inserting dot leaders

[Patty]

Is there anyway to insert dot leaders at the end of a line of text to the
margin without setting up a new tab? (I'm an ex-WordPerfect user, and I used
this feature all the time. But I haven't been able to find it in Word.)

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

No, you have to have a tab stop to have tab leaders.

 

[Patty]

Thanks for confirming this for me. I miss the WordPerfect feature!

 

[abs]

What we did was to create a style for a dot leader. Helped a lot of my users.

 

[Stefan Blom]

I believe this is entirely a matter of personal preferences. Personally I
could never figure out WordPerfect.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

There were certain aspects of WordPerfect that I found utterly infuriating
(and a lot of them had to do with those much-lauded "codes"). In the end,
what a Word-trained WP user would miss most are styles (WP has them but
doesn't know how to use them) and line breaks.

What I found infuriating was that you can't conveniently set and reset tab
stops for a selection. You select the text and set the tab stops, and all is
well, but if you want to move one of the tab stops, you can't just click in
a paragraph and do it because that inserts a code at the insertion point,
and the change is effective only from that point forward. And you can't
reselect the initial selection because when you do, you're inside (or
outside, whichever it takes) the "codes," and so what you see on the ruler
is the default tab stops, not the ones you set for the selection. That
frustration alone was enough to drive me to distraction because I tend to
type first, then set the tab stops when I can see where they need to go, but
I may fine-tune them later.

WordPerfect is ideal for legal offices where everything is done in Courier
New and all tabs are half an inch and no one really cares how awful anything
looks (huge gaping spaces between numbers and text in numbered paragraphs,
for example).

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

 

[CyberTaz]

I've not launched any version of WP in *years* Does the current version
still insert a separate instance of the Ruler for every variation in Tab
Stops & Indents throughout the document? What a clutter!

The program definitely had its strong points, and compared to Word Star it
was a godsend. But unfortunately it did not [IMHO] make a very graceful or
functional migration to the world of graphic user interfaces. For those who
learned early on to master its intricacies I can understand the feeling of
"control", but for anyone unpracticed with a command/code driven environment
it was still an absolute nightmare... And slapping a graphic interface on it
just made things worse.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I agree that the UI was not very attractive, though in many ways quite
functional. The version that was especially clunky was the DOS version 6.0
(I think it was) that attempted to be WYSIWYG (at least in one view). One
thing that was/is superior about WP wrt tabs, however, is that you can
right-click (IIRC) on a tab stop on the ruler and select tab leaders from a
dropdown menu instead of having to go to the Tabs dialog as in Word.

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

I've not launched any version of WP in *years* Does the current
version
still insert a separate instance of the Ruler for every variation in Tab
Stops & Indents throughout the document? What a clutter!

The program definitely had its strong points, and compared to Word Star it
was a godsend. But unfortunately it did not [IMHO] make a very graceful or
functional migration to the world of graphic user interfaces. For those
who
learned early on to master its intricacies I can understand the feeling of
"control", but for anyone unpracticed with a command/code driven
environment
it was still an absolute nightmare... And slapping a graphic interface on
it
just made things worse.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

There were certain aspects of WordPerfect that I found utterly
infuriating
(and a lot of them had to do with those much-lauded "codes"). In the end,
what a Word-trained WP user would miss most are styles (WP has them but
doesn't know how to use them) and line breaks.

What I found infuriating was that you can't conveniently set and reset
tab
stops for a selection. You select the text and set the tab stops, and all
is
well, but if you want to move one of the tab stops, you can't just click
in
a paragraph and do it because that inserts a code at the insertion point,
and the change is effective only from that point forward. And you can't
reselect the initial selection because when you do, you're inside (or
outside, whichever it takes) the "codes," and so what you see on the
ruler
is the default tab stops, not the ones you set for the selection. That
frustration alone was enough to drive me to distraction because I tend to
type first, then set the tab stops when I can see where they need to go,
but
I may fine-tune them later.

WordPerfect is ideal for legal offices where everything is done in
Courier
New and all tabs are half an inch and no one really cares how awful
anything
looks (huge gaping spaces between numbers and text in numbered
paragraphs,
for example).

 

[CyberTaz]

I also liked the versatility of being able to use any combination of
characters for custom leaders such as ox or x‹ or whatever. I still miss
that capability in both PC/Mac Word.

The bottom line is that both apps have their good/bad points, but the
biggest distinction is that they're just *different*. I did a lot of
training for SSA as well as a number of others several years ago when many
made "the big switch" & the hardest obstacle to overcome was the
unwillingness of users to accept that fact... They wanted Word to be WP with
a different name It's really difficult to comprehend why people insist
on being able to hunt for *sets* of control codes rather than simply
selecting text & looking at a button or a plain English explanation.

Regards |:>)
Bob Jones
[MVP] Office:Mac

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Yes, the custom leaders are a great idea, though I'm not sure how often they
actually get used.

I'm always a little skeptical of claims that problems can be sorted out by
examining the "codes," since the kinds of problems people encounter in Word
are often much more subtle. Or they're things that are quite obvious, but
even when you tell people where to look for the solution, they claim to have
done it with no effect, and then when they send you the document to look at,
you see that the problem is *exactly* what you said it was, and obviously
they *didn't* look at or do whatever it was you told them to look at or do.
<g>

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