Setting tabs beyond the right hand body text delimiter

[MarkWBD]

Hi. Can anyone help me with a questions on paragraph tabs?

Within MS Word I can set any type of tab beyond the right hand body copy delimiter tab. This is useful (for example) if I have a long question that runs over multiple lines and want to have an obvious answer box. Or if I have a description on an invoice that runs to multiple lines and I want the amount (£/$) to be shown at the end of the column. (Hopefully the attached graphic makes this clear.) Within Affinity Publisher I can set a tab beyond the right hadn't delimiter but I can't seem to place any copy at the tab. I've tried various key combinations but nothing seems to work. Am I missing something or is this just not possible?

 

[Dan C]

Hi @MarkWBD,

Welcome to the Affinity Forums

I believe I understand what you're looking for - but I'm having a hard time achieving this in Publisher currently.

Can you please confirm for me, how are you setting up your paragraph in Publisher? Are you using Indent values in the Paragraph Studio? Or perhaps Inset values in the Text Frame Studio?

Many thanks in advance!

[Old Bruce]

Set up a right indent of x inches and then have the last line right indent at 0 (zero) inches. You may need a space a tab and a space before your Checkbox or Price to get the result you want.

[MarkWBD]

@Dan CHi Dan. Thanks for the response. I think I've tried both setting the tabs in the Paragraph Studio and clicking into the paragraph rule bar. I'm NOT adjusting the insets in the text box using the Text Frame Studio. It may be that it just ins't possible.

@Old Bruce Hi Bruce. Thanks for the response. I think your suggestion is a good work around, but I have numerous lines of questions and it will be time consuming to force a line break in each question and then reformat the following line. Plus if I want to reflow stuff at any point or change dimensions of a text box I suspect it will throw up a lot more work. But I am grateful for the suggestion and if the functionality does not exits in AP then I may have to go this route.

[MarkWBD]

@Dan CHi Dan. It is possible to get the insertion point to the tab beyond the right hand delimiter but as soon as I type anything the copy is placed on a new line.

[Dan C]

No problem at all, thanks for confirming that for me and my apologies for the delayed reply!

I believe a colleague of mine has come up with a good solution for you, as shown in the sample document attached.

This uses a Right Indent value, by default when setting this value the app will automatically use the same value for Last Line Outdent, which is the input box directly below Right Indent. When these are using the same values it will always go to a new line.

Therefore, after setting the Right Indent value, return the Last Line Outdent value to 0. You should now find that you're able to tab beyond the delimiter, and enter the characters/glyphs etc that you want here

Does this achieve what you're looking for please?

Indent.afpub

[MarkWBD]

@Dan C. Hi Dan. Thanks for the follow up. That seems to work just perfectly. It's setting the last line outdent to 0 that seems to do the trick. Thank you so much.

[MarkWBD]

@Dan C. And if you ste the right most tab to a distance for the right hand border you can resize the text frame without having to move the tab around.

 

[Old Bruce]

1 hour ago, MarkWBD said:

@Dan C. And if you ste the right most tab to a distance for the right hand border you can resize the text frame without having to move the tab around.

Excellent point which I neglected to mention. Kudos for posting it in your own question, I wish more people would do so.

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Dan C said:

This uses a Right Indent value, by default when setting this value the app will automatically use the same value for Last Line Outdent, which is the input box directly below Right Indent.

Am I looking in the wrong place for this? The only place I can find either item is in the Edit Text Style window, & in that window on my Mac in the Paragraph > Spacing section, I see Left indent, Right indent, First line indent, & Last line outdent in that order.

[Old Bruce]

I think Dan C made a mistake or it might be a Windows thing.

[MarkWBD]

@R C-RHi R C-R. It may be that your problem is the right indent (not the last line outdent) is set to 0. These are the settings I used to create this test Text Frame.

 

[MarkWBD]

@Old BruceHi Bruce. Rereading your original advice I realise you proposed the same solution as Dan C. So it wasn't a work around as I thought I just didn't 'get it'. So apologies and thank you.

[Dan C]

14 hours ago, R C-R said:

Am I looking in the wrong place for this? The only place I can find either item is in the Edit Text Style window, & in that window on my Mac in the Paragraph > Spacing section, I see Left indent, Right indent, First line indent, & Last line outdent in that order.

Apologies, I was referring to the Paragraph Studio, within the Spacing setting - at least on Windows these options are above/below one another and I believe this is the same for Mac 

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Dan C said:

Apologies, I was referring to the Paragraph Studio...

No apologies needed -- I looked in the Paragraph studio, where logically that should have been and was -- but somehow I managed to completely overlook them.