Using alignment tabs

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Using alignment tabs

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In addition to normal tabs, you can also use a very special type of tab, namely "alignment tabs", in headers and footers.

Alignment tabs have the following special features:

▪They can only be inserted in headers and footers.

▪They ignore all tab settings that have been made in a paragraph (for example, with the ribbon command Layout | Tabs) because:

▪They always align the following text relative to the page margins – either left-aligned, centered or right-aligned.

The word "relative" is what makes this specific type of tab particularly interesting:

If, for example, you insert a centered alignment tab in the footer and add a field "Page number" behind it, this field will be centered in the footer. So far, so good. If you now change the page margins or even set the page format to landscape, however, the page number will still be centered in the footer. A normal centered tab stop could not do such a thing, since normal tabs always have a specific absolute position.

To insert an alignment tab, proceed as follows:

1.Click in the header or footer to set the cursor there (or insert a new header/footer).
2.Click on the icon alignment_tab_icon on the contextual ribbon tab Header and footer to insert an alignment tab.
3.A dialog box appears. You can select the desired alignment for the tab and make some other settings (see below) in this dialog box.

As soon as you confirm, the alignment tab is inserted and the text behind it is aligned accordingly.

Options of the dialog box

The options in this dialog box have the following functions:

▪Alignment

This option determines the alignment of the alignment tab: left-aligned, centered or right-aligned (each relative to the page margins).

▪Tab leader

Here, as with normal tabs, you have the option of selecting a tab leader if desired in order to fill the area to the left of the tab.

▪Relative to

This option determines what the alignment tab should be aligned with: the page margins (without considering paragraph indents) or the indents for the current paragraph.