If you need (for some reason) to determine whether a tab character is a normal tab or an alignment tab, one way to do so is to try deleting it. I noted that if you have non-printing characters visible then alignment tabs look like regular tabs. This means that if you later make a formatting change that adjusts those margins (such as Patsy did), change paper size, or even change from portrait to landscape orientation, the alignment tabs adjust the information that follows them relative to the margin change. Regular tabs are set at a particular distance from the left margin, while alignment tabs are set at a relative position (left, center, or right) to both margins. While alignment tabs, in this respect, look like regular tabs, they are very different. If you have non-printing characters visible on your screen, you'll notice that Word displays the alignment tab using the familiar arrow character it normally uses for tabs.

Close the header or footer area by clicking in the main document.

Type the information you want right-aligned in the header or footer.

Word again displays the Alignment Tab dialog box.

Again click the Insert Alignment Tab tool, as you did in step 4.

Type the information you want centered in the header or footer.Click OK to close the Alignment tab dialog box.Make sure the Align Relative To drop-down list is set to Margin.Word displays the Alignment Tab dialog box. In the Position group, click the Insert Alignment Tab tool.Type the text you want left-aligned in the header or footer.(Simply double-click in the header or footer area to open it to editing.) Open the header or footer area, depending on which one you want to change.Starting with Word 2007, however, there is an even better way to get the desired result: through the use of alignment tabs. As long as the table width is set to 100%, it will adjust automatically to any changes in the overall line width. You can put text in the left, center, and right cells and then format or align that text any way you like within the cell. The traditional way to solve this problem is to put a three-celled, single-row table in the header or footer. (The center-aligned tab was set based upon the old line width, which is no longer valid after the margin change.) Patsy wonders if there is a way to set up the header or footers so that the centered information remains centered, even if she needs to change margins. If she later changes the margins of the document, the previously centered portion is no longer centered. Each has information at three places: left, centered, and right. Patsy has a document that has headers and footers in it.

How to change header in word online