How to set up auto-numbering for an affidavit in Microsoft Word

In this post I explain how to set up auto-numbering and other features in Microsoft Word to make an affidavit form look great and comply with court rules.

The example I am using is an affidavit form for South Australia, but the steps can be altered as necessary for documents for other courts. While I used Microsoft Word for Mac 2011, most of the steps will be similar in other recent versions of Word.

Step 1: change the default font

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The South Australian courts require electronically filed documents to be in Arial or Times New Roman fonts. The reason for this is unknown but we do not want to take any chances so the default font should be changed from the nice-looking Cambria to boring old Arial.

To do this, first open a blank document. Make sure “Normal” is selected in the Styles box. Then, in right hand side of the Styles box click on the icon for Manage the styles that are used in the document.

Hover over the word “Normal” in the Current style of selected text dialogue until a down arrow appears to the right of the word “Normal.” Click on it.

Click on “Modify Style” and a new dialogue box will open giving you the option to select a new font and size. Make the change to Arial and click “OK.” Now any text written in Normal style, or any styles based on Normal style will be in Arial.

Step 2: auto-numbering

Click on multi-level list in the paragraph box.

Click on “define new list style” and then name your style in the next dialogue box. I have called the style “SA Aff paras” because it will be used for the numbered paragraphs in my South Australian affidavit.

Next click Format, select Numbering and click Customise.

Now you need to link each number level (which are displayed in a vertical list down the left hand of the dialogue box) to a style. To do this, select level 1 (this should already be selected) and then go to “Link level to style” and select “Heading 1”. Then link level 2 to Heading 2 and so on for the number of levels of numbering you require.

I will only be using 3 levels, since an affidavit that has more than 2 levels of sub-paragraph is likely to be unwieldy.

Now go back to level 1. In the number format box delete the bracket after “1)” as it doesn’t look great. (The 1 should be in grey – that is because it is a field code.)

Leave the number style as “1,2,3…” and starting at 1.

Select “Font” and change it to Arial, Regular, 12 point.

Next, change the indent and add tab stop figures to 1.5cm.

Now select level 2. This time, change the numbering style to “a,b,c…” and put brackets either side of the “a” so it looks like “(a)”. Again change the font. Align the numbers at 1.5cm with a tab stop and indent at 3cm.

Finally, level 3. Use “i,ii,iii” as the numbering style with brackets either side of it. Change the font, align the numbers to 3cm and have a tab stop and indent at 4.5cm.

Click OK and OK, and you’re done.

One tip to remember is that if you want to edit your multilevel list style, you can do this by clicking on “Multilevel list” and “Define new list style” again. The modifications you made before will already be there.

Step 3: Modify list styles

The final step is to modify the list styles so that they are the right type of text for the numbered paragraphs of the affidavit. The default styles are usually used for headings (that’s why they’re called “heading 1” etc) so we need to make them more appropriate for paragraphs.

The styles box should still be open. Hover over “1 Heading 1” and click on the right arrow. Click modify style.

Change “Style for following paragraph” to be “Heading 1”. This means that the auto-numbering will change to the next paragraph number at the same level automatically when you hit “enter” after a paragraph.

Edit the font and size. Here we want Arial, regular, 12 point.

Next click on Format and select paragraph. Make the after paragraph spaces to be 12 point. This is because a South Australian Affidavit must have double spacing between paragraphs (so one full blank line at 12 point will give the double spacing). Set the line spacing to 1.5 – again, this is what the court rules require.

Click OK then OK again, and repeat this step for “Heading 2” style and “Heading 3” style. And you’re done with the styles.

Step 4: add the content of the affidavit to your document

Once the numbering styles are set up, you can add the content of the affidavit to your document. In the case of the South Australian affidavit this involves pasting in and formatting Form1 and Form 33. Once this is formatted, use the numbered list styles you have created for the paragraphs of your affidavit.