Yes, no, maybe ...

You'll need to provide a bit more info to get the best possible solutions to your scenario:

What platform are you working in? Word? WordPerfect? Something else? If Word, is it "local Word (any version installed on your hard drive), Word Online, or Nuance Word, Mac Word, all of which can behave differently with certain commands?

Are you referring to transcribing or typing new content into a blank document, or working with existing text that you now need to edit? If it's the latter, you'll need and use different features compared to if it's the former.

If it's typing new content into a blank document, perhaps instead of trying to manipulate a bunch of text that's strung together in a paragraph, you might consider customizing your default settings so that you can easily trigger the numbered list formatting option.

For example, to do this in (local) Word (I don't use the other versions, so can't speak to those, but others around here do), you would go to File, Options, Proofing, AutoCorrectOptions, AutoFormatAsYouType, and make sure the Automatic Numbered Lists option is checked. With that option checked, if you start typing "1." it will automatically trigger the format for a numbered list.

You'll have to fine-tune the list format to get the formatting you want (e.g., left justification). Pressing the Enter key twice returns you to normal formatting.

If you need more than that, please provide more details about your specific scenario. No guarantees that you can do what you are envisioning, but if you provide enough detail, I know there are plenty of MTs on here (I'm not one of them) who are surely doing something similar and can offer insight into how they handle similar scenarios.

Hope this helps!

-Karen :)