Word doc with tabs

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Tabs are a text-alignment function in paragraph formatting. Tabs produce equally spaced text in your document. They also guarantee that your content is correctly aligned, versus if you just typed a couple of spaces to split it.

Below is a step-by-step guide to set tabs in Microsoft Word.

1. Make sure your ruler is shown on your screen.
2. If you do not see your ruler going across the top of your page, go to the view tab, and on it, there is a ruler choice.

• Check the ruler box, and your ruler will appear.

• Go back to your home ribbon and make sure your flashing insertion point is where you want your tabs to happen.

There is a button on the far-left side with a capital L on it, and if you hover your pointer right on it, it will show you that it is a left tab.

• When you click on that button once, twice, thrice, it will keep changing to different kinds of tabs.

• Let us assume you want to put a left tab in front of a heading you have typed, such as ‘Setting Tabs.’ And you want to place it at one-and-a-half inches on the ruler.
• On the ruler, point to the one-and-a-half-inch mark (at the bottom of it) and click once.

• Press your Tab key.

The heading is aligned with the one-and-a-half-inch mark.

There is another way to set up tabs that is even easier and better because you can do more with it, using the tabs dialog box.

1. To open the ‘Tabs’ dialog box, go to the home ribbon.
2. Go to the paragraph area

• Click the downward-facing arrow in the corner.

This will open up the paragraph settings dialog box.

• On it, click ‘Tabs.’

• Now you can make more modifications with Tabs, such as alignment, leaders. For example, with ‘Leaders,’ when you press your tab key, you will see a dotted line going along that tab space or dash or solid line.

Let us say you want to create two-tab stop positions: With the first one, you want to be at the one-inch mark.

• To do this, you will type ‘1’ in the tab stop position box for one inch.

• To make it stick, you have to click ‘Set.’ If it appears in the big window below where you typed it, that means it has been set.

• With the second one, let us type ‘3’ in the tab stop position to mean three inches.

• Before we click ‘Set’ in the ‘Leaders’ option, pick a leader to go with that tab, such as 2 with the dotted line.

1. Now that you have the left tab chosen and a dotted line selected from a leader, you can click ‘Set’ and ‘OK.’

1. You will have a left tab indicator at the one-inch mark and another at the three-inch mark on the ruler.
2. Make sure that your flashing insertion is right before your heading and press Tab once.

You will notice that your line is indented and brought to the one-inch mark.

1. If you press your ‘Tab’ key once more, it will indent to the three-inch mark with a dotted line leader.

You can now play around with these tab settings and choose your preferred presentation.

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This will create another version different from the first. Every time another person opens a version and makes edits, a new version is created, with the latest changes. The best part is, even if you forget to turn on tracked changes, they are automatically documented!

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The Tab key or Tabulation key moves the cursor to a fixed horizontal position in the document, marked with a tab stop.

You can use tab stops in two different ways:

I. Use the tab stops as they are pre-defined in Word

By default, the tab stops set at every half-inch from the beginning of the line.

So, when you press the Tab key or insert the Tabulation symbol, the cursor moves to the next half-inch position of the line. The distance between tab positions does not need to be equal for all tabs stops in the document:

You can change the pre-defined half-inch distance for the tab stops. For example, the 1-inch tab stops:

To customize the positions of tab stops, follow the next steps:

   1.   On the Layout tab, click the dialog box launcher:

   2.   In the Paragraph dialog box, click the Tabs… button:

   3.   In the Tabs dialog box:

In the Default tab stops field, instead of the pre-defined tab stops 0.5’’, type or choose the number you prefer.

   4.   Click OK to close the Tabs dialog box.

II. Set your tab stops

For example:

• To create
  a table-like look for your data without using tables:

  

  

• To create
  special types of text such as tables of content (the title and page number reside at the opposite ends of the line):

  

See also this tip in French:
Tabulations et taquets de tabulation dans le document Word.

In February this year, Microsoft rolled out its Office 2013 product, bringing numerous updates and several new features, such as the new start screen. One thing the Redmond-based software company failed to do was add tabs to Microsoft Office – a convenience that many of us have grown used to in our web browsers. For those of us who work with multiple documents, this would have been a huge and valuable addition to the new suite. But with this, Microsoft dropped the ball.

