I've never understood how formatting works in MSWord for lists... it mostly just works but sometimes becomes incredibly stubborn about enforcing styles you don't want, especially when copy-pasting into a list and working with multiple, multi-layer lists.

What are some good ways to understand how it works, so one can work with Word, instead of fighting against it?

Here's an example... I want a list like:

1)first test
CHECK:
 a)something
 b)another thing

2)another test
CHECK:
 a)it works 
 b)it doesn't crash

I find Word really doesn't like this... I try creating one mini-list and copy pasting but typically the numbering on the sub-lists doesn't re-start automatically, etc.

I'm using Word 2007 but I remember it being this way in earlier versions too.