Microsoft Word - When I hit tab, it no longer indents the bullet-point in a list

For 2007 it’s:

1. Office button → “Word Options” → “Proofing” → “AutoCorrect Options” → “AutoFormat As You Type”
2. Check the “Set left- and first-indent with tabs and backspaces” box.

For 2010 it’s essentially the same:

1. “File” menu → “Options” → “Proofing” → “AutoCorrect Options …” button → “AutoFormat As You Type” tab → “Automatically as you type” section
   • If you can’t find the “Proofing” panel as described above, try “File” menu → “Options” → “Mail” tab → “Editor Options” button → “Proofing” tab
2. Check the “Set left- and first-indent with tabs and backspaces” box.

For 2013 it’s:

1. Select the line you want to indent back.
2. There is a button in the “Home” tab titled “decrease indent” or “decrease list level”.
3. Left click this button.

For Word 2013 it's:

1. File > Options to open the Word Options window
2. Proofing tab on the left hand
3. Autocorrect Options tab
4. Under Automatically as you type check the box for Set left- and first-indet with tabs and backspaces

For Word 2003 it's:

• Tools Menu
• AutoCorrect Options
• AutoFormat As You Type
• Set left- and first-indent with tabs and backspaces

So going to the AutoFormat options didn't work for me (the option to "Set left- and first-indent with tabs and backspaces" was already set, and reset it a couple of times did nothing - tabbing jumped to the next Heading style I had formatted), and the other answer listed here at the time of me writing this, to just use the indent buttons on the toolbar works, but gets incredibly annoying as a workaround. Here's what happened with me, what I tried that ultimately fixed it:

I found that this issue is document-specific - not a global setting in Word that got unset and needs to be rechecked. I opened another, blank Word document. I hit the bullet button. Now, if you hit Tab you should see the bullet indent. It won't change "level", from that solid to a hollow bullet, because that requires entering some text on that line, then hit Enter, then you should be able to hit Tab on the new, 2nd bullet and it should indent and change the level of the bullet from the solid to the hollow one. Once you have made sure that works, you can proceed. (If it doesn't for some reason, I recommend closing all Word documents, then finding and deleting the Normal.dot in your Local Settings folder under your profile folder in C:\Users. Search for it, it should be somewhere if you have Word 2013 or prior - this shouldn't be a problem/issue in Word 2016 as they no longer seem to have that file. But in those previous versions, Word should re-create it the next time you launch the program. Then you can proceed with these instructions.)

What I initially tried was copying the content from my old Word doc onto this blank, new one. That doesn't work because I found that just copies the formatting issue/problem over to the new one (this was also how I figured out it was document-specific). So, open Notepad, copy/paste all of your content from your bad Word document into that using Ctrl+A (select all), Ctrl+X (cut), then in Notepad, paste with Ctrl+V. Then grab the content from Notepad: Ctrl+A to "Select All" of the text in Notepad, Ctrl+X to cut it all out of Notepad, and go to the new Word document to Ctrl+V and paste it into Word. Now to fix those pesky, misaligned bullets.

On each bullet, you're going to have to fix it manually. Click next to/just ahead of one, so your cursor is sitting in front of it. I hit the Bullet button in the toolbar. Once you do that, if you put your cursor at the end of it, hit Enter, a new bullet at the same level should appear. Hitting Tab should indent the bullet and give you the hollow one for the next level.

So you can do this individually (safest, but tedious), or for the more adventure-loving, you can highlight all of the pasted in text/all of your bullets and click the Bullet button, then go back and indent the bullets that need indenting, using your previous Word document as a guide until you are complete with all bullet indenting and restoring any formatting/styling you once had - then you can exit your old document, and save this new Word document over top of your old one and discard the Notepad text by closing Notepad without saving. Or, if you are using SharePoint/Office 365, once you've performed all of your old styling on your headers and fixed this new Word document up to get it back to the point of your old one, you can then do a Ctrl+A (select all), Ctrl+X (cut), and then Ctrl+A on the old Word document and Ctrl+V to paste this fixed up content over top of the old document that is still attached to SharePoint/the cloud. It will now work. Save the document. If you want to be sure you're good, close and re-launch the document - your tabbing of your bullets should indent them, now.