How to Use Leader Tabs in Word 2016

Word 2010 For Dummies

A leader tab shows a series of dots or other characters where the tab appears on the page. Press the Tab key in Word 2016 and the insertion pointer hops over to the next tab stop. The space added is empty, but it doesn't have to be. Word lets you apply different styles to the empty space, which help create something called a leader tab.

Three styles of leader tabs are available: dot, dash, and underline, as illustrated here.

Leader tab styles.

You can apply a leader to any tab stop in Word other than the bar tab. To do so, follow these steps:

Create the tab-formatted list.
Select the text as a block.
Bring forth the Tabs dialog box.

The quick shortcut is to double-click a tab on the ruler.
Select the tab stop from the Tab Stop Position list.
In the Leader area, choose the leader style.
Click the Set button.

Don't click OK before you set the tab stop to add the leader. This step is the one you'll screw up most often.
Click OK.

The leader is applied.

Use the underline leader tab to create fill-in-the-blank forms. In the Tabs dialog box, set a left tab stop at the far right margin (usually, 6.0 inches). Choose the underline leader style (number 4). Click Set and then click OK. Back in your document, type a tab to create a fill-in-the-blank line, such a:

Your name:

This format is far better than typing a zillion underlines.

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.