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How do I make the enter button stop indenting my text?

Anonymous
2024-11-09T18:07:48+00:00

I am merely trying to add a blank line into my document and it is indenting my text instead of making a fresh line. Do you think I don't know how to press tab? Who is making these idiotic changes?

It seems every time I use word I have to look up how to make it work properly. I am about to return to pen and paper. At least the pen doesn't try to write in graphite unexpectedly.

And yes, I know you now double press the enter button to make a fresh line. Just extra steps when there is a button, who's only function, is to do that. It has been that way since Word came out. It was that way in typewriters. If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.🤯

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  1. Suzanne S Barnhill 277.1K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-11-09T22:20:10+00:00

    It appears that when you press Enter, you are getting a paragraph with an indent or a first-line indent. As Stefan suggests, this may be because the "Style for following paragraph" is different from the style of the paragraph at the end of which you're pressing Enter. For example, the following style for all the built-in heading styles is Normal. If you have modified the Normal style to have some sort of indent, that could be the issue. But since you say pressing Enter twice solves the problem, the likelihood is that your paragraph is in the List Paragraph style because it is numbered or bulleted or in some way part of a list.

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  2. Stefan Blom 338.6K Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2024-11-09T22:03:20+00:00

    In recent versions of Word, pressing Enter repeatedly within a multilevel list would "outdent" the list. This is by design.

    If you are not working with numbering, maybe it is just that pressing Enter applies a different style. For example, if you press Enter at the end of heading paragraph, Word applies Normal to the new paragraph by default. This is controlled by the "Style for following paragraph" setting in the Modify Style dialog box.

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  3. Anonymous
    2024-11-09T19:03:14+00:00

    Hi Patrick, not sure what a 'blank line' is, unless you mean an indent first line? And yes, using the Tab Key will indent the first line of the paragraph. Try: Indent the first line of a paragraph - Microsoft Support

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