ok suzanne, no panic here!

here's what i have done (and i think it is what you meant, since it worked
out alright seemingly):

i have changed the style formatting of List of Abbreviations & Summary of
Findings from Heading 1 to Body text, Bold, Size 14 and assigned outline
Level 1 then apply Bullets & Numbering etc. it worked! Chapter 1 is now
Chapter 1 and so on.

not only that, now even the figures and tables appeared correctly (the few
that i re-captioned to include chapter number) but it looks like i have to
manually re-captioned all the figures and tables, additionally i have to
re-crossreferenced all the in-text citations of the figures and tables. there
is not much choice/difference between pasting { STYLEREF 1 \s } to every
single figures/tables and re-captioning (i don't think). i wish i have
thought/learnt about these issues earlier and may be i could have recorded a
macro to automate the re-captioning but c'est la vie. at least now my
documents appeared as i think it should be.

for my own education, could you tell or provide me with a link to find out
what are the switches in the captions and their respective functions? i tried
to google for these but could not find the answer.

thanks again suzanne, your advice/guidance has been very helpful and useful.

regards,
jes