Misbehaving Styles (97 & 2k)

[wdwells]

My apologies up front if this rambles, but the story has taken a while to unfold.
We have a template that was created in Word 2K.
<UL><LI>Based on Heading 1; TOC 1 has hanging first line of 0.4", left tab at 0.4", and right tab with leading dots at 6.49""
<LI>Based on Heading 2; TOC 2 has hanging first line of 0.6", left tab at 0.6", and right tab with leading dots at 6.49""
<LI>Based on TOC 2; TOC 3 through TOC 9 have the hanging first line and left tab incremented by 0.2", the right tab with leading dots remains at 6.49""[/list]Whenever the Table of Contents is updated a tab is inserted in the TOC 2 style. This rogue tab aligns with the hanging first line of TOC 1. This causes the text of TOC 2 to align with the text of TOC 1.

Moving to Word 97, the field code was revised from { TOC O H Z } to { TOC O "1-9" Z } . I prefer the hyperlink only at the page no. in addition to overcoming the ERROR! NOT A VALID HEADING LEVEL RANGE. message. The template now performed the same in Word 97 as it had in Word 2K.

The next step was to redefine the styles--working in Word 97--as follows:
<UL><LI>Created a new style named TOC Base based on nothing, formatted with no hanging first line, and only one tab (the common right tab with leading dots at 6.49").
<LI>Styles TOC 2 through TOC 9 are all based on TOC Base with the hanging first line incrementing from 0.4" to 2.0"[/list]Now the TOC performs as expected, but:
<UL><LI>TOC 8 has an extra left tab at 2.0".
<LI>TOC 9 has an extra left tab at 2.06"[/list]Neither of these extraneous tabs appear in the Format > Styles > Modify > Format > Tabs pane for the particular style. Removing the rogue tab from the ruler and updating the style directly works as expected; but updating the TOC re-inserts the rogue tabs.
While the position of these tabs does not currently interfere with the intended performance; I'd certainly like to know how to regain control. Does anyone out there have any insight into what's going on?

[StuartR]

This sounds like the notorious "Jason Tabs", which are nearly impossible to get rid of. Try searching for that phrase here in the lounge, and out on the web for more information.

I usually see these when Word thinks that my first tab is too close to the bullet or number in a bulletted/numbered paragraph. Your best bet would be to slightly increase the left tab increment (e.g. from 0.2 to 0.25) but nothing is guaranteed to cure these.

StuartR