How to insert a new tab stop to the left of existing stops without disturbing the existing text under the existing tabs

English
#1

Libreoffice writer

Without actually using the table function but using just tab stops, I am constructing a vertical list of items in a vertical column, with various properties in columns to the right, eg

	height  weight age gender.

person a
person b
person c

using tab stops in the ruler to position the height weight etc column heads.

But I omitted to enter another column to the left of the height column, headed “birthdate”. The problem is although I can move the existing tabs further to the right to create space for a new tab, when I click on the ruler at the location for the new tab, all the data in the columns to the right get shifted to the left so the new blank tab is now to the right of the others.

How can I prevent this happening?

Question with two solutions
#2

Why aren’t you using a table? The table tools make this and other operations, such as adding the data, easy. A table does not need to show lines when printed or exported to pdf. Tables are less easily accidentally mis-aligned too.


You need another tab at the beginning of each row to create the new column

#3

“You need another tab at the beginning of each row to create the new column”
Thanks for replying. Maybe I have understood what you mean, I have achieved what I wanted by tabbing to the right, manually row by row, it wasn’t as troublesome as I thought it would be in the end.

It’s just a quirk of mine, I don’t want to use tables if I can avoid it.

#4

You know that you are creating a table? That is what tabulated data is.

1 Like
#5

Of course, but I would still be interested in doing it my own way if at all possible.

#6

It is always possible to do it in many “own” ways. But are you ready to accept the consequences? You discovered that tab-separated data are not that easy to format after a change in design (new column to be added among or before others). Many features were invented fo facilitate the task. Tables are one of them. It is intended for tabular data and it makes formatting in the cells nearly independent from formatting in other cells. And the “shape” of the table can be manipulated without touching/caring for contents.

1 Like
#7

Thank you for the replies. I understand there is no direct solution to the problem but I will mark solved to end the thread.

#8

You can copy a tab, select vertically with the mouse while holding Alt, and paste the tab in all selected rows at once.

2 Likes
#9

Thank you, I had no idea I could do that, this will be very useful. Effectively solves the problem for me.

1 Like

Impressum (Legal Info) | Datenschutzerklärung (Privacy Policy)   Content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 license.