Right Tab Stop to the right of the Right Indent - Not Working

Anonymous
2013-11-20T18:08:50+00:00

You used to be able to place a right tab stop outside of the right indent, so that the tab actually appeared on the ruler to the right of the right indent. This was how a table of contents would be formatted so that if the heading title was longer than one line, the text would only go as far right as the right indent as it wrapped onto multiple lines, and then the page number would align farther right of the heading text at the tab stop. It now appears that Word 2013 (when it is not in Compatibility Mode) cannot recognize a tab stop if it is to the right of the right indent, so I cannot figure out how to get this alignment if the heading title is longer than one line.

The only way I can find that you can is to use manual returns at the end of each line of text with a dot leader tab on the last line, like this example:

   Really long heading title that is tremendously long so it goes longer than one line of text (RETURN)

   and in fact just keeps going on and on so that it spans multiple lines in the document (RETURN)

   instead of all fitting on one line of the document……………………………………………………………..............……….…3

How do I create an alignment like this within the paragraph settings without manually adding returns?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Word | For home | Windows

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Stefan Blom 353K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
2017-06-22T11:17:31+00:00

Well, I have the same problem with WORD2016 now and even though I am glad I found your posts about the problems with the 2013 version, I am still frustrated that this problem is not addressed and solved in the new version.

I now followed an old reply found here and saved my document in the .doc format - and voila... it now does what I want. But can this be the solution?? To go back to save it in an ancient format???

If you are running Word for Mac, you should start a new thread.

In Word 2016 (or in Word 2013 with the most recent updates) for Windows, you can set a tab stop to the right of a right indent, but NOT to the right of the right margin. This is by design. See screen shot below.

Also, you must use the Tab dialog box; you can't add such a tab stop by double-clicking the horizontal ruler.

Older file formats still support the older behavior, which is to be expected.

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  1. Anonymous
    2016-01-18T11:55:17+00:00

    Shame they keep meddling with loopholes like this. 

    I had a similar requirement to use the tab stop beyond right margin; it was a useful way of 'not' printing pagenumbers for certain TOC levels for instance.

    I found a workaround that fixed it for me. Simply set the style for TOC 1 (in my case) to have a negative right margin; this extends the line lenght for that style and you can set the tab in (or in my case beyond) the increased right margin.

    This allows me to show the table of contents without a page number for the TOC 1 line as below:

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  2. Suzanne S Barnhill 279.4K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-01-18T13:00:36+00:00

    There is an easier way to omit page numbers for a given TOC level/style. You just add the \n switch to the TOC field, specifying the level(s) to omit. As explained in http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/TOCTips.htm#OmitPageNumbers, the \n switch requires a range of inclusive levels even when there’s only one, so, to omit page numbers for TOC 1, you have to use \n 1-1.

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  3. Anonymous
    2016-09-14T21:58:15+00:00

    Adding a right-aligned tab (or any other type of tab) past the right indent via the Tabs dialog box doesn't solve the problem.  Microsoft needs to fix this pronto.

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  4. Stefan Blom 353K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2016-09-14T22:40:00+00:00

    What are you trying to do? If you can't add a tab stop to the right of a right indent, but to the left of the right margin, then you are behind on updates for Office 2013.

    Adding tab stops outside the margin is no longer supported in Word; this is by design. (The situation may be different for documents in compatibility mode; I haven't tested that recently.)

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