I've never had any notable trouble with paragraph numbering in Word, since "3.5 for DOS" although a couple of the common methods are nearly impossible to use in Word 2007. If you apply a "numbered list" you should get a new number each time you hit Enter. If you need a break without a new number you use Shift-Enter to put in a "soft break" instead of a paragraph. I don't often use numbered, or bulleted, lists, as I find I have more control with a {seq paras} field that I can insert where I want it, start or restart with a number I SELECT, and have it update itself whenever I CHOOSE to let it.

Instead of the previous versions' layout where you had a nice set of a half-dozen choices each of which leads logically to another half-dozen, etc., always taking you in no more than two or three steps to a complete task window where you could actually do something ...

Word 2007 has a "toolbar" with approximately 95 indistinguishable "icons." And there are 9 of those "toolless bars" each with an equal number of indistinguishable icons.

Most of the "icons" take you to a bunch of "preset choices" that tell you nothing about what will happen if you click one of them. As an example, if you click on "Table" you get 150 identical little squares as a "visual field" and if you click on one of them it will create an empty table with some number of rows and columns.

Only a total IDIOT creates a table and then tabs through it to fill in the squares. You type the data, tab separated for columns and paragraphs for rows, and then you convert it to a table.

But the command to convert text to a table is on a different "top menu" from the one that says "Table," three levels down through the maze of fuzzy icons, and the command to convert a table back to text is on a third different top menu, at the opposite end three levels down through apparently identical meaningless icons.

The problem is that almost any "professional level" task requires using at least three "top toolbars" and frequently "drilling down" two to five levels in each one to get to the "menus" that are actually useful if YOU want to choose what to do instead of accepting a bunch of kiddy babble defaults.

The single menu that in previous Word versions "popped up" when you clicked on an inserted image, with all the tools you needed, in Word 2007 requires three separate menus (on two different toolbars) to set half of the properties you really need if you want to control all the attributes of the image.

Instead of a tool for doing constructive work, they've made it into a toy for adolescents (and magazine editors) that resembles an ancient gaudy arcade pinball machine, where you click the buttons and "hope that something good happens." Frequently you just get a flashing light that says "TILT" if you're actually trying to accomplish some purpose you've elected in advance. You're supposed to just click things and believe that what it does must be good for you.

What you want to do doesn't matter.

Unfortunately my older Word "went obsolete" and when they stopped delivering updates to keep it compatible with the XP patches, it simply stopped working. It was Word 2002. Word 2003 comes next.

And full support for WinXP is scheduled to end in April of this year.

But they say that Windows 7 will be "better than Vista" ... "soon" ... or at least "someday." I haven't heard of any plans to return Office to something useful.

John