Number Bullets in Word not lining up

See Suzanne Barnhill's page on this: http://wordfaqs.ssbarnhill.com/NumberAlignment2007.htm#NumberedLists.

Here is an excerpt:

Numbered lists

If you don’t have much experience with, or very frequent need for, numbered lists, you probably apply auto numbering using the Numbering button in the Paragraph group on the Home tab of the Ribbon (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Paragraph group of Home tab showing Numbering button

This can be risky in a number of ways, not least of which is that the button alone always applies whatever numbering style was last selected from the gallery (which may not be the one you want this time), but even if you select the "right" number format, it may not be suitable for your list. The built-in number formats work great for short lists—nine items or fewer—but when you get to 10 or more, one or both of two things happen (see Figure 2):

The numbers are no longer aligned on the period or other punctuation following them.

There may be a much larger space after the double-digit numbers than the single-digit ones.

This article will tell you how to solve both problems. Ideally, you should apply numbering by using a specific style that includes your customized number format, but Word 2007 also provides "list styles" that can apply numbering to any paragraph style, and numbering can also be applied manually to any style.

Equalizing the space

Let’s deal with the second problem first; this is an issue often seen in numbered headings. Suppose you apply numbering to Heading 1 using the default numbering style. The result will look like Figure 2. The reason for this is that the numbering has a hanging indent at 0.5″, allowing only 0.25″ between the left side of the first digit (which is at 0.25″) and the right side of the tab character following the number and period. This is adequate for numbered paragraphs in body text (using 12-point Times New Roman), but the heading uses much larger type. So the numbers 1–9, with following period and tab character, fit comfortably within this 0.25″ space, but when the numbers reach two digits, the combination becomes wider than 0.25″ and so the tab goes to the next default tab stop, at 1″. Figure 2. Numbered Heading 1s showing incorrect alignment

The solution for this problem is to increase the size of the hanging indent. In many cases, you can right-click in a paragraph and choose Adjust List Indents… from the shortcut menu, which opens the Adjust List Indents dialog (Figure 3). You may want to make your numbering flush left. If so, as shown in the dialog, you will need to set "Number position" to 0" and "Text indent" to something more than 0.25"; it may be that as little as 0.3" will be enough to solve the problem. > Figure 3. Adjust List Indents dialog showing appropriate settings> Unfortunately, the Adjust List Indents command is not on the shortcut menu when the insertion point is in a heading style. If this is a throwaway document, it may be safe to make the change in the paragraph formatting instead, but be sure this change is made to the heading style itself and not applied to paragraphs as direct formatting. There are two ways to accomplish this: (1) make the change by dragging the indent marker on the ruler, then right-click the heading style in the Styles gallery or window and choose "Update Heading 1 to Match Selection," or (2) right-click the style and choose Modify..., then, in the Modify Style dialog, choose Format | Paragraph and define a different hanging indent.

If this is an important document that needs to be very stable, or if numbering will be applied to more than one heading level, it is preferable to use a Multilevel List in order to associate the list formatting with the style(s)...

See Suzanne's original page or https://www.shaunakelly.com/word/numbering/numbering20072010.html for information on using MultiLevel Lists. For important documents or documents that will be subject to much editing, I would always use a Multilevel list.