Index Tab Templates Made Easy

by Joe Torrence

Published on this site: August 28th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

If you been through the process of trying to set up tab titles for printing on your laser printer and have become so frustrated that you given up, then this article is for you.

Blank, copyable tabs are now readily available over the internet and your local office supply store but effectively using these products takes patience to set up for your laser printer. The most common tab cut is the 5 bank or 5 tabs per set. Each tab is 2" wide x 1/2" tall. By taking the total number of tabs (5) and multiplying by the width of the tab (2"), you can see that the total printing area is 10". Add the inset of 1/2" on both sides and now we have a total of 11", the standard length of all US letter size documents.

Using the above measurements, we can now make a table in our favorite graphics program. We have used Microsoft Publisher, Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. Whatever your comfortable with will work, just as long as the program has the ability to generate graphics tables.

Set the table length to 10", the table height to 1/2", the number of cells to 5 for a 5 bank, 6 for a 6 bank and so forth. Set the x coordinate to .5" and the y coordinate to 0.00". Set all the cells to align in the center, both horizontal and
vertical and finally choose the type style and size of the tab titles you wish to print.

It may take you one or twos tries to get it right but all in all its not a difficult task. If the boss has you on a hundred different projects and you just don't have the time to set up tables for tab laser printing, then you can visit our site at http://www.gpxtabs.com/tab_templates.htm and download 3 through 20 bank templates already set up in Microsoft Publisher.

Joe Torrence: Owner and General Manager of The Tab Store http://www.gpxtabs.com Value, Integrity, Honesty, Unparalleled customer service.