From the course: InDesign Secrets
138 Making a multi-level numbered list - InDesign Tutorial
From the course: InDesign Secrets
138 Making a multi-level numbered list
You probably know that you can make a numbered list in In Design. What web folks call the ordered list, something that updates automatically when you add or remove paragraphs. To do that, all you need to do is choose the type tool, select the paragraphs that you want to apply the numbered list to, and then click on the numbered list button in the control panel. The great thing about numbered lists is that you can update them very easily. For example, I needed to add two more paragraphs here, so I'll simply select those and click on the button. Now, all the numbers update. If I remove paragraphs in the middle, all the numbers would update again. I love that. However, what if I wanted this to be a multi-level numbered list? For example, this needs to be 3A, 3B, 3C and so on. How would we do that? Well, it's not so obvious. So, in this lesson, I'm going to take you through the steps that you need to know to create lists that are two or more levels deep. Whenever you're making numbered lists, it's imperative that you use paragraph styles. You're going to drive yourself crazy if you don't. So, I'm going to select all of these paragraphs. I'll open my paragraph styles panel and I'm going to create a new paragraph style for this list. I'll call it list level one. You can call it anything you want, but I'll call it that. Before I click okay, I want to make sure that apply style to selection is turned on. It is. So, that when I click okay, it's going to make that style, and apply it to those paragraphs. Now, this is interesting. I can see, immediately, that something's messed up. Look at all the numbers. They're all one. So, let's go ahead and edit that style, and see what went wrong. I'm simply going to double click on it, which opens up the Paragraph Option Styles dialog box. And then, I'll click on Bullets and Numbering, to open up that pane. We can see that this list is going to use regular numbers, one, two, three, four, and so on. And, we can see that the code here tells us that it's going to insert the number, the current number, followed by a period, followed by the tab. That's what those codes are all about. But, look at this. The mode is set to start at one. All of them are starting at one. That's not what we want. We are going to change this to continue from previous number. Because the preview check box is turned on down here, I can immediately see that all my numbers have reworked themselves properly. One is following the next. I would kind of like all of these numbers to right aligned, however, right along those dots as periods. I think that would look nicer. So, I'm going to come over here to the alignment pop-up menu and change this to right. Now, most InDesign users, when they tried that, they find it doesn't work and they give up, but let me tell you the trick. Not only do you need to set this to Right Aligned, but you also need to make sure that the left indent is large enough to fit all the numbers. So, for example, if I come in here and change the left indent to something larger, like 20 points and set the first line indent to something smaller, maybe minue four points, and then I'll hit tab again, you'll see that all of these numbers are moved over and now they can be right aligned. There's enough space there, so that looks pretty good. I'm going to click okay. And now, let's try to do at the second level. Remember, I wanted these paragraphs here to be indented. And, I wanted this to be 3A, 3B, and so on. I've selected those paragraphs and I'll head back over to the paragraph style panel menu and chose new paragraph style. This time, I'm going to call it List Level Two. Again, you can call that anything you want and I'll head right to my bullets and numbering pain. You'll notice that I keep calling this a second level heading or multi level headings. And, that's because the key to this whole trick is this level field over here on the right side of the dialogue box. Right now, it's set to level one. Butt, if I increase this by clicking this little button and making this two, suddenly I have a second level head. We can actually see this here. It goes one, two, three, and then back to one again. Let's make this more obvious by changing the format to a, b, c. Also, let's increase the indent to something like 40 points. So, suddenly, we have one, two, three, and then a, b, c, d, and then it skips back to four. So, that's looking pretty good, but what if I wanted this to say 3a, 3b, 3c? Well, we can do that, too. All we need to do is change the number codes. Remember, this code is the current number followed by a period and a tab? Well, if I want it to say 3a, 3b, 3c and so on, I need to click before this code, I'll just click right there at the beginning. And then, I'm going to come over to this little pop up menu, this little triangle. And, I'm going to choose from the insert number place holder sub menu. And, I'll choose level one. In other words, grab the number from the last level one list. Let's see if it works. It typed the code for me. Carrot one. And, we can see that it's grabbing the number here, three, and it's inserting it before the a, b, c. So, it now says 3, 3a, 3b, and so on. That's exactly what I wanted. Let's select Okay and see if our paragraph styles work elsewhere. I'll select a couple of paragraphs down here and change them into a list level two. And indeed, we have 6, 6a, 6b. If I come over here and delete a paragraph, I'm going to just delete paragraph number five there. Hit the delete key. Everything updates. All the numbers change, so now, it's 5, 5a, 5b. So, this is just another one of those features in InDesign that seems really hard until you see how it's done. The key is using paragraph styles and remembering that word. Level.
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Contents
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161 Keeping page numbers on top of master items3m 55s
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162 Adding automatic currency symbols in a table cell or before text3m 50s
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163 Make a pop-up footnote for your ebook3m 48s
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164 Deleting tabs at the beginning of paragraphs and applying a paragraph style3m 10s
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165 Five InDesign Presentation tips6m 28s
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089 Three great Object Styles for any designer8m 1s
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090 Choosing alpha channel image transparency2m 25s
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091 Adding and reading metadata for InDesign files3m 25s
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092 Adding ALT tags to your images6m 59s
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093 How to Place & Link a text frame's text but not its formatting7m 4s
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094 Setting the baseline position of a caption2m 39s
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051 Five things that should be in every new file5m 19s
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052 Forcing EPUB page breaks with invisible objects6m 21s
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053 Understanding component information6m 39s
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054 Creating running heads using section markers4m 16s
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055 Making a font with InDesign using the IndyFont script5m 20s
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056 Finding where that color is used7m 17s
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037 Updating a linked table without losing formatting5m 18s
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038 Creating electronic sticky notes4m 49s
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039 Moving master page items to the top layer for visibility2m 48s
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040 Five guide tricks that will impress your coworkers6m 18s
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041 Letting InDesign add the diacritics4m 21s
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042 Using single-cell table cells for custom paragraph formatting6m 2s
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