I tend to work with short to medium length documents which do not contain headings. I often need to search for specific phrases, and for this purpose the 'browse the results from your current search' option in the navigation pane works perfectly.

However, whenever I press Ctrl+F, the navigation pane always goes to the default option of 'browse the headings in your document'. This is useless to me, as the documents I work with don't contain headings! I always have to click on the option I want, which after hundreds of searches starts to get very tedious.

I have attached two images to this post - the first demonstrates the default option that appears whenever I press Ctrl+F, the second demonstrates the option that I want to appear by default when I press Ctrl+F, but which I currently have to click after pressing Ctrl+F.



Would anyone be able to advise on how to change the default setting?

Attached Images

	(1) Default option I don't want.PNG (6.3 KB, 38 views)
	(2) Non-default option I want to set as default.PNG (13.9 KB, 38 views)

Rather than using Ctrl+F have you tried to click on "Find" from the Home Ribbon (far right-hand side of the screen)? I think that will get what you want.

Hope this helps...

Blazed,
I have done the following in trying out your problem in Word 2013; I don't know if this represents a change from 2010. I searched for a word using Find (Alt+E,F). When subsequently opening the navigation panel with Ctrl+F, Results was highlighted and the word was in the Find field.

In Word 2010 and 2013, my pane opens with your second example - the search results.

Try opening Word is safe mode and see if the result is different. (This is a diagnostic, not the way you should be using Word.) To open Word in safe mode, with the Ctrl key depressed, double-click on a Word file's icon in Windows.

How interesting. In Safe Mode Ctrl+F did indeed open up the second option. When I reopened Word, Ctrl+F has reverted to opening up the second option. Problem partly solved!

However, when the navigation pane is open with the second option, I close Word (without closing the navigation pane) and I reopen Word, the navigation pane reverts to the first (unwanted) option. I can't remember if it has always done this or if it is something specific to my computer. Does the same occur on your computer?

I don't know as to your new question. I expect that the Navigation pane will always open as a Navigation aid rather than a Find aid; but the Find panel will open in response to Ctrl+F.

As I said, the safe mode was for diagnostics. You almost certainly have an Add-In that is causing this. Try disabling them all and see what happens.

See View, manage, and install add-ins in Office programs - Support.

If it works for you with Add-Ins disabled, try turning them back on, one at a time until you notice the problem again. Then you will know which one is the problem. Unless it provides some advantage you value over the Navigation pane problem, leave it disabled.

BTW, I find the navigation pane helpful enough that I assigned it a Keyboard Shortcut.

I have the same issue. I tried to deactivate the add-ins, but it didn't help. To confirm my question: is there any way to change the Navigation Pane in Word 2010 so that it defaults to the "Browse the results..." tab instead of the "Browse the headings..." tab? Thanks

Did you also try opening in Safe Mode and seeing what happens when you do so?

View, manage, and install add-ins in Office programs - Support

I know of no simple way to change the behavior of the navigation pane.

Thanks for the quick response. OK, this is interesting. Yes, in safe mode, if I hit Ctrl-F, the Navigation Pane appears with "Browse the results..." selected. But when I reopen Word in normal mode, the Navigation Pane appears and, by default, it shows "Browse the headings..." on top. However, if I then close the Navigation Pane and hit Ctrl-F, the Navigation Pane reappears, but this time with "Browse the results..." on top. The problem is that this will "stick" only for this particular document. When I open a new document, the Navigation Pane immediately goes back to default to "Browse the headings..." This is making searches unwieldy. I simply want to see the search results without having to go through a two step process each time. Is there a way to open a document and have the Navigation Pane appear with the "Browse the results..." tab on top by default? (By the way, I'm using 64-bit Windows 7 OS with 23-bit Office 2010.)

That you do not have the problem in Safe Mode tells me that it is either an Add-In or something in your normal.dotm file that is causing this problem. I doubt it is something in your normal.dotm file.

I assume you mean 32-bit Office rather than 23-bit.

Check the link I gave you. There are two kinds of Add-Ins, templates and .com. In my experience, although either can cause problems, the .com Add-ins seem to come up more often. You need to check the button for it under Add-Ins to look at .com Add-Ins.

Again, I know of no simple way to change which tab comes up on top when you call the navigation pane. It might be possible with a macro, but I do not even know the name of the navigation pane in vba. It doesn't show up in the document recorder and I'm too lazy to do much looking until you have eliminated Add-Ins.

A simple way to run Word with no Add-Ins is to type "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office14\WINWORD.EXE" /a in the Run window on your Start menu.
Winword.exe /a
may be enough unless you have multiple versions of Word running on your computer.

If you use the Navigation Pane only for searching, then this works for me, hopefully for you too:
1. By default, Ctrl+F should be set to "SmartFind" (that's the command name) in Word.
2. Go to View tab, and in the Show section uncheck the option Navigation Pane.
3. Now your documents will open without the navigation pane but every time you press Ctrl+F navigation pane will open and go automatically to Results (with the cursor in place).
amadís

Thanks Amadis for settling that, even tho such a long time ago.
You know there are so many queries out there abut this issue and most of the replies have simply not understood the question: by "default setting of navigation page" we did not mean whether it is on the LH side of the page or not, nor any other of the weird things people have replied to, meaninglessly: we meant, how we can do a word or phrase Search in a document without getting this absurd "Navigation Pane" starting us off with the irrelevant "headings" rather than "results", which is what used to happen automatically before some update.