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Mysteriously Moving Margins in Word

In Microsoft Word 2008 (and older versions), if you put your cursor in a paragraph and then move a tab or indent marker in the ruler, the change applies to just that paragraph. If your markers are closely spaced, you may have trouble grabbing the right one, and inadvertently work with tabs when you want to work with indents, or vice-versa. The solution is to hover your mouse over the marker until a yellow tooltip confirms which element you're about to drag.

I recently came to appreciate the importance of waiting for those tooltips: a document mysteriously reset its margins several times while I was under deadline pressure, causing a variety of problems. After several hours of puzzlement, I had my "doh!" moment: I had been dragging a margin marker when I thought I was dragging an indent marker.

When it comes to moving markers in the Word ruler, the moral of the story is always to hover, read, and only then drag.

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Published in TidBITS 726.
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12 Apr 2004 | Print Printer-Friendly Version of This Article

Matias Sponsoring TidBITS

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Matias Sponsoring TidBITS -- We're pleased to announce our latest long-term sponsor, Matias Corporation, makers of the Tactile Pro Keyboard, and the Laptop Armor and iPod Armor hardshell cases. Matias first caught our attention back in 2001 with their Half Keyboard, an unusual halved QWERTY keyboard that used the spacebar as a modifier key to access the missing keys. Although neat enough to warrant mention in consecutive Macworld Superlatives articles, the Half Keyboard was attractive primarily in very specific situations (such as when portable data entry to a Palm OS handheld was necessary), and it's great to see Matias devoting their design sensibility to more mainstream products like the Tactile Pro Keyboard and the two hardshell cases. We've been impressed both with Matias's products and the company itself, so we couldn't be happier to include Matias among our select group of sponsors. [ACE]

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