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View Full Version : Limits in Heading Numbered paragraphs and cross references



Howard Kaikow
01-06-2005, 09:39 PM
Anybody know of "documentation" of the apparent limits in Word(97, 2000,
2002. 2003) that apply to heading numbering. I used Word 2003 for the
following.

I tried to find out how many heading numbered paragraphs could be contained in a single document.

So I wrote a little macro to keep generating paragraphs, each consisting of
only the counter. I interrupted the macro when the count got to a bit under 36000.

I then applied the Heading 1 style to the whole document.
So each paragraph is numbered from 1 to the number of paragraphs and the
text of the paragraph is the same as the paragraph number.

I then used the Insert | References menu to insert a reference, initially
using the /h option.

I was able to successfully insert a reference to the number of the last
paragraph, however, when I almost immediately followed that by attempting to
insert a reference to the paragraph's text, the cross reference inserted was
to an entirely different paragraph.

I tried a few more insertions, eventually getting to the point where the
incorrect cross reference was always inserted, and finally to a point where
the Insert Cross Reference dialog, in effect, blew up. Ultimately, an
attempt to insert a reference to the later paragraphs, caused things to hang
AND the first 32767 items disappeared from the list of headings in the cross
reference dialog.

In addition, Norton Auntie Virus 2004 got blown out of the System tray. I
did not notice the point at which this occurred. Note that I do not use the
NAV Office plug-in and I disabled NAV's Autoprotect when I ran the macro, so
NAV should not have been poking around.

Perhaps, most important, I noticed the following.

While scrolling thru the list of Headings in the cross reference menu, the
first 32767 were listed in a normal font, but starting with 32768, both the
paragraph number and text are dimmed

My questions include:

1. What is the limit on the number of Heading numbered paragraphs that may
be included in a document?
2. What is the limit on the number of such paragraphs that may be
consistently cross referenced via the cross reference menu?

I do recall seeing a statement that the number of bookmarks in a document
is limited to about 16K. Obviously, that places an upper limit on the number
of heading paragraphs that can be cross referenced, and the number is
reduced further by other bookmarks that may be used in the document.

So, I also must wonder why Word allows the inclusion of more heading
paragraphs than the bookmark limit without some sort of warning? Heck, I
imagine if I tried to generate a TOC, things really would have gone haywire.

And, of course, my last silly question, where's the documentation?