Create the empty macro

A previous post covers creating an empty macro like the one shown below. When you’re done, you’ll have something like:

We'll have one each for the setting and jumping to the respective bookmarks.

The single quote tells VBA the rest of the text on that line is a comment meant for human readers. We start our macro steps on the empty line.

How do I use it?

If I’m about to move to make an edit somewhere else in the document, I’ll quickly hit Command+Option+7 to set an editing bookmark at my current location.

I go where I need and make the edit. Then I hit Command+7 to jump back to my original location.

It’s quick and easy.

This is important to me because I build a running outline of scene ideas and tentative scenes in my novels with inline notes as I write.

What about the “Find and Replace” dialog?

I know this may feel like we’re reinventing the wheel, but as I’ve said before, we’re talking about streamlining your workflow. Making your whole editing process faster.

Yeah, the Find and Replace dialog (F5 in Windows or Mac; alternatively Command+Option+G in Word for Mac or Control+G in Word for Windows) is useful, but it’s a prime example of increased friction reducing its own utility.

In the effort to make it general and apply to almost everything in addition to searching for text, it’s just clunky to use.

How do we use bookmarks with the Find and Replace dialog?

• Press F5
• Make sure the GoTo tab is selected
• Select bookmarks from the side panel
• Select the appropriate bookmark from the drop down list
• Click the GoTo button

Sometimes the GoTo tab and the proper bookmark will already be selected, but it’s still more friction than necessary.

There are a similar number of steps even if you use the Bookmarks dialog on the Insert tab of the ribbon instead.

The extra steps make people less likely to actually use either method.

They’re just long and clunky when you’re in a work flow state when you could accomplish the same thing by tapping Command+7 (my preferred keyboard shortcut).

What about the “goto last edit” shortcut?

As mentioned last article, Shift+F5 is a standard Word keyboard shortcut to cycle between the last several edits in a document, but it actually often counts individual letters as separate edits. This greatly limits it utility in practice.

Quick Bookmarks

Working with the ActiveDocument

We previous used the Selection to access a hidden Word bookmark through its Bookmarks collection:

In this macro, we’ll instead refer to the Bookmarks collection of the ActiveDocument rather than through the Selection since the latter probably doesn’t contain the editing bookmark(s) we’re using.

This collection allows us to access any defined Bookmark in the active document.

Set an editing bookmark

We can set or redefine a bookmark using the Add method of the collection.

We gave it a Range in the document for the bookmark to span. Here Selection.Range is just the current insertion point (or all content spanned by a selection if one exists).

Then we gave the new bookmark a name in double quotes. I personally use three regular editing bookmarks: PrimaryEdit, SecondaryEdit, and TertiaryEdit.

Word doesn’t allow spaces in bookmark names, but some people use an underscore _ to simulate a space like Primary_Edit. This underscore is just for the name and has nothing to do with the above line extension. Not my preference.

Recall the underscore _ character at the end of the first line above tells VBA you're continuing the long line on the next.

Don’t forget we use := to assign arguments when necessary after VBA commands.

Goto a standard bookmark

If we quickly set a standard bookmark, we need a corresponding method to jump to it. We can use the GoTo method of the Selection.

Remember we have to give the GoTo method a thing to jump to it using the pre-defined item constants.

If a bookmark is used as we’ve done here, we also have to give the name of the Bookmark in double quotes.

Checking whether the bookmark exists

We should probably check whether the bookmark exists before trying to access it. Otherwise, the macro will crash.

The Exists method is True if the bookmark exists in the ActiveDocument and False if not. We then use it in a conditional statement:

Final macros

Unfortunately, we have to define a separate bookmark macro for each one we use. Here is how I do it:

Set the primary editing bookmark:

And the secondary version:

I’ve assigned these to Command+Option+7 and Command+Option+1 in Word for Mac using the numpad. In Word for Windows, I use Control+Alt+7 and Control+Alt+1, respectively.

I don’t understand why, but sometimes Word will even delete the added bookmarks between sessions with the document, so it's nice to able to reset them quickly.

The corresponding goto macros are:

And the secondary version:

I’ve assigned these to Command+7 and Command+1 in Word for Mac using the Numpad. In Word for Windows, I use Control+7 and Control+1, on the numpad respectively.