I’m making a table of contents. I want it to look like this:
LEFT JUSTIFY STUFF…RIGHT JUSTIFY PAGE#
It doesn’t seem to allow two justifcations on a single line. I tried a table but that won’t work since it destroys indentations (there will be various levels of left indentation; tables don’t seem to allow this).
I mean, I could just cheat and use spaces but that’s not a very eloquent solution. There must be a better way.
I think what you want to do is set a right-justified TAB for where you want your page numbers to line up on the right. See the little doohickey on the left end of your ruler that looks like an L? That’s your tab selector. Click on it a couple times until it looks like a reverse L. Now click on your ruler line where you want that tab to appear. You should also be able to set up the properties for the tab so that you get the … between your left justified text and your right justified page #.
You can use a table - you can indent the text in the cells as much as you want, and you can make it different in every cell. You move the little carats that control the margins.
Shoeless, your method doesn’t seem to quite work right. It does tab to the right correctly, but it ruins my ability to create left tabs. Ie, hierarchy-type indentations on the left.
I believe there is a TOC feature that will make this significantly easier for you.
If you want to do it by hand, all you have to do is perform enough carriage returns to get your cursor where you want it, enter your text and then move the mouse to the right side of the page whereby the cursor will display the “right justified” pointer and you can click there (double click) and type again.
If you wanted to you, could also have a center justficiation on the same line.
Trigonal, you must not be doing the tabs right – you should be able to do left tabs, decimal tabs, and right tabs all in the same line and make them all different in the next line, if you want to.
Have you got an email? I can do up a dummy for you in about 5 minutes.
Sure.
Send it to pat_leonard@hotmail.com
Will be there in a sec.
Okay, that looks good.
How about a way to get those … in between the headings and the page number?
You would format the tabs. Place the cursor at the end of the name of the heading. For to Format, Tabs. Make sure Right is clicked and Option 2 under Leader. Then hit the tab key. After you do the first one, put the cursor at the end of the second heading and just hit Ctrl-Y - that makes the computer repeat whatever you last did.
If you’re starting from scratch, unlike revising an existing doc, then you’d only have to format once and every time you tabbed, the … would show up.
Trigonal, you may also want to go to Format->Tabs and mess around a bit there; see what happens when you set up different kinds of tabs, and learn how they work. Missbunny’s technique is excellent, but it involves a shortcut or three that might be confusing if you’re not familiar with Word’s different tab options.
You may also want to, under the tab options, choose a leader; see what happens when you do!
Finally, the “Table of Contents” option is way cool. It works best if you’ve used different headers throughout your document. The easiest way to do this is, whenever you have a new section of the document, hit Ctrl+Shift+1 (or 2, or 3, if you’re using subsections and subsubsections) to create a title for that section. When you’re done with the document, go to Insert–>Reference–>Index and Tables (in Word XP, at least), and choose Table of Contents; Word will do the rest.
Daniel
Lets say I have this:
HeaderX
>>>>>HeaderX
>>>>>HeaderX
and I just want to tab all the X’s over to the right with … in between. I want to keep the current tabbing/formatting the way it is, but when I start tabbing the X’s I want the … inserted
Header…X
>>>>>Header…X
>>>>>Header…X
(See, I’ve already got the headers and page numbers appropriately positioned; I just need the … in between)
Did you try my suggestion? I didn’t have any trouble when testing it. If that doesn’t work, try the auto-create TOC function.
Format - Tabs
Alignment: “Right”
Leader: “…”
Click OK
Set a tab where you want it. Type the Header. Hit tab key. Voila, it should have tabbed all the way to the proper spot complete with dots in between.
(This is in Word 2003 though.)
Whenever you add a tab, like a right tab, you override the preset tabs so all your previous tabs have to be set manually. To insure you can indent your titles, simply reapply your .5 tabs for as many levels as you need using the format/tabs menu. Once you set all your tabs, you can change their individual format by clicking on the one you want to change. So, you want to change your last tab to be right-aligned and have a dot leader. Click on that tab (probably 6.5), then choose “right” from the alignment menu and #2 (which is …) from the leader menu and you’re set to go.
If you need your x’s staggered like your headers, then the best thing to do is set up a separate style for each level header.
I think its clear that I don’t understand some of these word processing concepts. When I talk about using tabs I mean simply pressing the tab button to jump over a few spaces. That is ALL I know about tabs. What is a “left tab”? What is a “right tab”? How do I add a tab?
I just want to be able to push the tab button and have … appear 
Then you have to format them. There’s no way around it. Did you try doing that yet?
Further, you are not going to be able to right-align numbers just by tabbing over a whole bunch of times. Try it and see. It won’t work.
I’m going to explain in more detail the problem I’m having as maybe it will give rise to a more precise solution.
I have a big list of the toc entries with page number. Its not formatted in anyway. In fact, its just a straight text file created in notepad.
header1 page#
header2 page#
header3 page#
header4 page#
What I’ve been asked to do is take this and make it into a nice looking toc of form:
header1…page#
header2…page#
>>>>>header3…page#
>>>>>header4…page#
I simply copy & pasted the text into Word so that I can edit it. By simply using the tab button I’ve accomplished this:
header1>>(push tab a bunch of times)>>page#
header2>>(push tab a bunch of times)>>page#
(push tab) header3>>>>(…tab…)>>>>>>page#
(push tab) header4>>>>(…tab…)>>>>>>page#
(Except it does actually line up correctly in the file) Restating that I’ve applied no formatting. I just pressed the tab button until each line lined up nicely.
Retying the text file into Word is not an option since it has a huge number of entries. It MUST be copy & pasted and then somehow formatted.
Actually, Its pretty easy, Word does it for you.
You just use the pre-defined styles on the Format toolbar. Use Heading 1 for the titles of major sections, Heading 2 for the titles of subsections, and Heading 3 for sub-sub-sections.
Once you have done that, go to the start of the document, put the caret at the very start of the text. Then go to the menubar and select Insert->Index and tables. Go to the Table of Contents tab, select your favorite style, then click OK. Word creates a table of contents for you, titles on the left, page numbers on the right, and … between them.
Once you’ve generated the contents, updating it can be done in three clicks.
Easy when you know how.