Does Word have a command that compares to WordPerfect Advance?

[Puzzled in Portland]

I want to advance text to a specific position within the line that is
independent of the number of characters that precedes it. Tab will not work
as it measures from the preceding character. WordPerfect has a command:
"Typesetting" "Advance" that I use for this. Is there a comparable command
in MS Word?

 

[Jay Freedman]

Word does have an Advance field, mostly for compatibility with documents
imported from WordPerfect. If you use the \x switch, it will position the
next character at the specified location. According to the help topic on the
Advance field, the \x switch "moves the text that follows the field the
specified distance from the left edge of the column, frame, or text box. For
example, { ADVANCE \x 4 } starts text 4 points from the left edge."

However, you're incorrect about a tab (more correctly, a tab stop). Tab
stops are *always* positioned absolutely with respect to the left margin.
You may be confused by the "default" tab stops, which (if you don't change
the setting in the Tabs dialog) occur every 0.5". If you set a non-default
tab stop, and if the character before a tab character is to the left of that
tab stop, then the character after it will be placed at the tab stop. See
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/SettingTabs.htm for more.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.