Changing How Go To Works

Subscriber Cheryl Christofferson recently wrote to complain about changes in Word that result in additional work when using the Go To feature. In earlier versions of Word (Word 95 and before), when the Go To dialog box was displayed, the target you wanted to "Go To" was automatically highlighted, so anything you typed (such as a new page number) automatically replaced what was there and you could easily jump to a new location. Starting with Word 97, however, the target in the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box is not automatically selected. Instead the insertion point is at the beginning of the entry box, with your previous target following the insertion point. Thus, if you want to jump to a new page, you must erase the default target and then type your real target.

Apparently this also bothered several other subscribers, who agreed it was a dumb change on the part of Microsoft. Fortunately, you can modify your version of Word to start with a clean target for your Go To efforts by modifying the command used by Word. Simply follow these steps in Word 97 and later versions:

1. Choose Macro from the Tools menu, and then Macros from the resulting submenu. Word displays the Macros dialog box.
2. In the Macro Name box, enter EditGoTo as your macro's name. (That is a single word and must be spelled exactly as shown.)
3. Click on the Create button. Word displays the VBA Editor, ready for you to put in your new macro. Notice, however, that the macro already contains some code, as follows:

   Sub EditGoTo()
   '
   ' EditGoTo Macro
   ' Jumps to a specified place in the active document
   '
       Dialogs(wdDialogEditGoTo).Show
   
   End Sub
   

   The reason for this is because you are redefining an existing Word command. The code shown is the code that Word normally executes for the Go To command.
4. Replace the code that is shown with the following code:

Sub EditGoTo()
'
' EditGoTo Macro
' Jumps to a specified place in the active document
'
    With Dialogs(wdDialogEditGoTo)
        .Destination = ""
        .Show
    End With
End Sub

5. Close the VBA Editor.

That's it. From now on when you pull up the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box, the destination (target) of your jump will be blank.