Make Word remember your last editing position
Microsoft Word should have, and I hope in the future it will have, an option like “Remember last editing position when Word opens”, “Remember last cursor position when Word opens”, etc, i.e. an option that would let us immediately continue editing a document from the page and line we were when we closed this document. I’m surprised that Microsoft has not already done this for Word, since it is a standard function in Excel.
I solved this problem for myself by creating two simple macros. The first one writes some standard text when I close a document, and the second one searches for this text when I open a document. You can open the macro editor (through the Developer menu) and paste there these macros. If you don’t see a “Developer” menu, you have to add it by going to Word Options – Popular, and selecting the option “Add the Developer tab in the ribbon.”
The macros are named AutoOpen and AutoClose because we want them to run automatically when Word opens and closes. You need to allow the automatic running of macros in Word. This security configuration can be made in Word’s Trust Center.
Sub AutoOpen() ' ' GoToMyBookmarkText ' ' On Error Resume Next Selection.Find.ClearFormatting With Selection.Find .Text = "**************" .Replacement.Text = "" .Forward = True .Wrap = wdFindContinue .Format = False .MatchCase = False .MatchWholeWord = False .MatchWildcards = False .MatchSoundsLike = False .MatchAllWordForms = False End With Selection.Find.Execute ActiveWindow.SmallScroll Up:=15 End Sub Sub AutoClose() ' ' CreateMyBookmark ' ' Selection.TypeText Text:="**************" End Sub
You don’t need to assign these macros to a specific document; the normal template is fine to have them work with all your documents. You can change the asterisks with whatever text you prefer, and you can change the SmallScroll number in the AutoOpen macro, according to how many lines above the bookmark you want immediately visible, since by default Word when selecting a text places the selection to the top, letting you see none of the lines above it!
Next time you close a document, Word will write this bookmark and ask you if you want to save the Document. Confirm and save the document (unless you don’t want to have the bookmark). When you re-open this document, Word will find and select the bookmark. Press the “Delete” button to remove the bookmark and start working.
If you don’t want even to delete the bookmark yourself, just add to the AutoOpen macro, right below the Selection.Find.Execute line, these lines:
If Selection = "**************" Then Selection.Delete Selection.MoveRight Unit:=wdCharacter, Count:=1 End If
Again, replace the asterisks with whatever text you’ve chosen as a bookmark.
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