Setting tabs

Article contributed by Suzanne Barnhill and Dave Rado

Why set them?
Have you ever tried pasting from someone else's documents into your own, or even just changing the page margins, or the font; and found that their tabbed lists no longer line up – so you have to waste a lot of time reformatting them?  If so, it's because the person who created the document didn't use tabs properly.

If you use the built-in tabs, (and even, as many people do, use the space bar to simulate right-aligned tabs); and therefore end up tabbing once on some lines, more on others, depending on how much text you're typing on a given line, then the tab positions will be determined by the document's margins and by the font in use.

The golden  rules when it comes to using tabs are: do set the tab positions yourself, and don't press the tab key more than once between any two blocks of text – set a tab position instead.  You can easily see whether a tabbed list has been created properly by clicking the ShowAll button , so you can see where the tabs are. 

Figure 1:  How not to use tabs 
Multiple tabs between the text blocks, spaces have been used to simulate right-aligned tabs – this list will go all over the place if the page margins or font are ever changed, or if the list is ever pasted into another document

Figure 2:  These tabs have been set properly
A left indent and a decimal tabstop have been set on the ruler, there are no redundant tabs or spaces in the document  – this list will be very easy to maintain

How to set them
Like many tasks in Word, setting tabs can be done in any of several ways. Which one you use will mostly depend on which is most intuitive for you.

To begin with, like most word processing programs, Word has built-in tab stops. By default these are set every half inch, but you can change the interval if you like: there is a spin box at the top right of the Tabs dialog box that allows you to do this.

The Tabs dialog (accessed via Format | Tabs) is the ultimate way to set tabs. Here you can type in an exact figure (down to hundredths of an inch), choose the kind of tab you want, and set a tab leader if desired. It is the only way to set a tab leader (typically, a dotted line filling the space take up by the tab, used most commonly in tables of contents; but there are four different choices of tab leader available); and also the only way (in Word 97 and earlier versions) to set a bar tab, which is a special kind of tab that isn't really exactly a tab but has been included in this dialog because some Microsoft engineer found it convenient (more on that later).

Unless you want to set a bar tab or a tab leader, however, it is rarely necessary to visit the Tabs dialog. Usually the easiest way to set tabs is using the ruler bar. If you do not have the ruler displayed, check that item on the View menu. On the left side of the ruler is a button with an icon that looks like an L.

This button shows which kind of tab stop is currently selected; the default is a left tab. Click anywhere on the ruler, and you will have set a tab stop; you will see a small L on the ruler. By default, the tab stop will be set at one of the ruler markings or halfway between them. If your ruler display shows inches, this means that tabs can be set only at intervals of 1/16" (which is usually close enough) unless you press the Alt key while dragging the tab marker; when you do this, you will see measurements displayed, and you can set tab stops just as precisely as in the Tabs dialog.

Three other types of tab stops can be set this way. If you click on the L button, it will change to the icons that represent center, right, and decimal tab stops. When you have reached the kind you need and click on the ruler bar, you will place that type of tab stop (see Figure 2). You can move these tabs as needed; just click on one of the markers and drag it where it is needed. This is very handy if you want to set up a simple table using tabs: you can enter data such as the following:

Item<tab>Item<tab>$Number
Another item<tab>A very long item<tab>number
And so on.

After you've finished the whole list and can see where the tabs need to be, you can select the entire block and place the tabs as needed. Which brings up another issue: unlike in WordPerfect, where tabs take effect when they are set and continue in effect until they are changed, tabs in Word affect just the paragraph in which they are set and any other paragraphs that may later be created by pressing Enter. This means that you can set tabs in a paragraph while you are writing it and keep those same tabs for as long as you keep writing, until you change them in another paragraph, but, if you have already entered text and go back and set tabs, they will affect only the paragraph where the insertion point is located or any block of text you have selected. This is really a very powerful tool, but it is not always intuitive for beginners.

One of the things I especially like about Word (compared to WordPerfect) is that you can set tabs beyond the right paragraph margin, which makes it very easy to do (without a table) invoices, say, with a multi-line entry that wraps short of the right page margin (paragraph has a right indent), while the money amount is at a right tab at the right page margin (beyond the paragraph margin).

Tabs and Tables
You might think that using tables would be a substitute for tabs, and to a large extent it is, but you can also set tab stops in tables; the trick is that you have to use Ctrl+Tab to get to the tab stop, because Tab alone takes you to the next table cell. Also, if you set a decimal tab in a table, the cell contents (which must be left-aligned), will jump to that tab automatically: you don't have to enter a tab character.

A borderless table has one other major advantage over a tabbed list – the text in it can word-wrap.  You may very well start out using a tabbed list, then realise half way through that you need the text to word-wrap. Provided you have used tabs properly, this is almost a one step process – on the Table menu, select “Convert Text to Table”, press Return, and you're done..  But if you tabbed more than once between any two blocks of text, the resulting table will be a mess.

Now the promised information about bar tabs: They are an almost totally undocumented feature in Word, but they can be very useful occasionally (only you will be able to figure out when they might be useful for you). When you set a bar tab, you get a thin vertical line at the tab stop position in each line of a paragraph. You don't actually have to tab to it; it's there all the time, and it stretches the height of the text line, making a solid line throughout the paragraph. It doesn't take the place of a paragraph border or cell borders in a table, but every now and then it's just what you want.

One more word of advice about tabs: if you are accustomed to indenting the first line of a paragraph using a tab, don't do it. The proper (and timesaving) way to do this in Word is to use a first-line indent. You can set this in the Format | Paragraph dialog or by dragging the first-line indent marker on the ruler bar. This is the top triangle of the three buttons to the right of the tab selector button. If you hover your mouse over it, the ScreenTip will say “First Line Indent.” (The other two are for Left Indent – there's a corresponding Right Indent on the other side – and Hanging Indent.)