How do you insert a "tab leader"

[Guest]

The document is already typed, but need to insert tab leaders. How do I do
this without the text moving also?? I have followed the "help"
instructions, so please don't tell me to go to format/tabs/etc., etc. - it
does not work. Please let me know step-by-step what to do (ie: where to put
the curser, and what to do). Thanks.

 

[Jay Freedman]

The document is already typed, but need to insert tab leaders. How
do I do this without the text moving also?? I have followed the
"help" instructions, so please don't tell me to go to
format/tabs/etc., etc. - it does not work. Please let me know
step-by-step what to do (ie: where to put the curser, and what to
do). Thanks.

It *does* work if you follow the instructions exactly. Three things you may
have missed or misinterpreted:

- You must select the text -- one or more paragraphs -- that you want to
affect *before* you open the Tabs dialog. That's easy if it's all together
in one spot. If it's spread around, you can change just one piece of text,
then select the next piece and press the F4 (repeat) key, etc. A better idea
is to define the tab with its leader in a paragraph style, and apply that
style to all the affected paragraphs.

- In the Tabs dialog, you need to select from the list the tab whose leader
you want to change. For example, if you have a tab at 6", be sure to click
that one in the list so it appears in the "Tab stop position" box.

- Most important, after you select the leader you want, you must click the
Set button before you click OK. It isn't enough just to click OK -- nothing
will happen unless you click Set.

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Jay, but how do you select the text? Do you highlight it? Does the
curser go after the text? How do I get it to look like this:

I. INTRODUTION
................................................................... 1

Sorry.......
Toni

 

[Jay Freedman]

If you're only changing one paragraph, it's enough to click once anywhere in
that paragraph and leave the cursor there while you open the dialog. If you
want to change two or more paragraphs at once, drag the cursor across the
text so that the highlight includes every paragraph to be changed.

One other thing... you didn't mention exactly what you're doing, but it
looks like you're making a table of contents. Word has a whole feature to do
that automatically for you, and you don't have to mess with tabs and
leaders. Look in the Insert menu, click Reference, and click "Index and
Tables". Then select the Table of Contents tab.

 

[Guest]

Jay - this is exactly what I do:

1. TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT (I want ........... after this to the right)

Put the curser on the line of text;
Pull down "Format"
Click on "Tab"
Set: Tab Stop: 5.5
Right
2.....
Click "Set"
Click "OK"

and I get:

1.
.....................................................................................TEXT TEXT TEXT

What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for your help
Toni

 

[Charles Kenyon]

You need one or more additional tab stops for your initial text.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

Jay - this is exactly what I do:

1. TEXT TEXT TEXT TEXT (I want ........... after this to the right)

Put the curser on the line of text;
Pull down "Format"
Click on "Tab"
Set: Tab Stop: 5.5
Right
2.....
Click "Set"
Click "OK"

and I get:

1.
....................................................................................TEXT
TEXT TEXT

What am I doing wrong?
Thanks for your help
Toni

 

[Guest]

Charles - thank you for responding.
I just set a tab for .5 and one at 5.5
and it didn't work == I am getting very frustrated!!

 

[Jay Freedman]

This might be clearer if you display nonprinting characters by pressing the
¶ button on the toolbar. (Press it again to remove the display.) Each tab
character is represented by a right-pointing arrow, as shown at
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/SettingTabs.htm.

Because you inserted a numbered list entry, you got a tab character between
the '1.' and the first 'TEXT'. Before you define any explicit tab stops,
Word assumes a default tab stop every 0.5" (or whatever you set in the
"Default tab stops" dropdown in the Tabs dialog). So at that time the first
'TEXT' starts at the 0.5" position.

Now you manually define an explicit tab stop at 5.5", and a side effect of
that is that Word ignores all the default tab stops to the left of 5.5" (but
it still honors the ones to the right of that point). The tab character
between the '1.' and the first 'TEXT' now pushes out to the 5.5" tab stop.
In addition, because the 'TEXT' doesn't fit between the 5.5" position and
the right margin, Word pushes it down to the next line (that's a little
strange, but reproducible).

What you need to do is define a regular tab at or near the 0.5" position to
"eat" the first tab character, and then define the tab stop with the leader
at the 5.5" position. You can define the regular tab in the dialog (don't
forget to click the Set button!), or simply by clicking on the ruler at the
0.5" mark.