many thanks for keeping this old thread going

If you do not wish to save the macro in your document (or if you ahve a shop standard which does not allow macros) you can accomplish the same thing by opening the VBA editor (Alt-F11), and then the Immediate Window (Ctrl-G), type in the statement ActiveDocument.ConvertNumbersToText, and hit <Enter>. I have done this successfully. However, I would caution taht for some reason I find that all the numbers do not always convert. In a large document with a few hundred outline numbered headers I always seem to get a dozen or so random headers which did not convert. Still, it is a great time saver.

That would be something I would need but I am on a mac.

Do you know how I could create this macro on a mac? Bearing in mind I hardly know the meaning of the word "macro"....

Offine 2008 UK
Mac Os 10.7.3

Macros are not needed. Just copy and paste the selected automatically numbered text as below.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/control-the-formatting-when-you-paste-text-HA010215708.aspx#BM3

If your selection includes a bulleted or numbered list, the Keep Text Only option may discard the bullets or numbering, depending on the default setting for pasting text in Word.

To preserve the bullet and number characters, you can convert the bulleted or numbered list formatting to paragraphs that begin with bullet or number characters.
1.Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Word Options.
2.Click Advanced, and then scroll down to the Cut, copy, and paste section.
3.Select the Keep bullets and numbers when pasting text with Keep Text Only option check box.