The cursed cursor

You have been typing along, and have come to the end of your paragraph, and Word has – wrongly – decided you want to keep your indent at the same level.  But of course that’s never true, is it?  You want it back at the left margin.  And you certainly didn’t want your paragraph to be completely indented.  (And the way out of that has been sooooo  annoying.)  But finally, there is hope.

When you have been placed at the annoying new line, simply backspace.

• One backspace will leave you at the same indent as the start of the text for the previous line.
• Two backspaces will leave you at the indent directly under the number/ letter/bullet point.
• Three backspaces will take you back to the left margin.

Like this.

If you already started typing (or you’re looking at a document that already has this problem in it), all is not lost.  Click your cursor at the very start of the text you want to change, and then backspace one, two or three times (depending upon where you wanted to be).  I’ve noticed that the tab never goes in as far as previously, so you may need to tab again to match up your paragraphs.

Do you ever outline in Word?  Word calls that a “multilevel list.”  To “show” Word that you’re done with your outline, press Enter once to get to a new line, then press it once again, to convince it that you’re at the end of your list.  If you have gotten yourself a couple of levels deep into your outline, you’ll have to press Enter a few more times to get the cursor back to the left margin. 

Remember, if you’ve tabbed too far, you can hold down the Shift key while you press Tab and this will move you back one tab.

For a tutorial on this whole topic, see http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx?AssetID=RC102161651033  This takes about 30 minutes, and will take you through some of the finer points.

Special thanks to Rich Pilny for asking me about this so that I investigated it further, instead of continuing to speak colorfully to my computer when it indented in ways I did not intend.