By using tab stops in your document, you can create uniformly spaced text. And, unlike if you were to just enter a bunch of spaces to separate text, tabs ensure your text remains properly aligned. Each time you press the Tab key, the cursor moves to the next tab stop. By default, Word has left tab stops set at every half-inch, but you can create your own tab stops in a specific position or change the location of the existing tab stops.
Enable Formatting Marks and the Ruler
Before you start adjusting tab stops, make sure to turn on both formatting marks and the ruler. The formatting marks make it easy to see what's going on in your document, especially when it comes to tabs. The ruler is necessary to easily add, move, and remove tab stops.
- Click the Show/Hide ¶ button on the Home tab.
- Click the View tab.
- Click the Ruler checkbox in the Show group.
Each space is represented by a dot (·) each pilcrow (¶) is a new paragraph, and each arrow (→) is a tab.
Set a Tab Stop Using the Ruler
- Select the text you want to align.
- Select the type of tab stop you want to use.
- Click on the ruler where you want to place the tab stop.
The tab icon at the upper-left shows the type of tab that's active. If you want something else, click the icon to cycle through the available options.
The tab stop is added and everything after the tab is aligned to it.
Set a Custom Tab Stop
If you want to create an additional tab at an exact location, you can use a custom tab stop.
- Click the Home tab.
- Click the Paragraph dialog box launcher.
- Click Tabs.
- Type a tab stop position.
- Select the type of tab stop you want to use in the Alignment section.
- Click Set.
- Click OK.
You can set a tab leader here, which is a series of dots, dashes, or line that extends across the empty space added by a tab. These are very helpful when you need to line up information across multiple lines, like in a directory or table of contents.
The tab stop is added. You can repeat the process to add more tab stops.
The tab stops you set are added to the selected paragraph.
Click the Clear button in the Tabs dialog box to remove a single tab stop or click the Clear All button to remove all tab stops.
Move or Remove a Tab Stop
You can adjust a tab stop directly from the ruler, moving it to a new position or removing it entirely.
- Click and drag a tab stop along the ruler to reposition it.
- Click and drag a tab stop off the ruler to remove it.
As you drag a tab stop to a new position on the ruler, the text affected by that tab stop will move with it.
Removing a tab stop will shift the text over to the next tab stop. If another tab stop isn’t set, the text will instead use the default half-inch tab spacing.
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Tabs allow users to align text vertically at a specific location in a document. A tab stop is a point on the horizontal ruler that indicates the location at which to align text. A tab stop is a location where the insertion point will stop when the user presses the
Each type of tab stop is used in the example shown below. Note the markers on the ruler:
The default tab stop is Left, but tab stops can easily be switched by multi-clicking the tab selector
The Tabs dialog window is useful for adding new, and editing existing tab stops.
The window can be opened by double-clicking an existing tab stop or by clicking the Tabs… button in the Paragraph Dialog window, which is opened from the Paragraph Launcher button. The Tabs window is useful for precise position definitions, and it is the only option for adding Leaders to tab stops. A tab leader is a character that is repeated to fill the space spanned by a tab. The dotted leader is very commonly used on menus to make it easier to associate the menu description with its correlating price. The Tabs window is also a convenient way to clear one or all tab stops in a document.
Practice 3: Wine Prices – Part 1
- Open the data file Wines unformatted.docx from your data files.
- Insert two blank paragraphs at the beginning of the document.
- Select the text Name in the first paragraph. Apply the Arial font, size 12, bold and red text color.
- Use the Format Painter tool to apply the same formatting from Name to Country, Color, Year, Type and Price. Hint: Double-click the Format Painter after placing the cursor in Name, and then click each the headings. Click the Format Painter tool again to turn it off.
- Select the text starting with Name through $16.99. Click the Paragraph Launcher button and then click the Tabs… button to open the Tabs dialog window.
- Set the following five tab stops:
- Center tab stop at the 1.5” position. (Type 1.5 in the Tab stop position field, then click Center, then click Set.)
- Left tab stop at the 2.15” position.
- Right tab stop at the 3” position.
- Center tab stop at the 3.75” position.
- Decimal tab stop at the 6” position. Add a dotted leader before clicking Set. Then click OK.
- A slight error may be noticeable. If you enable the Show/Hide , you should notice that there are two tabs between Country and Color. Remove one of the tabs. This should align the data into neat columns.
- Select the same block of text as step 5. Remove the 8 pt of paragraph spacing After each paragraph via the Layout tab.
- At the top of the document enter the text: Wine Prices. Center-align the paragraph, and make the font 36pt and bold.
- Save the file with a new name: Tab formatted Wine Prices.docx.
Your file should look like this: