Horizontal line with centered text

1. Format your text as left-alligned and no indents.
2. Format tabs for the paragraph, one is a left tab, one is a center tab, one is a right tab
3. With your cursor at the beginning of the line format for strike-through and then press tab
4. Now have no strike-through and type your text
5. Now set strike-through and press tab
6. Adjust the positions of the tab stops so that your text is in the right position and the horizontal lines end where you want

Put the cursor in the paragraph that contains the section name. Right-click and choose Paragraph. At the bottom of the dialog, click the Tabs button.

If the Tab Stop Position list contains any entries, click the Clear All button.

In the box at the top of the Tab Stop Position list, type the position of the center of the text column. For example, if you use US Letter page size (8.5 inches wide) and have 1" margins, the text column is 6.5" wide, so the center is 3.25". Type in 3.25. Click the Center alignment and the center-line (3) leader. Important: Click the Set button, NOT the OK button.

Now type the position of the right margin (6.5 in the example above), click the Right alignment, and again click the center-line leader. Click the Set button, NOT the OK button.

Once the Tab Stop Position list contains both 3.25 and 6.5, now you can click the OK button.

At the left end of the line containing the section name, press the Tab key to create the line on the left. Then go to the right end of the section name and press the Tab key again to create the line on the right.

Sorry to have misled you. I just set the font size of the tabs a bit smaller, and the gaps between hyphens disappeared. Condensed spacing would do as well, but that dialog page is a bit harder to get to.

As Suzanne suggests, if the line is to be level with the centre of the text height then it is a bit fiddly to achieve manually, but you can do it with a macro.

Type the heading text at the left margin then run the following macro, which sets tabs at the centre and right margins with underline leaders, then tabs are added before and after the text and formatted raised to the height ot the font divided by 2.5, which should be near enough the centre. You can adjust that figure to whatever you need to produce the effect you are after

Sub AddLines()

Dim iWidth As Long, iLM As Long, iRM As Long, iCentre As Long

Dim oHT As Long

Dim oRng As Range

With Selection.Sections(1).PageSetup

    iLM = .LeftMargin

    iRM = .RightMargin

    iWidth = .PageWidth

End With

'find the cenre of the page between the margins

iCentre = ((iWidth - (iLM + iRM)) / 2)

'Clear any existing tabs and add a tab at the centre and another at the right margin

With Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops

    .ClearAll

    .Add Position:=iCentre, _

         Alignment:=wdAlignTabCenter, _

         Leader:=wdTabLeaderLines

    .Add Position:=iWidth - iLM - iRM, _

         Alignment:=wdAlignTabRight, _

         Leader:=wdTabLeaderLines

End With

'define the paragraph text as a range

Set oRng = Selection.Paragraphs(1).Range

oRng.End = oRng.End - 1

'establish the font size of the first character

oHT = oRng.Characters(1).Font.Size

'add a tab before and a space and tab after the text

oRng.InsertBefore vbTab

oRng.InsertAfter Chr(32) & vbTab

'move the range start and end to include the tabs

oRng.Start = oRng.Start - 1

oRng.End = oRng.Paragraphs(1).Range.End

'locate and format the tabs by raising the font

With oRng.Find

    Do While .Execute(FindText:=Chr(9))

        oRng.Font.Position = oHT / 2.5

    Loop

End With

'collapse the range

oRng.Collapse wdCollapseEnd

'and select it to continue typing from that point

oRng.Select

End Sub

http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm