Using Indents in MS Word

Indents are something which seem to leave many people baffled, and yet if you get to know how to handle them, you'll be surprised how easy and useful they are.  If you've ever found your self tabbing or pressing the space bar numerous times to shift your text over then this is post for you.

Typically your text is typed within the boundaries of the margins, however margins are set for the entire document and you may want to adjust the margins for only a small section of your document.  In this case you can make use of Indents.


Indents are used to align blocks of text by creating left and right boundaries for selected paragraphs without having to change margins for the whole document.  There are four indent markers positioned at the edges of the horizontal ruler as depicted below:




Moving the First Line Indent moves the text on the first line of the paragraph in line with the indent, but the remaining lines of the paragraph adhere to the margin settings.

Moving the Hanging Indent moves the text on everything except the first line of the paragraph.

Moving the Left Indent moves all the text within the paragraph to the match the indent settings.

Remember that each line within a document can have its own indent settings, so to ensure that your indent changes take effect to the required areas, make sure you have selected each line that requires the indent changed.

Don't be afraid to play around with the indents to see the changes they can make - save regularly when you're happy with a change, and press Undo when you're not :) and of course -please share this if you think it could be of value to someone else

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