Bullets, Numbering and Indents

Daniel is correct. You don't have the tab markers on the ruler as you do in PPT (or Word, InDesign and just about any other application that deals with text) but you can set the Indentation in the Paragraph options dialog. Under Indentation > Special > (Select "Hanging") > and set the distance in inches. What you can't do is have multiple levels of custom indents.

Related to this is basic tab functionality; it is very limited. In addition to the hanging indent issues there are no right-aligned, center-aligned, or decimal-aligned tabs. This makes it very difficult to set up lists with columns, like a price list with the items aligned to the left and the prices aligned to the right. I've put in my request a long time ago for this functionality and urge anyone who cares about typography to do so as well.

Hi Ken,

Thanks for coming back around and sharing a bit more information as well. I understand you're unable to share the file at this point after so much back and forth, so in the future please don't hesitate to reach out here or send along to our Support team - as we're always happy to help and would rather do that then have you become frustrated!   Support via the forums or a case is always free, so we're here for you. ;-)

As for the the general oddities, I did want to check that you're working on project files as described here - as working off things like a network drive can cause a lot of unexpected and frustrating behavior in your .story file. Another good solution is to look at importing it into a new project to resolve oddness. Lastly as a good general rule, you'll always want to be on the latest update as well - we're currently on Update 6 of Storyline 2. 

Brett and Daniel are correct in terms of the spacing elements you mentioned needing here. I also tested the Bold, Italic, Underline in my Storyline 2, and could add all those elements in as normal, the only issue was when trying to combine them such as line 1 bold, and line 2 underlined, the letter/number formatting retains the first setting unless I change the text box as a whole. 

Please feel free to let us know if you need anything else. 

I see this thread is two years stale (pre Storyline 3, I assume) but hanging indent still does not work (11/21/17) , even though a dialog box includes that control that I have tried to use over and over again. Lack of such basic formatting is pretty sad.

Hi John,

Sorry to hear that you are having difficulty and you are certainly correct in assuming that this was pre-SL3.

Perhaps I'm not understanding what a hanging-indent is or is it that it is not available as a Paragraph formatting option as it is in Word?

Thanks for your feedback :)

Thanks Leslie,

Correct: Am trying to do a hanging indent as Word allows for a numbered list: The first line (containing the number) is at the margin, and all following lines are indented.

Storyline has a control for this at Home > Paragraph > Line spacing > Line Spacing options ..., but it doesn't work. I have selected Hanging indent and applied a number of different values, but the selected paragraph remains flush left.

Hi John,

I took a look at adjusting these in Storyline 3 myself, and you'll see they do take the adjustment here. My video shows with bullets but I also tested it with a numbered list and saw the same results. 

If you want to share your exact needs, and/or a copy of your .story file I can also give it a test there.

Hey John - I did file this as a possible bug with our team since it obviously performs differently than the Word formatting. Looks like paragraphs and numbers and bullets have different results as well based on Ashley's testing. 

I'll admit, not a feature I've ever used :)

Ashley and Leslie,

This is just not working as advertised for me. Please take a look at the attached, done in Storyline 3.

Thank you John.

As I mentioned above, I did report this to our team. I'll include your example as well.

Thanks Leslie,

I should have directed this to Ashley: In her reply, she demonstrated that this is working for her and I would like to know how she gets this to work so that I can get hanging indents to work for us as well.

Gotcha John - no worries. Looks like paragraph and bullets work differently. In the example Ashley shared above, and we discussed this internally, she used bullets and it's indenting the first line. The hanging indent on the paragraph doesn't seem to be working and you want the lines below the first line like Word does from what I understand :)

Thanks Leslie,

Correct: I am adding my own numbers to control how they continue from slide to slide.

Thank you for your example.  The point is making the second line indent.  It is easy to change the first line to indent (and that is what is the 'hanging' part of the paragraph instructions), but that was not what was asked.  (As I understood it).  I have a slide where I want 2, 3, and 5 to indent, I am unable to move the second line over.

Jan,

What I now do is tab (or indent) the first line over (as I gather you are doing). Then, at the end of that line insert a soft line break (Shift + Enter). Then use the tab and space keys to line up lines under the first.

Easy to do once or twice, but a real time waste doing this over and again, and what is missing--as has been pointed out earlier in this thread--is basic functionality baked into just about any application out there today that handles text.

This still seems to be a problem.  I have a client who has very specific bullet spacing requirements and I have to adjust each text box rather than assign a text style.