Search and Navigation Problem

Question

I just got Word 2013 a week ago.  I have two related problems:  (1) Word 2010 used to allow you to navigate page up/down a page at a time - there were arrows on the right that let you do it.  Word 2013 does not seem to have this feature, but I figured out that I can use the Control+FN+page down/up keys to move page by page.  This brings me to my second problem (2) If I happen to have searched for something, then the page down/up feature no longer works, but instead it takes me to the same old search each time. This happens even after I have erased the search words from the search box. Even after doing that, if I then want to go up or down, I keep ending up at the search spot which I no longer need. The only way to make this stop happening is to exit the document and open it back up.  Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Any help will be much appreciated.  Thanks.

Answer 1

The keyboard shortcuts Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown are assigned to the BrowsePrev and BrowseNext commands. In previous versions of Word, the double arrows at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar also execute these commands, and there is a Select Browse Object button between the arrows that allows you to select which object you want to browse by. The default actions at Word startup are Previous Page and Next Page, but after the Find (or Replace or Go To) dialog has been used, they become Previous Find/GoTo and Next Find/GoTo. To restore the original action, you have to use Select Browse Object to select Browse by Page.

This works great in Word 2010 and earlier (it's particularly helpful, in versions that don't have the Navigation pane, to be able to use them to navigate quickly through search results). In Word 2013, an unfortunate design decision was made to eliminate the browse arrows and the Select Browse Object gallery. In the Navigation pane (Results tab), you can click the arrow at the end of the search box and find some of the "browse objects" to search by, but Page is not one of them.

There are several workarounds for this:

1. The article at http://wordribbon.tips.net/T011206_Setting_a_Default_for_the_Object_Browser.html provides some macros that you can use to set the browse object back to Page.
2. You could add Next Page and Previous Page buttons to the Quick Access Toolbar (File | Options | Customize Quick Access Toolbar: All Commands).
3. You could assign the Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown shortcuts to the NextPage and PrevPage commands (File | Options | Customize Ribbon: Keyboard shortcuts). (If these commands don't work as expected, there are also commands calledGoToNextPage and GoToPreviousPage; these would surely work.)

Answer 2

Hi John, Exactly the same thing happens in my computer too.  However, when I go back to editing, and if I want to then view the document page by page, by going Cntrl + Fn + page up/down, it keeps taking me to the search that I did half an hour ago, even though I deleted the search words, hit escape, and closed out of the navigation pane.  The Cntrl + Fn + page up/down function  is somehow overwritten by the search function.  The only way out of this is to close the document and open it up again.

I'm working on a 250 page document, with different types of formatting in different parts. Once in a while, I like to check that the formatting is not messed up after I do my edits, and therefore I often use the Cntrl + Fn + page up/down keys to view pages.  I'm already pissed that we can no longer do this with the mouse and the icons on the side bar, and on top of that, there's this.

Is there a way to report bugs to Microsoft?

Thanks for your response, by the way.  Appreciate it.

Answer 3

Here's what happens on my computer. When I use Find and Replace, the Navigation pane opens on the left side of the screen and steals focus from the main window. My keystrokes are then directed to the Navigation pane and the keyboard shortcut appears to stop working.

Pressing Esc closes the Navigation pane, the focus moves back to the main window and the keystrokes start working again.

Please describe what happens on your computer when you follow similar steps.

Answer 4

Ctrl + Page Up/Down on my new laptop with Word 2013 takes me up and down one paragraph. But Ctrl + Fn + Page Up/Down works page-wise.

I tried your suggestion of pressing Esc, with no luck. I think this is a bug.  Is there any way to report bugs?

Answer 5

Ctrl + Page Up/Down is usually the keyboard shortcut.

After using Find, press the Esc key, the page up/down keys should start working again.