Setting tab markers in Word

[jasonsas]

A user at my work is having trouble with setting tab markers in Word. She has setup a table with many rows.

If she copies and pastes data from one row in the table to another, the tab setting will move and she needs to move it back to where it should be. (ie, the original tab setting gets lost).

Is there anyway to permanently set these tab positions?

Thanks!

 

[fumei]

I am not clear on this. What tab settings are you talking about???

Are you talking about cell settings?

If you copy content from one row to another it does not change tabs.

Tabs are in paragraphs.

Gerry

 

[jasonsas]

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for your reply.
I've taken some screenshots to help explain the problem with the user. In the first screenshot shown below, you can see the highlighted text is in a bullet point with the tab market set at just over 8.25 on the ruler:

In the next image shown, the highlighted text has been copied from the cell shown above to the second last row in the fourth column:

In the next image, when the user hits the TAB button, or clicks the increase indent button, the lines of text move as shown below. The tab market is now set at nearly 10.5 as shown in the picture below:

The user then has to fiddle around with tabs etc to get the bullet point the same as the ones shown above it. She would like it so that when she presses the TAB button, it goes to the tab market she set as shown in the first picture.

Hope this makes more sense and someone can help!

 

[fumei]

I will tell you the best answer right now, from looking at the screen shots. I see in the Style dropdown "Normal + Web...blah blah".

If you set up proper styles, and used them, this problem would simply not exist. You could have the entire column be a specified style...and that would be that.

What version are you using? If it is 2002, or later, then using a Table Style could make it even easier.

Gerry

 

[BlueHorizon]

Hi Jasonsas,

I think I understand what you are trying to do. I suggest you set the tabs first and then when copy/cut and paste, it should hold its setting. I tried it in 2003 and it worked. Select the entire table or the individual column, go to Format | Tabs and set a tab at, say, .5 as an example. Then that tab is set in each cell. Now when I copied and pasted, it kept the setting.
HTH,

Best,
Blue Horizon

http://www.bluehorizontraining.com

 

[fumei]

Styles are better.

Gerry

 

[jasonsas]

Hi Gerry

How would we go about setting up the various styles we need? Is a table style different from a normal style?

Thanks

 

[fumei]

There is no such thing as a normal style. There is a paragraph style, named Normal, that comes with Word. It is the default paragraph style.

There are (Word 2002 and later) four TYPES of styles: character, paragraph, list and table.

If it is strictly a format you want, making a Table Style is best. There are some quirks to Table styles. And unfortunately, you can NOT build a internal style structure within them. And you can NOT build bullets and numbering within them.

That being said, personally, I have styles for every single element within my tables, including bulleted lists.

However, the easiest thing for you to do is create the style for what you would like for that column. I duplicated the format, and named it - "MyTableLastCol".

So now you have a style (MyTableLastCol). Simply select the column (or parts thereof) and make it that style. You do that by selecting it from the Styles dropdown. You are done. You can copy and paste to your heart content. The style is attached to the paragraphs within the column.

It is easy to retrofit existing tables.

Make a table heading style (I named mine "MyTableHeading"). It can be whatever format you want.

Running the following code will make every table in the document have the last column formatted as MyTableLastCol, and every first row formatted as MyTableHeading.

Sub LastColStyles()
Dim oTable As Word.Table
For Each oTable In ActiveDocument.Tables()
  oTable.Columns.Last.Select
  Selection.Style = "MyTableLastCol"
  oTable.Rows(1).Select
  Selection.Style = "MyTableHeading"
Next
End Sub

Back to Table styles. You can format almost every aspect of table to whatever you want. Make the right column a different font and size, a different shading; make rows alternate in font and shading; make the last row a different spacing, font bold...whatever you want.

When you want a table formatted like it...on a blank paragraph line, select the table from Styles dropdown...done. A fully formatted table, just as you set it up.

Not only that, but you can set it as the default table. Click the table creating button, it will make whatever size table you want, in the format you want.

The ONLY thing missing, is in fact, the issue you have. Table styles can not set an internal paragraph style. And they do NOT set bullets and numbering. However, using independent styles, as I suggest, works great.

Gerry