How to Set a Tab Stop in the Tabs Dialog Box in Word 2013

Word 2010 For Dummies

Sometimes, the tabs in Word 2013 can be frustrating. When you need for your tab stops to be precise and the ruler is proving unruly, follow these steps to set tabs in the Tab dialog box:

Summon the Tabs dialog box by clicking the Paragraph Settings button in the Paragraph group of the Page Layout tab and then clicking the Tabs button.

The tabs dialog box gives you tab options.

Enter the exact tab stop position in the Tab Stop Position box.

For example, type 1.1875 to set a tab at exactly that spot.

Choose the type of tab stop from the Alignment area.

The standard tab stop is named Left.

Click the Set button.

The Set button — not the OK button — creates the tab stop. After you click Set, the tab stop is placed on the list below the Tab Stop Position box. (You may notice that numbers are rounded to the nearest hundredth; Word interprets 1.1875 as 1.19, for example.)

Continue setting tab stops.

Repeat Steps above for as many tab stops as you need to set.

Click OK.

The tab stops you set affect the current paragraph or a selected group of paragraphs. The tab stops you set are visible on the ruler, if the ruler itself is visible.

You must click the Set button to set a tab stop!

About This Article

About the book author:

Dan Gookin has been writing about technology for 20 years. He has contributed articles to numerous high-tech magazines and written more than 90 books about personal computing technology, many of them accurate.
He combines his love of writing with his interest in technology to create books that are informative and entertaining, but not boring. Having sold more than 14 million titles translated into more than 30 languages, Dan can attest that his method of crafting computer tomes does seem to work.
Perhaps Dan’s most famous title is the original DOS For Dummies, published in 1991. It became the world’s fastest-selling computer book, at one time moving more copies per week than the New York Times number-one best seller (although, because it’s a reference book, it could not be listed on the NYT best seller list). That book spawned the entire line of For Dummies books, which remains a publishing phenomenon to this day.
Dan’s most recent titles include PCs For Dummies, 9th Edition; Buying a Computer For Dummies, 2005 Edition; Troubleshooting Your PC For Dummies; Dan Gookin’s Naked Windows XP; and Dan Gookin’s Naked Office. He publishes a free weekly computer newsletter, “Weekly Wambooli Salad,” and also maintains the vast and helpful Web site www.wambooli.com.