Moving Found Text Down On a Page

Subscriber David Goldenberg wrote about his frustration with using Word's Find feature and having the "found" information appear on the top line of the document window. (Technically, this is true only if the next occurrence of the thing you are searching for is not visible within the current window.) When Word changes the display to show what it found, then the item found is shown on the top row. In earlier versions of Word, the item found was always on the second row of the document window.

Unfortunately, there is no setting or anything that you can use to change where Word displays found text after changing the display window. There is, however, a macro you can devise that will provide a workaround. Consider the following:

Sub MyFindNext()
    Application.ScreenUpdating = False
    Selection.Find.Execute
    ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Name:="MyFound"
    Selection.MoveUp Unit:=wdLine, Count:=3
    Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="MyFound"
    ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("MyFound").Delete
    Application.ScreenUpdating = True
End Sub

The purpose of this macro is to find the next occurrence of whatever you are searching for, bookmark the selection (uses a bookmark name of "MyFound"), move up three lines, jump back to the bookmark, and then delete the bookmark. The result is that whatever is "found" will be displayed at least three lines from the top of the screen.

To use the macro, simply assign it to a shortcut key combination that you can easily remember and use. Then, use Ctrl+F to search for your first occurrence as you normally would. Once the first occurrence is found, press Esc to dismiss the Find and Replace dialog box. Now you can use your shortcut key combination to initiate the macro and find the next occurrence of the search term. Keep pressing the shortcut key to keep pulling up additional instances.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1547) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.