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InDesign How-to Video: How to Align Auto Numbering on a Decimal

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In this week’s InDesignSecrets video, Mike Rankin explains how easy it actually is to right-align numbered lists on a decimal. By taking advantage of a little-known feature, he demos a foolproof way to assure those decimal points always line up!

Check out new tutorials every other Tuesday on our InDesign Secrets YouTube channel, then join the discussion on our Facebook group!

Editor in Chief of CreativePro. Instructor at LinkedIn Learning with courses on InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, Inkscape, and Affinity Publisher. Co-author of The Photoshop Visual Quickstart Guide with Nigel French.
  • Jimmy says:

    That is easily the most obscure InDesign feature I’ve ever seen, and very useful.

  • Lindsey Thomas Martin says:

    If you use tabular, rather than proportional, figures (almost always the right choice for lists and tables), none of this is necessary and the numbers in the list are even on left and right. Paragraph Style Options > OpenType Features > Figure Style: Tablular Lining or Tablular Oldstyle.

    • Mike Rankin says:

      Yes of course, but there are plenty of fonts that don’t have Tabular figures and knowing how to quickly and easily decimal align list using any font is a good thing.

  • Brad Grigor says:

    Over the years, I have used every possible clumsy way of doing this. Thanks for showing us the way.

  • Lioudmila Grigorieva says:

    Very easy and very useful! Thanks!

  • Donna Gonzalez says:

    You’re missing Top Hat from your list of movies :-) (love this tip anyway!)

  • Jane says:

    GENIUS!!!

  • Steve Davis says:

    However, it might be a bug… in RTL paras, you have to do a subtraction of the textbox width minus the found value as it appears to read from LTR.

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