You may need to click the bottom chevrons if you do not see the Ruler option. Tip The horizontal ruler is displayed below the menu or Ribbon bar and the vertical ruler is displayed on the left side of the Word program window.
Microsoft Word and Earlier versions of Word, OpenOffice, and other word processors. Tip You may need to click the bottom chevrons if you do not see the Ruler option. Additional information How to enable and disable the ruler in WordPad. See our ruler definition for related information and links. Microsoft Word help and support. You can also quickly adjust margins right from the ruler. Hold your mouse over the line separating the white and gray area.
Now, just click and drag that line left or right to adjust that margin. Those little triangle- and box-shaped markers on the ruler are quite handy. They control the indenting of individual paragraphs. Just position your cursor in the paragraph you want to adjust and slide them around. If you want to change multiple paragraphs, select the paragraphs you want to change. Dragging the Left Indent marker changes the indentation for all lines of a paragraph.
As you slide it, the other two indent markers move as well. Dragging the First Line Indent marker changes indentation for only the first line of a paragraph. Drag it to constrain the paragraph on the right side. A tab stop is the location your cursor moves to when you hit the Tab key. A default Word document has no tab stops, so each time you hit the Tab key, the cursor jumps ahead about eight characters. Setting tab stops lets you better control and line up text. Of course, Word offers enough options that things get a little more complicated than that.
Clicking this button lets you cycle through the different types of tab stops Word makes available. Here they are:. A little tip for you. To insert a tab stop, just use the button to select the type of stop you want. Now, point your mouse anywhere on the white portion of the horizontal ruler toward the bottom of the ruler line , and then click. This is a tab marker, showing where the text will jump to if you press the Tab button on your keyboard.
You can insert multiple tab markers if you want, and you can click and drag them around to reposition them on the fly. To get rid of a tab marker, just drag it down away from the ruler and release the mouse button. The ruler is just one of the little features in Word that packs a whole lot more functionality than most people realize. It provides a quick way to control margins, set various indents for a paragraph, and keep things in line using tab stops.
Why Word leaves it turned off by default is beyond us, but at least now you know how to turn it back on and put it to use.
