Just out of curiosity, I'd like to know what version you were testing?
Because I just tried this in Word 2000, and a tab *after* a heading
won't be reflected in the TOC, even with the \w switch, unless more
text follows after that tab, in which case it is preserved:

Heading 1 paragraph:

My heading texttabMore text

In the TOC:

My heading text......... 1

(assuming of course that you set two tab stops in the TOC 1 style,
and that the first tab stop has a leader but the one at the right
margin doesn't).

--
Stefan Blom


"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
Interestingly, I tested the \w switch in a previous version when I
was
writing http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TOCSwitches.htm, and
apparently
it did work, but I can't get it to work in Word 2003. sigh

--
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.

"Cathy D." wrote in message
...
Suzanne, thanks for getting back to me so fast. I tried your
recommendations, but unfortunately, it doesn't work the way I need
it to.
I
guess we will have to make the changes manually, or overlook the
messy
format.

Thank you for your help.
Cathy

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
Unfortunately, there is probably no way around what you are
experiencing
as
long as you continue to update the TOC. Once editing is complete
and you
are
sure the page numbers will not change, add the tab characters
back and
then
lock (Ctrl+F11) or unlink (Ctrl+Shift+F9) the TOC field so it
won't/can't
update.

One thing you might try (how well it will work depends on how
your
headings
are formatted): Add a tab character to the end of each heading
in the
document. Then add a \w switch to the TOC field, which will
preserve the
tab
characters instead of converting them to spaces. Try this with
one or
two
headings to see how it works before you go to the trouble of
adding it
to
all.

--
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.

"Microsoft Newsgroups" wrote in message
...
I'm using Word 2002 and I'm creating a table of contents from
heading
styles
and using a dot leader that goes over to the page numbers. My
problem
is
that I don't want the dot leaders to go right up to the page
numbers.
Instead, I want them to stop about a half inch from the page
number.
An
example would be that I set a dot leader tab at 6.0 for the
leaders to
stop
and a right align tab at 6.5 for the page number. This
requires you
to
tab
once for the dot leader and then again to get to the page
number tab
and
type in the page number. This works fine if you were to type
the ToC
manually, however, if you Update the ToC it doesn't work.
Instead,
the
page
numbers slide back and line up to the dot leader tab. It's as
though
it
can
only use one tab after the ToC entry and not two.

Does anyone know how I can get this to work. Your help will
be
greatly
appreciated. Thank you.