[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

You might also want to see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/SettingTabs.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/TableBasics.htm, which deal
specifically with aligning table columns.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Jay Freedman" wrote in message
...
First of all, when you're trying to align items like that, you
definitely need a table, not tabs and spaces. See
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Format...ingColumns.htm for a
discussion of what's appropriate where, and
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm for an
explanation of why the document may look different on various
computers.

Second, you don't have to spend hours dragging text into a table. Just
select the text and click Table Convert Text to Table. In the
dialog, make sure the "Separate text at" selection is set to Tabs, and
click OK.

There is some preparation that will prevent problems with this. Make
sure that each paragraph contains the same number of tab characters.
(Click the ¶ button on the toolbar so you can see the tabs and spaces,
and count the arrows that represent tabs.) In the Convert dialog,
check the number of columns it says it's going to create, and make
sure it matches what you think you should get -- if the number in the
dialog is too big, at least one line has too many tabs.

It's a good idea to make a backup copy of the document before you
convert it, so you can go back if there's a disaster. Also, remember
that Undo (Ctrl+Z) is always available until you close the document.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

On Sun, 23 Jul 2006 11:46:24 -0400, "LMB"
wrote:

We have some "mangled" documents that were originally created in word
2.0.
the creator had 3 columns with 4 rows of text. Not all columns were
filled
in with text. To get the 3 columns they used tabs and spaces (Argh!)
Others
came along and tried to line up the text in columns so now the text is
not
all lined up. Yet another person last week said she lined everything up
using tabs and spaces and said everything was fixed. She was working on
the
documents remotly from home on one of our network drives. When I open the
documents on my computer, remotly, from the same drive, the text is not
lined up. I sent the document to my home computer and opened it up and
it
looks better but certainly not the same. I have screenshots of both
documents with the paragraph marks on. Would anyone be willing to take a
look and see if they have any ideas? One is 105kb and the other is 78kb.
I
could also send the document. I need help figuring out how to fix these
documents also, there are probably 100 or more that were done like this.
I
tried changing text to table but I have no idea what number goes with
what
column. I think I should insert a table above the text and then drag the
correct info then delete the mangled text.



Thanks,

Linda