Jumping to the End of the Document in Error

Eleanor finds that often, when she is editing, the insertion point suddenly jumps to the end of the entire document. If she is working on a fifty-page document this is very annoying! She notes that she works on documents with a lot of tracked changes and comments.

It is difficult to analyze, from a distance, what may be happening here. It is possible that Eleanor could be pressing, by mistake, the Ctrl+End keyboard shortcut. This would move the insertion point to the very end of the document. If this happens, another shortcut—Shift+F5—can be used to get back to where you were previously. In fact, pressing Shift+F5 multiple times allows you to jump back to the last three editing positions within the document.

Another possibility is hinted at by Eleanor's comment that she works with lots of tracked changes and comments. An apparent bug in the program can move you to the end of the document when you correct an error in a comment. For example, create a comment that has two periods at the end. Word flags the two periods as an error. (Make sure the error is at very end of the comment; don't press Enter after the two periods.) You can then right-click on the error and choose the suggested correction that shows only a single period. If you do, however, besides making the correction, Word will move you out of the comment and seem to place you at the end of the document.

If this is happening to you, the solution is to immediately press Ctrl+Z to undo the change, and then correct the error manually. It seems to only happen when Word corrects the error by you accepting a suggested correction, and then only if the error is at the very end of the comment.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10017) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.