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Choose Options/Editor/Formatting. Change tab size field from 8 to 4 (Change tabs to spaces is not checked) Close the dialog. All files still have tab size of 8. Reformatting any document will also use a tab size of 8
Do the files really contain tab character or just space? (you mentioned the replace tab with spaces is not checked, but the files may be created before this option was disabled) Reformat does not work with tab size, but with 'Number of spaces per Indent'.
I would love to spend the time going over the details of the innumerable bugs you have in the edit/format dialog, but unfortunatley, I have work to do. But I will tell you that with a little simple QA that I have done by testing the changing of both the indent spacing and tab sizes, you will find that it rarely produces any reasonably predictable results. I can change all the setting to 8 (and I mean ALL of them for both all file types java files) and still the do not consistently change to 8). If you close the project and check out the project properties file, you will notice that none of the settings have changed. This a a QA job and not really my job, so I'm sorry to be a little short here, but I have developed software for 40 years, and If I can see the problem that easily, so should you. Good luck with your efforts. P.S. I have fixed my problem by manually editing the project.proerties file and inserting the appropriate values of 4 everywhere required. This is not a solution so DO NOT close this bug as solved. It is not solved. You need better QA.
If you've found formatting settings in project.properties, your project has project specific formatting, which overrides the global setting. It means the global setting does not apply to any file from the given project. Please check Project properties -> Formatting P.S. The fact that you can easily see some problem does not mean that the problem is easy to reproduce. It may depend on many factors - as OS, file system, old imported user setting, JDK version, specific setting etc..., It is not possible that QA tests everything on all configurations. That why you're asked for more details, it the issue is not reproduced by QA or developers.