You can do this in recent versions of Illustrator.
Select your text without numbers.
Open the Paragraph panel.
Click the Numbered List button.
That’s it. Do you see the button?

it will be easier if we can make something like this in illustrator, especially for keyboards that don't have a number pad

Clusterx Thanks a lot, I'm very annoyed with this function.

Well, this is unusable and gets in the way a lot. The best thing about it is that I can disable it!

As Egor says, a lot more control is needed for this to be more useful than annoying.

Customize Bullet Characters?

It looks like I only have (4) bullet character options.

Is there a way to use a different character (other than the 4 offered) as a bullet?

e.g., select among any given typeface's glyphs as bullet options?

OMG Thank you clusterx. I was looking for this, and couldn't find it.

Mike Escoffery look at the last item in Preferences > Type. Uncheck "Automatic Bulleted and Numbered lists while typing".

Am I the only one who hates this new feature?
How do I turn it off?

Every time I type 1. at the beginning of a sentence, it AUTO creates a numbered list, WHICH I DO NOT WANT.
If I set it to "No Bullets" then it removes my number.
I want Absolute, and Total control over everything I type, Illustrator should never make assumptions on my behalf. Especially when I can't have total control over the feature and it's behaviours.

This will be an incredibly useful feature!

I'm sure Illustrator must have more artistic controls over the bullet design. An expected solution to this would be allowing to use symbols instead of glyphs. With the scaling controls. The vertical position can be controlled with the baseline shift, and the origin position could perhaps stick to a half of the font's x-height.

This also goes well with the anchored graphics request, something that InDesign handles well — there is a separate request for that I encourage to vote for: https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657/suggestions/36764746

Hey Gary, thanks for checking this out. Yes, we will be adding the dialog box with more settings (these will keep appearing in Beta in upcoming weeks). Also, we are checking on the .001 numbered list appearing outside the text frame.

Hi Varun, Awesome to see this finally happen! My only feedback for now is wondering if you will be adding the same dialog box (see attached) like InDesign and also the .001, .002, etc numbers (numbered list) are appearing outside the text frame to the left. Intentional? It shouldn't be. Users can always apply indents if they want it floating out there. Thx Gary

Looking and functioning very well so far!

Excited to give this a try. Thanks for all your hard work on this feature!

This is fantastic and long-awaited good news. Can't wait to use this feature when it arrives.

Rama, you and your team are awesome for finally hopping on this. In my line of work (using Ai), this will be a major time saver. Thank you and your team!

Please please please such a waste of time to use multiple files/programs only for this reason

IK,R???!!!
If you're on a Mac, you'll have to depend on option>8. You'll get a bullet something like this: •
Make it larger or smaller to your liking and use the character palette to raise or lower the baseline shift because each font displays its bullets differently.
Copy the bullet and the space behind it and paste it in front of your following items.
A pain, but a workaround that I've found to be helpful and saves a lot of time.

Or PC and Mack folks, see the attached screenshot to see how to use the Glyphs panel to create a bullet by clicking twice on the one you want,

This is maddening. There are certain types of jobs that cannot be done in InDesign. Work for a CPG company, our files and dielines must be in illustrator for the vendors, it is quite ridiculous that cannot format a simple 3 bullet list appropriately because they even took out the Bulleted List feature they had a couple of years ago.

Need this so much so often. Please make it happen!!