When I press Tab in Word Perfect, it tabs over several spacese for paragraph indent. However, when I press Tab when writing here or e-mail, everything flips upstairs instead of merely indenting. What must I buy or press to stop the Tab from disappearing what I hafve typed ?
“flips upstairs”?
In web browsers, the tab key moves from one field to another. You usually can’t tab within a field in order to indent. If you need to indent, you type the spaces.
Tab in WordPerfect and other wordprocessors is defined to indent a number of preset spaces while the tab key for “windows” basic OS functions and in many non-word processing apps is defined to jump from line to line or button to button. Tab will not normally jump from window to window (per your description) unless the alt key is held down at the same time. You might want to try another keyboard and see if it does this on the other keyboard in case your current KB has a sticky alt key.
There is keyboard mapping software like this at http://www.tucows.com
"KeyChange 1.06 Shareware $ 19.95
KeyChange takes the stress of having to stretch your fingers typing certain hotkey combinations by exchanging them with a less straining combination. The exchange is completely user defined.
Unlike conventional keyboard layout managers, KeyChange allows you to redefine system keys, such as Shift, Ctrl, Alt, and Esc, for each language you have installed in Windows
etc etc"
In re-reading your OP I see you are not “flipping” between windows but places in the application so your KB is probably fine.