Word 2010 - list number style wont restart at 1

The best solution is to use multilevel lists set up according to the instructions on Shauna Kelly's site (even when you just need multiple lists rather than multi-level lists). You have to follow all of the instructions, step-by-step.

I suspect that is why Stefan is recommending setting up a template. You do it once for the template and base your future documents on that template. (It is how I handle it.)

Once you have the template, things work fine.

I have used Shauna Kelly's procedure, and finally have things working.  Still, this is way too much work for a short, inherited document, and I don't understand why ad hoc numbering no longer works the way it used to.

Templates are fine, but they don't help me to fix poorly structured documents I inherit from others.

I am now using multi-level lists, but still can't get this to work.

Numbering has been broken at least since Word 2010, if not 2007.

Numbering has been broken since Word 97, in that the simple buttons and menu controls in Word do not give a response that you would expect in heavily-edited documents. The technical term is "spaghetti numbering."

Numbering in Microsoft Word

The best solution is to use multilevel lists set up according to the instructions on Shauna Kelly's site (even when you just need multiple lists rather than multi-level lists). You have to follow all of the instructions, step-by-step.

I suspect that is why Stefan is recommending setting up a template. You do it once for the template and base your future documents on that template. (It is how I handle it.)

Once you have the template, things work fine.

Numbering has always been tricky in Word. The user interface for numbering is certainly more confusing in the ribbon interface (misleading commands, as mentioned previously, is only part of this), but the underlying mechanism hasn't changed. (What has changed is that the numbering is more stable compared to older versions of Word, assuming that you follow the "rules" in Shauna Kelly's article.)

When numbering is attached to paragraph styles, level 1 items don't restart (unless you manually restart them). If you use a list style without paragraph styles for each numbering levels, the default is to restart level 1 when there is "intervening" text. Are you seeing something different?

I recommend setting up a template. It's necessary when you want to reuse outline numbering in Word.

I am now using multi-level lists, but still can't get this to work.

Numbering has been broken at least since Word 2010, if not 2007.

In Word 2013, I can't find a way to have each subsidiary level in a multi-level list automatically restart at 1 for each new group of paragraphs preceded by a higher-level paragraph.  This is the logical behavior, and was also the way previous versions of Word behaved.

In Word 2013, each new group of (indented) paragraphs begins with a paragraph set to "restart", but the value is always set to the next value after the last occurrence, which defeats the purpose of a restart!

Restarting in a multilevel list is determined by the numbering levels (for example, you can have level 2 numbering be restarted by level 1). If numbering levels are attached to paragraph styles, then in practice a style is restarting another style.

Note that the level/style that restarts the list doesn't have to be numbered itself, but it must be part of the multilevel list.