In the last movie, we looked at how to make bulleted lists. Let's give them a little more structure. Here is how to apply numbers or letters to your paragraphs; what the Web designers call ordered lists. I have my brochure document open. I am going to zoom into the same text, and select these paragraphs. To turn this into an ordered or numbered list, all I need to do is go to the control panel, and click on the Numbered List button. If it's a very simple list like this, that's all I need to do.

Now I will click at the end of one paragraph, and I will type some more text, and you can see that it automatically updates the list. Let's say I didn't want that paragraph to be part of the list. It's easy to turn the number off; just click on the button. Now that paragraph I just typed looks like it's part of section number 2, so it goes 1, 2, and then skips, and then continues on with 3, 4, 5. If I wanted this paragraph to start over at number one again, I would place my cursor in that paragraph, and then right-click, or Control+Click with a one button mouse, to show the context menu, and choose Restart Numbering.

When you do that, it starts the number over at 1 again. So now I see, 1, 2, then blank, and 1, 2, 3. If I need to do anything more complex than what I just showed you, I need to visit the Numbering dialog box, and I can get there by holding down the Option or Alt key, and clicking on the Numbered button. Just to be clear, this numbering dialog box is actually the Bullets and Numbering dialog box. That's because I can change my selected text from a Numbered List to a Bulleted List with one pop-up menu. If I change that to Bullets, you'll see it update automatically on the page.

But that's not what I want; I do want a Numbered List here. Let's say I wanted this Numbered List to start at number 47. To do that, I would make sure the mode pop-up menu is set to Start At, and then I would type in the number that I wanted to start at. When I click OK, you can see that it updates automatically. Let's see some of the other cool things we can do with numbered lists. I am going to undo a few steps -- Command+Z or Control+Z -- back to where we had a list from 1 to 6. I will select those paragraphs again, and Option+Click or Alt+Click on the Numbered List button, and I am going to change the style of those numbers; that is, the formatting.

Right now they are formatted the same way as the rest of the text in the paragraph, but I can change that by applying a character style. I am going to be talking about character styles in the next chapter, but for right now, this document has some character styles built in. For example, I am going to choose bold. That applies the bold character style to the numbers; not the rest of the paragraph. Here is a question: what if I want a sublist? For example, I'd like this to be numbered 1, 2, 2a, 2b, and then 3, 4.

How would we do that? Well, to make a sublist, I'll click OK, I'll select the paragraphs that I actually want to affect, and I'll go back to that dialog box, and I am going to change the Level of this numbering from 1 to 2. Now it's a second level; a sublist, within this list. Next I am going to change the format of this list from regular Arabic numerals to something else. You can see you could choose Roman numerals, or letters; I will use the lowercase letters. I am going to increase the Left Indent to, let's say, 36 points, and then I'll press Tab, and that way the whole sublist is indented.

And finally, I'm pretty sure I said I wanted these to be listed as 2a, and 2b; not just A and B. So how do I tell InDesign to change the format? What it looks like on the page? Well, in fact, there is a field up here called Number, and the Number has some strange codes in it, and here is what it means. This first code -- caret, number sign -- means the current number; whatever number you're on right now. Then it's followed by a period, and a tab, and in fact, that's what we see: the current number, a, followed by a period, and a tab.

So if I want this to say 2a or 2b, I have a couple of choices. I could come in here, and type the word Two, followed by a space, then I will hit Tab to make it take effect, and you can see that whatever I type inside that field is reflected here on the page: Two a, and Two b. Or I could come in here, and replace that with the number 2, and hit Tab. Now it looks right. The problem with this method, where I actually type the number 2, is that it's not flexible. For example, if this number 2 later becomes 3, well, then it won't update properly.

So I'm going to get rid of that number 2, and instead, use another code. Now, I don't know what the code is, so instead, I'm going to use this little flyout menu on the right side. Most people don't even see that over there. But I'll choose that, and I will look inside the Insert Number Placeholder pop-up menu. Now, I know that this sublist is Level 2; I already set that, so I want to go one level up, so I'll choose Level 1. It typed in the code -- caret, one -- and when I hit Tab, it updates.

Now its 2a, and 2b, but it's totally flexible. I will click OK, and let's see it in action. I am going to click at the end of this paragraph, and hit Return, and then type some more, and you'll see that now it says 1, 2, 3, 3a, and 3b, so it worked. The last thing I want to point out here is that as I select text in InDesign, you will see that I am not selecting the numbers. It's almost like those numbers aren't even there. That's usually okay; I usually don't need to select those numbers for any reason, but if you did need to go in and choose those numbers for some reason, you'd need to convert it into actual text.

So to do that, I will go to the Type menu, come down here to Bulleted & Numbered Lists, and then choose Convert Numbering to Text. Now these numbers are no longer automatically going to update; they are actual text. You can select them, edit them, copy them, whatever you want to do, but they won't update if I later change my text. Like I said, it's rare that you need to do that, but it's good to know how. So, numbered lists; that wasn't so hard, was it?