Let’s talk about complex lists in Flare. As writers we’ve all come across the need to have a numbered list with some bulleted lists nested inside like this:
Many new Flare users struggle with how to do this. I was programmed to struggle with this because MS Word seemed to always screw up numbering. But in Flare it’s remarkably easy…and the parent lists continue when you want them to….it’s just dreamy.
I’ll start by creating an unordered list:
I am the director of a beagle rescue organization, BREW, so I’m using dogs as my subject today.
Anyway, I need a nested list of colors under the beagle.
At the end of the item for which you need a nested list, press Enter. A new <li> tag will appear.
Press the Tab key. This will cause that new bulleted line to become indented and create a NEW bulleted list. This nested list will continue as long as you need it. Notice how the nested <ul> is inside an <li> tag. This means that that last <li> tag has not been closed by an </li>.
That is the trick to making this work: leaving the <li> tag open.
Here’s a view of the html code:
What about closing that last <li> tag and returning to the previous list level? When you’ve completed your list, as I did with the beagle colors, press Enter one more time to get a bullet and then press the Outdent icon in the menu bar twice. Pressing it once will result in a <p> being created at the end of the parent list, as shown here.
Pressing the Outdent icon twice will cause a new <li> tag to appear at the end of the parent list.
Now, a <ul> <ul> grouping is easy…as you just saw. But what about a <ul><ol>? Again, easy. Let’s use our original list of colors of beagle and change the unordered list to an ordered one (and we accept that this is not correct according to tech writing rules).
Click on the <ul> tag that surrounds the colors.
Now that the entire list has been selected, go up and select ordered list from the bulleted list selector.
Here’s what the resulting complex list looks like:
If I wanted a third level list, I would repeat the steps above starting at the <li> tag under which I want the list to be. It would look like this:
Try it out and good luck! Let me know if you have any questions about this process.
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