Outlines in Word Processor, numbers and bullets don't mix?

Question

I'm writing a meeting adenga in an outline form. I want the main topics to be numbered, sub-topics to be bulleted, and sub-subtopics to have diamond bullets.
For some reason, the following (as an example) happens. I've created a list of 7 main topics. I add subtopics to topic # 5, which are by default also numbered instead of bulleted. As soon as I change the label style on these subtopics to bullets, topic # 6 is re-labeled # 1, topic # 7 becomes # 2, etc.
I need to make my sub-topics bulleted without affecting the numbering of the main topics. What's happening?

Answer 1

When you add a label (eg. Number) to a paragraph, you are setting a Style for that paragraph. The Style is inherited by subseqent paragraphs until a new style is set.
When you change the label, you are resetting the Style of the selected paragraph(s). This change breaks the chain of 'subsequent paragraphs', and the count is reset.
Rather than a Paragraph style (such as Number or Bullet), you could use one of the three Outline styles (Harvard, Diamond, or Legal) which do allow marking subtopics without affecting the numbering of the main topic list. Unfortunately, none of the three will give the topic marking pattern you want.
You can get (almost) what you want by not creating new 'paragraphs', and by manually inserting the bullets and diamonds.
AppleWorks considers every return character to mark the end of a paragraph, and any character following a return (other than another return, and probably a small set of other characters) to be the first character of a new paragraph.
To start a new line without starting a new 'paragraph', use a line feed (soft return), made by pressing shift-return.
Follow the shift-return with a tab to indent the subtopic, then option-8 for the bullet.
For the second level of subtopics, use shift-return, tab, tab, shift-option-V.
Regards,
Barry