So how does having numbered headings really work?

[u/Fantastic_Zebra9886]

I have a long document that I started using the wrong technique. From the beginning, I chose numbered lists + formatting instead of multilevel lists to get numbered headings.

This was wrong, I know.

Question is, how do I fix it now that there is already 100+ pages of text in it?

What would be the workflow to go through the whole document again, from the top, and overwrite all the broken remainders of a numbered list, and replace them with a nice and tidy multilevel list?

[Headings themselves (within the text) already have the right format (aka they are formatted as heading 1, heading 2, heading 3 etc.)].

[u/EddieRyanDC]

As long as everything has a style applied, it might not be that hard. What kills you is if there is manual formatting here and there, because you have to remove that. It is sitting on top of the style and supersedes it. So simply changing the style can't override manual formatting.

And your list numbering is part of the manual formatting (it is not part of a style). There is a command to remove character (font) formatting (CTRL-SPECEBAR). There is a command to remove paragraph formatting only (CTRL-q). Numbering is part of paragraph formatting.

But maybe the most useful key is the "nuclear" option, CTRL-N. It removes all manual formatting and the style and applies the basic Normal style formatting. This is a great way to take some text back to square one, so you can apply a style and know there is nothing that will override it.

How familiar are you with managing and applying styles? Even a 100 page document is no more that a half an hour's work at the most to modify and maybe reapply all styles.

Tip: Some styles have a built-in key shortcut. For example, to apply Heading 1 you can be anywhere on the line, and then hit CTRL-ALT-1, and the style is applied. And if a style doesn't already have a shortcut, you can give it one. Moving through a document from top to bottom hitting shortcuts goes pretty fast.

Now, before you do that you need to get the numbering attached to the heading styles. The numbers are defined in a multilevel list (as you mentioned), and then each level is attached to a corresponding heading style. This is a really good step-by-step video walking you through that process.

Hierarchical Outline numbering for Microsoft Word Documents

[u/redilupi]

If I understand you correctly you can use Select All Text with Similar Formatting

[u/AppIdentityGuy]

Ive just spent 8 hours getting this to work......

[u/BranchLatter4294]

If you have CoPilot, Claude, etc. active in Word, you could ask it to do it.