Setting tabs in Word

If you only ever use the toolbars in Word you are missing out on a lot of functionality. One thing you can't do using the toolbar that you can do with menus is to set a dot leader tab.

Choose Format > Tabs and not only can you select the type of tab and its exact position on the ruler but you can select from one of four leader styles. These leader characters appear before the tab stop, so they extend from the last character on the line to the tab position and they are the tool to use when creating lines for users to handwrite text into, for example.

Smart horizontal lines in Word

My history is as a WordPerfect 5.1 user if any of you can remember that far back!

WordPerfect had a great tool for creating horizontal lines and when I came to Word it took me ages to realize that Word didn’t have a tool anywhere near as useful. However Word can create horizontal lines if you know how to do it. Press the Enter key and then type three hyphens in a row and press Enter again – Voila! (well at least we hope so) - a horizontal line. If it doesn’t work for you choose Tools > AutoCorrect Options > AutoFormat As You Type tab and enable the Border Lines checkbox. Then try again. There are other line styles that you can use for example three asterisks creates a blocky line, three underscores a thick line, three equal signs a double line, three pounds [#] signs, an attractive thin thick thin line combination, and three tildes a squiggly line.

While Word’s lines aren’t as intuitive as those in WordPerfect 5.1 perhaps by giving us six different styles it’s set to win back some friends.