Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “How to Set Tab Stops in Microsoft Word”.
In this article, i will show you how to set tabs in microsoft word. As you can see. I have a vocabulary quiz here that i’ve created for my students and it’s supposed to be a matching quiz where they match the definition to the vocabulary term, and this was very easy for me to create because i used tabs and set them for this paragraph. Let’S take a look at how i did it, so i’m just gon na highlight and copy the first part of this quiz and then i’ll go here to the upper left and hold the enter key for just a couple of seconds to create some space here at The top of the document and then i’ll click and paste in what i copied so here i could simply type one and type in my first vocabulary term and in situations like this, a lot of teachers and really anyone that uses microsoft word who might want to Align certain parts of the document a lot of times, you’ll just tap spacebar a few times and then put in a blank in this case and then tap spacebar a few more times to create some more space. That is the tedious way to do. What i’m going to show tabs are much better much faster, so now that i’ve typed my first vocabulary term, i’m going to set a tab and step one for that is to enable rulers. You can see here in my document. I don’t have the rulers visible, there should be a ruler here and a ruler here at the left to enable those i just go to view and here in the show group there’s ruler and i’ll just check the box. Now i get my rulers and, along with the rulers, i also get this symbol here at the left.
If you put your mouse pointer over the top of it, it’ll tell you what it is. This is the left tab symbol. Now, if you click on that, it will change to other types of tabs in this article, i’m going to focus exclusively on the left tab. But if the video proves to be popular i’d, love to show you the other kinds of tabs and how to use them.
So making sure that the left tab is selected here at the left, you don’t have to click on it as long as it’s showing just go over here to the ruler and make a guess where you’d, like your tab, to be placed now before you click to Place that left tab, it’s important to notice where your flashing cursor is located for me, it’s here in question number one, that’s exactly where i want it to be, but whatever paragraph your flashing cursor is in that’s where the tab will be set up. Okay, so i’m happy where the flashing cursor is. I’Ve got the correct tab symbol selected here at the left, so i’m just going to click, maybe a couple of notches to the left of two inches so right there and i’m clicking toward the bottom of the ruler, and you can see now there’s what looks like An l, it’s really the left, tab symbol here on the ruler, while i’m at it.
I want to put in a second tab and this one. I want to be right at three inches. I now have two tabs set up and now as long as i’m working in this paragraph, those should be set in place and ready to use. Let’S try it now that i’ve typed my word i’ll tap the tab button and notice what it does. It creates space and moves the flashing cursor exactly where my first tab is set up.
So now i can hold shift and tap the minus sign on the keyboard to put in a blank space for the students to enter their answer in i’ll tap tab again and the flashing cursor goes to my second manual tab that i inserted so i’ll type. A a written document and i’ll just tap enter on the keyboard put in my second vocabulary term and a definition. It’S not the right definition to make different and then i could just continue to create this quiz for my students, but the beautiful thing about this is no matter how many letters the vocabulary word has. If i tap tab, it gets me to the exact right place. So i can put in my blank tap tab again. I go to the exact right place for the definition now what if, as i’m creating this quiz, what if the vocabulary word is too long.
If i tap tab, it can’t tab to the perfect spot here. So it just goes to the second tab. So what would you do in a situation like this, and what i can do is click and drag to select the paragraph and then i’ll go up here to the ruler and i’ll. Just click on that left, tab, symbol and i’ll drag it to the new place on the ruler.
Where i want the tab to be maybe right there and then i release the mouse button and i’ve adjusted it if something goes wrong and you feel like you’ve ruined one of the tabs or it’s just completely bad, you want to remove it. For any reason, all you have to do is notice where your flashing cursor is and then go up to the ruler and just left click on the left, tab, symbol and pull it down onto the document. Basically you’re pulling it off the ruler. When you release the mouse button, look what happens that tab is removed and instead there’s just a traditional default tab and the manual tab that i had set up is gone at least for that line where my flashing cursor was. If i wanted to remove all of them at once, i should have clicked and dragged to select all of the text, and then i could have clicked here on the left, tab, symbol and pulled it down and it would have adjusted all of them at once. I’M going to undo that if you’d like to use more complex tabs in your word document, all you have to do is go to the home.
Tab go to the paragraph group and click this launch button here in the corner and then, if you go to the lower left corner of the dialog box, that pops up, you can click on tabs, and this will give you lots of different options. You can set up new tabs. You can see that word already identifies that. I have two tabs.
Let’S set up an additional one at five inches, it’s going to be a left tab. Do i want it to have a leader? Basically, do i want to have dots or dashes or a solid line in front of that tab, i’ll go with the dashes just so you can see what that’s like so a tab at 5 inches with a dashed leader. It looks like i’ve set that up, but i really haven’t until i’ve clicked set and then okay, so let’s try it out now when i tap tab, the flashing cursor goes to 5 inches and i have a leader that appears so again. If you want more advanced tabs in your word, document, go to home paragraph launch button and then tabs.
So with what i’ve shown you in this article, you should be able to use tabs the way most people will want to use tabs. If this video proves to be popular i’d, love to show you all the other bells and whistles the other types of tabs that you can use and how they work so leave a comment below the video if you’d be interested in another video on tabs in microsoft. Word, i hope you found this tutorial to be helpful. If you did please like follow and subscribe and when you do subscribe, click the bell so you’ll be notified.
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