>Since this is a new document, I don't think that what you're saying
>about the formatting holds true.  Any other thoughts, anyone?
[rest snipped]

Holli, since you asked ...

I can't answer your problem but I can suggest some alternative ways of
getting what you want done.  Just one thought - if you press Shift-Enter
(it's easy to do accidentally) Word treats it as a plain new line and
does not do anything with it.

You described situations where you want blank lines between the list
items.  I find this is confusing for Word and this may be related to
your problem.  The best thing to do is enter the whole list without
numbers but with the spacing you want, like this

First

Second

Third


and then select the whole thing and click the numbered-list button,
giving:

1.  First

2.  Second

3.  Third

- Word is clever enough here to not put numbers on blank lines.  Or you
can enter the list without spaces, then add them *afterwards* and press
backspace (or right-click and select skip numbering) to remove the
numbers on the blank lines.  Whatever you do, avoid manually typing the
2. or B. because this will start a new list and your numbering could be
messed up if you add new items later, or re-order the list.
(The best thing really would be to have your paragraph style include
space after so you never need to type blank lines ... but not many
people seem happy with this.)

You also described producing section headings, with text within each
section.  This autoformat trick is not really creating headings but a
numbered list.  Lists can have unnumbered paragraphs within them (as I
describe above) but maybe you would be better off with real headings.
Autoformat can make headings for you (but I can't find the Help
description of how) - or you can hit Ctrl-Alt-1 for a Heading 1,
Ctrl-Alt-2 for a heading 2, etc.

Joe