Indenting a paragraph doesn't work

[rmilnes]

About half the time, when trying to indent a paragraph using the indent gizmos on the top ruler, the paragraph I'd selected doesn't move. Then, I'll mouse the indent gizmo right and left again, and the paragraph finally becomes indented. It's really frustrating to have to do this twice.



Anyone else have this problem?

[Stefan Blom]

Which particular kind of indent are you trying to set? Since indentation is a paragraph property, make sure that paragraphs start and end where you think. To do that, display nonprinting marks, for example by clicking the ¶ button on the Home tab. Paragraph marks are represented by pilcrows, ¶.

[rmilnes]

I always have paragraph marks displayed in Word 2007 so I don’t think the problem is that I’m missing the target.

Typically, I would be using a Left Indent (on the ruler) to the first tab position, often adding a First Line Indent to return the top line of the paragraph to the left margin. I type bulleted items a lot and don’t like the lack of control of Word’s automated bullet feature so I do it manually.

For this purpose, Word is programmed to assume a whole paragraph selection when the cursor is placed anywhere within the paragraph. Whether I use that method, or have selected part or the entire paragraph with the left mouse button, moving the Left Indent fails to move the paragraph half the time.

The problem isn’t fatal, but it certainly is frustrating…especially when changing several paragraphs in a document.

Thanks for the vocabulary lesson, BTW. “Pilcrow” gets my vote as the most arcane word in the English language.

[Stefan Blom]

Could you give us a step-by-step description of what you are doing when the indent fails?

[rmilnes]

Hi Stefan,

This problem occurs sporadically and is tough to replicate on demand. However, the screen shot below reflects an occasion when it did happen--except I couldn't get the ruler indent to hold still for snippingtool.exe.

Here's what I did: On a new Word document, I pasted a paragraph of Lorem ipsum, broke it into 3 paragraphs and inserted a bullet and a tab at the front of each. With the mouse I selected the 2nd paragraph from start to finish, from the bullet to the end-of-paragraph pilcrow. Then I moved the Left Indent gadget on the ruler 0.25" to the right with a left-button mouse motion.

When I lifted the mouse, the selected paragraph stayed where it had been even though the Left Indent gadget was a quarter inch to the right of the margin. I tried to obtain a screen shot of all of that, but the Left Indent gadget jumped back to the margin when I clicked "new" on snippingtool.exe. Scout's honor.

When I repeated those motions several times in several different ways afterward, Word performed as expected.

Second occurrence: I got it to misbehave yet once again by placing the cursor in the middle of one of the inside lines of the 3rd paragraph--without "selecting" anything. The 3rd paragraph did not move when I moved the Left Indent. When I touched the Left Indent with a left click mouse cursor a second time, the Left Indent jumped back to the margin and a Left Tab appeared in its place, although that could have been the result of my clicking on the ruler at that place.

[rmilnes]

Note on my reply just now…I had incorporated a screen-shot graphic into the reply space but apparently it didn’t survive the trip. The text pretty much explains relevant detail anyway.