Help with Decimal Tab?

quicklygreen

Click on my name and send me the file.

I'll try and work out what is going wrong.

Peter

Welcome to Apple Discussions

I think your best option is to use a table. You can make the cell borders white or none. I find thin & white for the stroke in the table inspector to work well. Decimal tabs don't work properly in tables, so I used a right-alignment for that column. Note I have the left column left-aligned & the right column right- & bottom-aligned.

Thanks Jim,

Got your file.

The problem is you have dragged the right margin inside the decimal tab to make the text wrap.

The behavior of Word and Pages vary on what happens to a final tab leading to the right margin.

In Word +the tab is caught by the margin+. The leader tab does not extend out to where you have the decimal tab which is well beyond the right margin. Instead the $500 is being caught by the margin indent, not the decimal tab. The reason you seem to get away with it in the Word document is that the word break of the line above is short of the right margin and makes it appear the $500 is actually hanging to the right.

In Pages +the tab spills over to the next line+. I see this as bad design in Pages, it caused me to give up on a calendar project I attempted when I first got iWork '08.

If you drag the decimal tab to inside of the margin it will behave as expected and catch the $500, but the text will not wrap short as you want. Also you must ensure the tab is actually a little to the left of the margin. Pages doesn't like it being right on the edge, again another flaw.

To make the text wrap you will need to insert +line breaks+ short of the margins or construct this in a table as Peggy suggested. Tables can be invisible, just turn off the borders. You will have another advantage in that tables are mini spreadsheets and you can run formulas on the contents.

Peter

quicklygreen wrote:
It would be nice if the next version of Pages could fix this tho _(a hint for Apple)._

If you really wish that, use the dedicated channel:
_Go to "Provide Pages Feedback" in the "Pages" menu_, describe what you wish.
Then, cross your fingers, and wait _at least_ for iWork'10 😉

Yvan KOENIG (VALLAURIS, France) jeudi 27 août 2009 15:49:31

I want to create a numbered list and have the text on all lines following the first to automatically wrap. The decimal tab description in Inspector does not help me. EX.

1. Today
2. is the first day of the rest of your life,
and it is in your power to make it great.

In this example, I hit the space bar to align the word "and" under "is", but how can I set that up in Pages to do it automatically?

A numbered list does automatically wrap text.

It sounds like you are typing a return at the end of the line which is not necessary.

A return marks the end of a paragraph and the beginning of a new paragraph with the next number aligned to the left hand margin.

To have text break at a particular point like after +…rest of your life,+ type a soft return (shift return) after life, this does not start a new paragraph.

Peter

btw A decimal tab is used, as it says, to line up a number on its decimal point, mainly for currency. This is nothing to do with numbered lists.

Thank you this was the answer I needed.