Changing the GoTo Default

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 2, 2025)

Roger regularly uses GoTo (F5) to move to a bookmark. Since he's always jumping to bookmarks, he would like to make "Bookmark" the default selection in the dialog box. Instead, the top item in the list ("Page") is always the default. Roger wonders how he can change this default.

When you first press F5 to display the GoTo tab of the Find and Replace dialog box, Roger is right—the Page option is selected. However, in all the versions of Word that we tested, once you select Bookmark at the left side of the dialog box, then every other time you press F5 in the current Word session, your choice (Bookmark) is remembered and displayed as the default.

There is no way to change the default, in Word, for the first time you press F5. If changing the GoTo object is bothersome for the one time you need to do it during each Word session, then there is a round-about approach you can take. Instead of pressing F5, just press Shift+Ctrl+F5. This displays the Bookmark dialog box. (See Figure 1.)

Figure 1. The Bookmark dialog box.

At this point you can simply use the arrow keys to select a bookmark and then press Enter. The result is that you are taken to the bookmark location. This is actually a bit easier than using the GoTo tab of the Find and Replace dialog box to jump to a bookmark, as you don't need to mess with the drop-down list that is in that dialog box. (Normally, drop-down lists require the use of the mouse, and the Bookmark dialog box is more friendly to using the keyboard without the need to use the mouse.)

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (11173) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and 2021.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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