A tab leader in Word produces a row of dots, hyphens or underscores between two sets of text, separated with the Tab key. They are useful for creating tabular lists without using tables, as shown in the picture above.
As an example, maybe you are including a price list in your document, but don't want to use a table. Tab leaders are also used in tables of contents and indexes.
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A tab leader is set for a particular tab. Tabs are markers placed on the ruler that define how text or numbers are aligned on a line. Pressing the Tab key on the keyboard, the cursor advances to the next tab stop. By default, every half inch of the ruler is a tab. Despite this, you can place your own custom tab stops, skipping the defaults. Can create left-aligned tabs, right, center and decimals, as well as a bar tab stop that places a vertical bar on the line in the tab stop.
You can place tabs on a line using the ruler, but you cannot add a tab leader to a tab using the rule. Despite this, adding a tab leader to a tab is easy and we'll show you how.
To add a tab leader to a tab, we need to open the Tabs dialog box. To do it, position the cursor on the line where you want to add a tab leader and double click on the desired tab marker on the ruler. If you don't have a tab set yet, just double click on the rule where you want to add the tab with the leader. A tab stop is added to the ruler and then the Tabs dialog box opens.
In the Tabs dialog box, You can adjust the tab measure via the tab position box and change the Alignment of the tab. In the Leader section, select the type of tab leader you want: points (2), scripts (3) or underscores (4). "None" (1) is the default option and does not apply a tab leader to the selected tab.
Note that the unit of measure in your tab stops. Any unit of measure you have set for the ruler is also used for the tabs.
Click on “To accept” to accept the changes and close the Tabs dialog.
Now, when you go to tab with the leader, leading characters automatically fill in the space from one piece of text to the other.
If you want to see where the tabs are in your document, and not only in the rule, you can turn on characters that are not printed. The small arrow above the tab leader characters in the next image is the tab character.
If you are applying the same tab leader to the same tab on multiple lines, you can choose those lines and later add the tab leader to all those lines at the same time by following the steps above.
