Formatting bullets in Word 2007

[great scott]

I am new to Word 2007 and had it newly installed on my computer. I am using
bullets and can't get them to format the way they appeared in Word 2003. The
standard formatting does not align the second line of a two-line bullet under
the text of the first line. It keeps the second line left-justified with the
left margin.

I have used the "decrease indent" feature but that doesn't do anything to
the second line of text, only the first line.

Thanks.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Click Ctrl+Shift+L to apply the built-in List Bullet style to the selected
paragraph(s).

To modify the indentation of the style: Right-click a bulleted paragraph and
click Adjust List Indents from the context menu. Change the indentation as
desired. When you are done, right-click again and click Styles | Update List
Bullet to Match Selection.

If you want to change other aspects of formatting, such as font name or
bullet character, first display the Styles pane (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S); in the
pane, right-click List Bullet and choose Modify from the context menu. In
the Modify Style dialog box, make the changes that you want. To transfer the
modified style to the attached template, use the "New documents based on
this template" option in the dialog box.

 

[great scott]

Thank you for your reply, but I'm still not getting what I need. I have tried
what you suggested and it didn't work. I'm trying to get the 2nd line of a
two-line bullet so that it aligns with the text above it. I don't want the
left margin of the second line to match the left margin of the page or even
under the actual bullet. I couldn't get your instructions to do this for me.
Am I doing something wrong?

 

[Peter T. Daniels]

What you're looking to set is the "hanging indent" value, which you
can see in the Format > Paragraph panel of Modify Style.

 

[Stefan Blom]

In the Adjust List Indents dialog box, you use the "Bullet position" value
to specify the left indent (for all lines). Be sure to choose "Tab
character" for "Follow number with." Then specify the desired value for the
hanging indent at "Text indent" and at "Add tab stop at."

 

[Stefan Blom]

Logically, hanging indents should work the same for bulleted (or numbered)
and "ordinary" paragraphs, but in practice that doesn't always work.
Therefore, using the Adjust List Indents dialog box will be safer when
specifying the indentation for a bulleted (numbered) paragraphs.

--
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP



What you're looking to set is the "hanging indent" value, which you
can see in the Format > Paragraph panel of Modify Style.

 

[great scott]

I am sorry to be so dense here, but I'm just not getting this to work. Can
someone please go step by step of an example of the numbers I should be using
and where? I have tried variations of the Bullet Position, Tab Indent, etc,
and NONE of them is getting me the second line of the two-line bullet to
match up with the text above them.

Thank you for any help! This is so frustrating!

 

[great scott]

I think I figured this out. I am using a template designed by someone
in-house to accomodate printing on our letterhead (which is a letterhead with
the company information on the left margin. This is, for some reason, messing
up my ability to get the bullets to line up correctly. When I went to a blank
document and started a long bullet, the second line DID finally line up under
the text above it.

Any thoughts on how I can either "fix" the template on my original document
or get a workaround?

Thanks.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Unfortunately, no. See “WD2000: Hanging Indent Lost When Text Wraps to Right
Side of Square Wrapped Object†at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/209633.
Sadly, this bug is still not fixed in Word 2007.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[great scott]

Good enough for me. Thanks.

I'll just have a new template made in Word 07.