To save you from browsing from window to window, Office Tabs steps in – yes, the name could not get much more logical. This fills a rather basic need that Microsoft should have had the sense to do, not only in Office 2013, but back in the 2010 iteration of its flagship software package.

Office Tabs Means Business

To be fair, while Office is a popular service in almost every business, it is certainly a suite for the consumer environment as well, and resides in many homes, not to mention schools.

If you have need of multiple open documents – a problem more common than some of you may believe, then Office Tabs will feel like a gift, though not a free one, but that depends on your needs.

There are three flavors to chose from – Enterprise, Standard and Free edition. All of them have varying levels of features. Free, however, should work for the majority of customers, but businesses will need to pony up the cash and grab an Enterprise license which will lighten the company budget on a variable scale based on the number of licenses required to outfit the organization.

Your Free Office Tabs!

The free version of this add-in to your Office suite works for Word, Excel and PowerPoint and is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Office 2010 and 2013, as well as 32-bit versions of 2003 and 2007.

The free version also provides the ability to customize Tab Length and appearance, get support for shortcuts and the ability to show or hide the tab bar.

But What Does it Look Like?

The way it looks and functions is more the bottom line to most customers … ahh … all customers. That is where this little app shines, with Chrome-like tabs that function almost exactly the same as any web browser.

This plays just like your browser, with an option to close a tab on the right and, to the further right, a choice of launching a new tab and adding yet one more.

The download is 20 MB and setup is simple, so no need to worry, and no extra bloatware is coming along for the ride during this installation.

What Are My Options?

Simply adding tabs is a nice feature, but far from a final play for your devoted use. When you get Office Tabs up and running, you will be faced with a number of options to customize the service. The Options page pops up upon a successful install and has only two tabs, but a number of features included within each.

In the left column, users will encounter options for tabs in each – each Office app can be individually customized, so if your wish is to have different options in Word and Excel, then it is an easy choice.

Customers further add flare to tabs by choosing color options, style and even setting tab width to prevent the window from being overrun as my browser currently is.

In the End

If you are someone who frequently runs multiple documents at a time, as I find myself doing with Word, then the free version will likely get you by. Corporate customers and power users will need to open their wallets, but the pricing does not break the bank. Honestly, for free, this is an easy choice. It is not using up computer resources, nor does it harm Office and can be handy even for those who use the app sparingly.

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Introduction

Indenting text adds structure to your document by allowing you to separate information. Whether you’d like to move a single line or an entire paragraph, you can use the tab selector and the horizontal ruler to set tabs and indents

Optional: Download our practice document.

Indenting text

In many types of documents, you may want to indent only the first line of each paragraph. This helps to visually separate paragraphs from one another. It’s also possible to indent every line except for the first line, which is known as a hanging indent.

First line indent

Hanging indent

To indent using the Tab key:

A quick way to indent is to use the Tab key. This will create a first-line indent of 1/2 inch.

1. Place the insertion point at the very beginning of the paragraph you want to indent.

   Placing the insertion point

2. Press the Tab key. On the ruler, you should see the first-line indent marker move to the right by 1/2 inch.
3. The first line of the paragraph will be indented.

   The indented paragraph

If you can’t see the ruler, select the View tab, then click the check box next to Ruler.

Showing the Ruler

Indent markers

In some cases, you may want to have more control over indents. Word provides indent markers that allow you to indent paragraphs to the location you want. The indent markers are located to the left of the horizontal ruler, and they provide several indenting options:

• First-line indent marker : Adjusts the first-line indent
• Hanging indent marker : Adjusts the hanging indent
• Left indent marker : Moves both the first-line indent and hanging indent markers at the same time (this will indent all lines in a paragraph)

  The three indent markers

To indent using the indent markers:

1. Place the insertion point anywhere in the paragraph you want to indent, or select one or more paragraphs.

   Selecting paragraphs to indent

2. Click, hold, and drag the desired indent marker. In our example, we’ll click, hold, and drag the left indent marker. A live preview of the indent will appear in the document.

   Moving a paragraph
   

3. Release the mouse. The paragraphs will be indented.

   The indented paragraphs

To indent using the Indent commands:

If you want to indent multiple lines of text or all lines of a paragraph, you can use the Indent commands.

