1. Word For Mac 2018 Tab Goes Too Far Video
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Word makes listening possible by using the text-to-speech (TTS) ability of your device to play back written text as spoken words. There are multiple tools for listening to your Word documents: Read Aloud reads all or part of your document. You can use Read Aloud on its own or within Immersive Reader for Word in Windows and MacOS. Next, check whether the app has a newer version. For example, if you are using Photoshop, go to Adobe’s official website to see if the version you’re using is the latest. Those of you who are used to download programs from the Mac App Store, you can also go to Software Update to check if there’s a new update.

Officially, it’s called the Spinning Wait Cursor or the Spinning Disc Pointer. Colloquially, it goes by many names, including the Spinning Beach Ball. Whatever you call it, the colorful pinwheel that replaces your mouse cursor is not a welcome sight.

According to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, “the spinning wait cursor is displayed automatically by the window server when an application cannot handle all of the events it receives. If an application does not respond for about 2 to 4 seconds, the spinning wait cursor appears.” (WindowServer is the background process that runs the Mac OS X graphical user interface.) Which is to say, the beachball is there to tell you your Mac is too busy with a task to respond normally.

Usually, the pinwheel quickly reverts to the mouse pointer. When it doesn’t go away, it turns into what some call the Spinning Beach Ball of Death (also known as the SBBOD or the Marble of Doom). At times like those, it helps to know why the thing appears and what you can do to make it go away.

Hardware causes

The most basic reason the beach ball appears is because your Mac’s hardware can’t handle the software task at hand. It’s not unusual to see the occasional beach ball when you Mac is performing complex computing tasks. Even everyday activities—such as syncing with iTunes—can temporarily overtax the CPU.

To find out if the CPU is a bottleneck on performance, use Activity Monitor (/Applications/Utilities) to monitor CPU usage. You don’t have to keep an Activity Monitor window open all the time; there are less obtrusive ways to use it. For example, open Activity Monitor then Control-click on its Dock icon and select Dock Icon -> Show CPU Usage. That will turn the icon itself into a CPU usage graph; you can then close the main Activity Monitor window. You can also Control-click on the icon and select Monitors -> CPU Usage, or Monitors -> Floating CPU Window. That will place a small activity graph in the corner of your screen.

The beach ball may also appear if you don’t have enough RAM. Virtual memory paging and swapping (freeing RAM by moving data to swap files on disk and back) consumes CPU cycles. Insufficient RAM means more paging and swapping, which means fewer CPU cycles are available to apps. If apps can’t get the CPU time they want, the beach ball appears. That’s why you want as much RAM as your budget will allow and your Mac can accommodate.

Similarly, if your startup disk is nearly full, less space is available for swap files. Again, that leads to more CPU cycles devoted to swapping and more beach balls. As a rule of thumb, keep at least 10GB free on your startup disk. Again, you can use Activity Monitor to diagnose RAM and hard drive shortages; open the System Memory or Disk Usage tabs. In the pie charts shown in these panes, more green is better.

If you can isolate a hardware cause, the solution is obvious: You need to upgrade. In the case of the CPU, however, that means buying a new Mac. If it’s the RAM or the hard drive, you can upgrade those individually. If upgrading isn’t an option for you, you’re just going to have to run fewer applications concurrently. Clearly, the more resource-intensive apps you work with daily, the fewer you should run simultaneously.

One other hardware-related reason the beach ball may appear: Your hard disk or optical drives may enter Standby mode, spinning down after a period of inactivity to save energy. If you try to access them when they’re in Standby (by opening or saving a file, for example), you may see the beach ball while the disk spins up. For some drives, that may take many seconds.

You can, if you wish, keep your startup disk from ever entering Standby mode. To do so, open Energy Saver preferences (in System Preferences) and deselect Put the Hard Disk(s) to Sleep When Possible. Note that all of your drives will still enter Standby mode when your Mac enters its own sleep mode; you may then see the beach ball if you wake your Mac and then immediately try to access a disk.

Software causes

Even if your hardware is adequate, an application or process can still monopolize your system. Perhaps an application is hung in an infinite loop or it’s simply inefficient. Maybe a background process is running amok, hogging CPU cycles. An errant third-party plug-in can turn a fast application into a slug. Whatever the reason, the program takes over the CPU and up pops the Ball.

If you suspect that the SBBOD is software-based, the first thing to do is simply to wait for a few minutes to see if the app starts responding again or crashes. While you’re waiting, you can find out which apps are hogging more than their fair share of system resources: Open Activity Monitor’s CPU tab and sort by the % CPU column in descending order; the apps at the top are the ones using the most CPU cycles.

If you are able to switch to other applications and the SBBOD appears in all of them, that could be a sign that one of your Mac’s system process is hung. In that case, try to shut down or restart the Mac by pressing Command-Eject or Command-Control-Eject, respectively. Otherwise, press and hold the power button to shut down the Mac, restart, then open the system log in Console (/Applications/Utilities) to see if you can determine the cause.

The SBBOD may also appear when you load a Web page containing a vast amount of data or a JavaScript that is either inefficient or incompatible. Most browsers recognize this situation and open an alert window stating that a script is slowing the browser. Clicking on Stop in this alert should end the problem (though the page may then render incorrectly). Otherwise, you’ll have to Force Quit the browser. If you can, you should report the problem the site’s Webmaster.

Ad-blocking—whether it’s built into your browser or enforced by an add-on—may also cause a browser to hang. In this case, Force Quit the browser, then disable ad-blocking for that particular site.

The Bottom Line

While you can’t prevent every instance of the SBBOD—it is there to tell you your Mac is busy—a little patience and an occasional Force Quit or Restart should make those instances a bit more bearable.

Gregory Swain runs The X Lab, a site dedicated to troubleshooting Mac OS X. He also writes and publishes the Troubleshooting Mac OS X e-book series.

Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read ouraffiliate link policyfor more details.

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There are two types of indents that can be adjusted: paragraphs and bullet points. Each has a separate way of adjusting (increasing and decreasing) the indent size. Below are the different ways you can move the indentation in Microsoft Word.

• First line indent with tab.
• Indent paragraph with shortcut key.
• Adjusting indents using the ruler.
• Changing indents in the Paragraph window.
• Adjust the indent on the Ribbon in Word 2007 and later.
• Adjusting the bullet and numbering indentation.

First line indent with tab

The first line indent can always be created using the Tab on the keyboard. To change the first line indent size or indent the full paragraph, continue reading the below suggestions.

Pressing Tab multiple times increases the indent each time it's pressed.

Indent paragraph with shortcut key

A complete paragraph can be indented with the keyboard shortcutCtrl+M and pressing the keyboard shortcut more than once will indent the paragraph further.

Word For Mac 2018 Tab Goes Too Far Video

To reverse the indent, you can also press Ctrl+Shift+M.

Adjusting indents using the ruler

To adjust a paragraph indent size, use the Ruler, which is below the menu bar and resembles the picture shown below. If this feature is not visible, see our document on how to enable the Ruler.

Towards the left side of the Ruler, look for indent markers that resemble an hourglass, like the image shown below.

The top marker (down arrow) controls the first line indent, and the middle marker (up arrow) controls the hanging indent (the indent for lines after the first line in each paragraph). The bottom marker (small box) controls the left indent. To adjust these indents, you can click-and-drag each marker to the right or left.

To change the indentation for an entire document, select all text in the document (press Ctrl+A), then adjust the indent spacing in the ruler as detailed above.

If a large indent is created when pressing the Tab and adjusting the indent on the Ruler doesn't work, adjust the Left Tab Stop in the Ruler.

Changing indents in the Paragraph window

Another way to adjust the indents is to view the Paragraph settings. To view this window, double-click the markers in the ruler, click Format and then Paragraph. You can also place the cursor in the paragraph, right-click with your mouse, and chose Paragraph.

As seen below in the Paragraph window, under the Indentation section, the left and right indent settings can be adjusted. You can also adjust the first line indent and hanging indent size under the Special option in the Indentation section.

At the bottom of the Paragraph settings window, you can preview the look of the indent sizes you are setting and make changes accordingly until you get it the way you want.

Adjust the indent on the Ribbon in Word 2007 and later

If you're using a newer version of Microsoft Word that uses the Ribbon, such as Word 2007 or 2013, do the following.

1. Click the Layout or Page Layout tab.
2. Adjust the indent settings in the Paragraph section.

To view the Paragraph window mentioned in the above section, click the small down arrow indicated by the red arrow in the picture below.

Word For Mac 2018 Tab Goes Too Far -

Adjusting the bullet and numbering indentation

The easiest method of adjusting the bullets and number list in all versions of Word is to adjust the left indent through the Microsoft Word ruler bar.

Word For Mac 2018 Tab Goes Too Far Full

To adjust the spacing between the bullet and the text in a list, you may need to adjust the Left Tab Stop in the Ruler.

Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, and later

Word For Mac 2018 Tab Goes Too Far Free

1. Click one of the bullets at the level you want to change in the document.
2. Right-click the bullet and select Adjust List Indents in the pop-up menu.
3. In the Adjust List Indents window, change the Bullet position to adjust the bullet indent size or change the Text indent to adjust the text indent size after a bullet. As shown, the Bullet position is at .25 inches and the Text indent is at .5 inches (or one-half inch).

Microsoft Word 2000 and earlier

Word For Mac 2018 Tab Goes Too Far

1. Place your cursor in a bulleted or numbered line in the document.
2. Click the Format menu at the top of the Word program and select the Bullets and Numbering option.
3. In the Bullets and Numbering window, click the Customize button on one of the first three tabs, depending on the type of list you are changing.
4. In the window that opens, adjust the indent size for the bullet position and the text position. At the bottom of the window, you can preview how the indentation sizing looks and make changes accordingly until you get it the way you want.

You can also access the Bullet and Numbering window by placing your text cursor on a bulleted or numbered line and right-clicking in the Word document. In the pop-up menu, select the Bullets and Numbering option.

Additional information

• See our bullet and indent definitions for related information and links.