unable to continue numbering
I have been working on a paper for the last few years that is at 210 pages now. It uses a paragraph style called Ex. (as in 'example'), which is set to use the numbering style Numbering 123. It has worked flawlessly this whole time. The numbers automatically count up sequentially, and at the beginning of each new chapter I manually tell the numbering to restart.
I recently upgraded from 6.2.0 to 6.3.4, and suddenly for the first time I had a case where the numbering restarted at (1) without my approval. I was able to manually tell it to continue previous numbering, but it caused a disturbing chain reaction where I had to tell each following numbered example to continue previous numbering too.
Well now it has gotten worse. Whenever I apply the Ex. style to a page it always restarts at (1) and there is no way to make it continue the numbering. Under the right-click bullets and numbering menu there is simply no such option. Instead, if you select "Restart Numbering" and then re-open that right-click menu, it will show the icon next to Restart Numbering highlighted blue. And if you click it again the highlight will turn off. I don't know what that is all about. Either way, it makes no difference. If you go to the main menu Format > Lists, then "Continue previous numbering" is greyed out.
I reverted to 6.2.0 and the problem persists!!! I tried copying the paragraph style to a blank document and the problem persists! But if I create a new paragraph style that also uses Numbering 123, it works fine. What has happened? How do I fix it?
Update: If I change the misbehaving paragraph to use List 1 style, strangely the numbering then does continue rather than restart at (1). I thought the normal behaviour is to NOT continue numbering between different list styles. There is still no option to continue or restart numbering for the paragraph, it just continues if it is List 1 and restarts if it is THE SAME numbering style as the previous examples (Numbering 123). If I try changing the Ex. style to use List 1, Writer crashes.
Update 2: I'm not sure but it seems that maybe the inability to continue line numbering only applied to the last examples in my paper. At least now, when I add an Ex. paragraph earlier in the paper, it shows up as (1) still, but I am able to tell it to continue line numbering. I found out that last heading line was preventing the "continue previous numbering" option from appearing for paragraphs that came after it. If I changed the heading to something else like Text Body, then I could set the following Ex. paragraphs to continue previous numbering. Then I set the heading back to the Heading 3 style and "continue previous numbering" still works. Of course none of this makes sense. I still have ...
Upon further investigation, if I go back five versions (50 examples, 1 month) on my paper, it works normally there, but the problem just started happening today... The other 4 older versions have the problem. This is bizarre.
Restart/Continue Numbering flag cannot be stored in a style definition. It can only be applied manually. By chance, did you copy and paste a block of text containing a restarted example (the flag is also copied)?
No. As I described, "Whenever I apply the Ex. style to a page it always restarts at (1) and there is no way to make it continue the numbering."
A comment on Update (1):
A list item is formatted by a paragraph style associated with a so-called list style (in fact a sequence number definition). Several paragraph styles may be associated with the same list style, in which case they belong to the same sequence even though they look different because of different paragraph styles.
Exactly. So it is weird when the numbering continues BECAUSE the list style changes.