I found the instruction to uncheck "most of them" curious. It's just a tad non-specific. I would think that the solution would be to uncheck "all" of them or just one specific setting.

I decided to uncheck them one at a time to see which, if any, of them made a difference. I've attached a screen shot of my settings as they were before unchecking any.

As I perused the list, I noticed that the only one that explicitly mentions tabs is the next to last one: "Set left- and first-indent with tabs and backspaces". So I unchecked that one and reran the test. The "bad tab" behavior did not occur. This appears to have fixed the problem.

Can I conclude that it is this one setting that is causing the problem?

But I am still puzzled by this. As far as I know, I have had this setting checked forever. I don't recall ever setting it either way (on or off). I have been using Word 2007 for about 10 years and I use Word all the time (thousands of documents). I am quite certain that this "bad tab" behavior never occurred until I wrote the MyOutlineLevel macro and then only after running the macro. Doesn't that suggest that it also has something to do with this macro?

Attached Images

Word 20150813 Autoformat As You Type settings.jpg (75.3 KB, 11 views)