How can I use an AutoNum field but suppress the period after the number or use a different separator character?

Article contributed by John McGhie and Dave Rado

You can't use the AutoNum field for this (at least, not on the PC), but you can achieve this using the AutoNumLgl field:

1.     Select Insert + Field.

2.     On the General Switches tab, you can use the Add button if you want to add switches that make the number appear in alphabetic or roman formats

3.     On the Field-specific switches tab, you can use the Add button if you want to add switches to suppress the trailing period (\e) or to convert the period to a different separator character (\s, followed by the separator character you want in quotes)

So, for example, the field to create an auto-numbered list with no separator, such as
  1  Some text
  2  Some text
would be:

{ AUTONUMLGL \e }

The field to create an alphabetically numbered list using a bracket separator:
  a)  Some text
  b)  Some text
would be:

{ AUTONUMLGL \* alphabetic \s ")" }

The braces in the examples above ({ }) do not represent text; they represent the field braces that are inserted automatically when you use the Insert + Field dialog. You can also insert them using Ctrl+F9 if you want to create the field without using the dialog.

Note that using the AutoNumLgl field with built-in Heading styles – provided you use  Arabic numbering (the default) – allows you to create an outline list in Legal style if you want to. For instance, using the \e switch, you can create a list of type.:
  1  This is a Heading 1 paragraph
   1.1  This is a Heading 2 paragraph
  2  This is a Heading 1 paragraph

or even of type:
  1  This is a Heading 1 paragraph
   1.1  This is a body text paragraph
  2 This is a Heading 1 paragraph

However, you can nevertheless use the field to create simple lists, and doing so gives you far more flexibility than using the AutoNum field, due to the number of switches supported by AutoNumLgl.