1. Select the text you want to indent.

   Selecting text to indent

2. On the Home tab, click the desired Indent command:
   • Increase Indent: This increases the indent by increments of 1/2 inch. In our example, we’ll increase the indent.
   • Decrease Indent: This decreases the indent by increments of 1/2 inch.

     The Indent commands
3. The text will indent.

   The indented text

To customize the indent amounts, select the Page Layout tab and enter the desired values in the boxes under Indent.

Customizing the indent amounts

Tabs

Using tabs gives you more control over the placement of text. By default, every time you press the Tab key, the insertion point will move 1/2 inch to the right. Adding tab stops to the Ruler allows you to change the size of the tabs, and Word even allows you to apply more than one tab stop to a single line. For example, on a resume you could left align the beginning of a line and right align the end of the line by adding a Right Tab.

Using two types of alignment on the same line

Pressing the Tab key can either add a tab or create a first-line indent, depending on where the insertion point is. Generally, if the insertion point is at the beginning of an existing paragraph, it will create a first-line indent; otherwise, it will create a tab.

The tab selector

The tab selector is located above the vertical ruler on the left. Hover the mouse over the tab selector to see the name of the active tab stop.

The tab selector

Types of tab stops include:

Although Bar Tab, First Line Indent, and Hanging Indent appear on the tab selector, they’re not technically tabs.

To add tab stops:

1. Select the paragraph or paragraphs you want to add tab stops to. If you don’t select any paragraphs, the tab stops will apply to the current paragraph and any new paragraphs you type below it.

   Selecting text to tab

2. Click the tab selector until the tab stop you want to use appears. In our example, we’ll select Decimal Tab.

   Selecting a tab stop

3. Click the location on the horizontal ruler where you want your text to appear (it helps to click on the bottom edge of the ruler). You can add as many tab stops as you want.

   Adding a tab stop to the Ruler

4. Place the insertion point in front of the text you want to tab, then press the Tab key. The text will jump to the next tab stop.

   Moving text to the Tab stop

Removing tab stops

It’s a good idea to remove any tab stops you aren’t using so they don’t get in the way. To remove a tab stop, click and drag it off of the Ruler.

Removing a tab stop

Word can display hidden formatting symbols such as the spacebar (), paragraph (), and Tab key () markings to help you see the formatting in your document. To show hidden formatting symbols, select the Home tab, then click the Show/Hide command.

Displaying hidden formatting symbols

Challenge!

1. Open an existing Word document. If you want, you can use our practice document.
2. Practice using the Tab key to indent some text. If you’re using the example, try indenting the second and third paragraphs of the thank-you letter.
3. Select a paragraph, and try creating a hanging indent.
4. Select some text, and use the Increase Indent and Decrease Indent commands to see how they change the text. If you’re using our example, practice increasing and decreasing the indent of the text in the Summary section of the resume.
5. Explore the tab selector and tab stops. If you’re using our example, select the text in the Experience section of the resume and add a left tab stop at 3 inches, then align each of the cities to the tab stop.

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In this chapter, we will discuss how to set tabs in Word 2010. Microsoft Word tabs help in setting up information properly within a column. Word enables you to set left, center, right, decimal, or bar tabs to line up columnar information. By default, Word places tabs every .5 inch across the page between the left and right margins.

Setting a Tab

Following are the simple steps to set the center and the right tabs in a Word document. You can use similar steps but different tabs to set up decimal and bar tabs.

Step 1 − Type some text that you want to line up with the tab stops. Press the Tab key only once between each column of information you to want to line up. I typed the following three lines.

Step 2 − Select a tab type using the Tab button; assume the center tab and finally select the paragraph or paragraphs the tabs of which you want to set. Next click the ruler where you want the tab to appear, a tab will appear at the ruler where you just clicked and the selected portion of text will be adjusted in the center.

Step 3 − Now select the right tab using the Tab Button and click the ruler at the right side where you want to align the text at the right side. A right tab will appear at the ruler where you just clicked and the selected portion of text will be right-aligned.

Moving a Tab

You can move an already set tab at a particular location by following the steps given below.

Step 1 − Click just before the line for which you want to change the tab setting. Drag the tab sign available at the ruler to the left or right.

Step 2 − A vertical line marks its position as you drag and when you click and drag a tab, the text moves with the tab.