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I noticed a change when searching in a Word document on my Macbook Air. Before when I would click command + F to search for a word, the words would go into a box on the top right where I would click next to search the document.
Then, it turned into a floating box that says "Find in document" near the top right corner, but not the same place as before. The box before was stationary and not floating. I think I may have accidentally hit a command or changed a function while typing because it started after I tried to hit a command, but may have misclicked. Now the command + F function has changed. I tried resetting the Word keyboard settings and stuff in the ribbon bar to no avail. Does anyone know what happened? It looks like this now:
A family of Microsoft word processing software products for creating web, email, and print documents.
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
Sukie is sort of right.
Microsoft made a change with the search field input. I don't like it either.
Let Microsoft know you don't like it by using the Menu Bar and choosing Help > Feedback > I Don't Like Something.
I did the feedback. I'm not optimistic that they will bring back the old method of searching even though it was a heckuva lot better. The floating box is annoying beyond words.
I was hoping there was going to be some way to disable it and use the old method. Ah well.
Try using Control+H to launch the Sidebar Search Pane. Reassign Command+F to it if you wish.
Hi Susan,
Unfortunately, I don't know what build number is the one in which this "feature" was introduced. It's been around for a while.
I like to think there's a Product Manager on the Word team who gets the feedback messages and is scratching their head. Why are we getting hundreds of feedback complaints about this fantastic new behavior I personally thought it up and tested it myself! I can't believe our users don't love this new way to find things. I'm sure once they get used to it they will love it!
The best way to counteract crazy thinking like this is to send Feedback each time you use the feature and find it to be dreadful or annoying.
I have the same issue as the other people in this thread. The floating box gets in the way of the text and is very frustrating. I have to keep taking my hands off the keyboard to move it around so I can see what I typed. How did the software developers ever think this was a good idea?
Another reason the old way was better: with a Command F and the return key, you could do the search very quickly as easily, without removing your hands from the keyboard. When you were done searching, you just left it till the next time. Now you have to delete the extant search term and type a new one into the box--which is always in the way--it is far less convenient and very inefficient.
I came here to see if there might be any possibility of reverting to the old Word, which was simpler and more effective in many other ways too.
But that seems not to be. Improvements and upgrades just make the system harder to use and less efficient.