In my July 12 post, I showed how you could use Word's bookmarks feature to navigate long documents. And my post of October 19, 2004 showed how to use Word's Shift + F5 shortcut to jump to the last 3 places in any document you edit, without having to create bookmarks.

While these are both great to know, there are some downsides. As you edit a document, the places where Shift + F5 goes to keeps changing. And if you need to mark a particular place in a document only temporarily, creating lots of bookmarks could be more trouble than they're worth. So today, I'll give you a macro that does the best of both -- borrowing a feature from WordPerfect called a QuickMark. (This will work in all versions of Word.)

The idea is this: use a shortcut to mark any spot in a document as a QuickMark. Later, use a different shortcut to come back to the spot, no matter where else you edited. If you assign the QuickMark to a different location, the previous one is removed, and you'll now come back to the new one. These macros have saved me a lot of time over the years.

First, create the macros:

1. In Word, open the Visual Basic for Applications editor (Alt + F11).
2. In the Project Explorer on the left (press Ctrl + R if you don't see it), double-click Module1, underneath Normal. (If there is no Module1, right-click Normal, then from the pop-up menu, select Insert/Module.)
3. Select the following code, copy (Ctrl + C), then paste (Ctrl + V) into Module1:

Sub InsertQuickMark()
If ActiveDocument.Bookmarks.Exists("QuickMark") = True Then
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("QuickMark").Delete
End If
With ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
.Add Range:=Selection.Range, Name:="QuickMark"
.DefaultSorting = wdSortByName
.ShowHidden = False
End With
End Sub

Sub FindQuickMark()
Selection.GoTo What:=wdGoToBookmark, Name:="QuickMark"
With ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
.DefaultSorting = wdSortByName
.ShowHidden = False
End With
End Sub

5. Close the VBA editor (Alt + F11). There's no need to save -- it will get saved when you exit Word.

Now, assign the shortcuts

1. Right-click any toolbar, then select Customize.
2. Click the Commands tab, then click the Keyboard button.
3. In the dialog box that appears, scroll down the Categories list on the left side, then select Macros.
4. In the macros list on the right, select the one called InsertQuickMark.
5. Click in the Press new shortcut key box, then press Ctrl + Q.
6. Click the Assign button.
7. In the macros list on the right, select the one called FindQuickMark.
8. Click in the Press new shortcut key box, then press Ctrl + Shift + Q.
9. Click the Assign button, then click the Close button.
10. Click the Close button again.

Put it to the test! Open a long document. Scroll a little, click the page, then insert the QuickMark (Ctrl + Q). Page down a few times, then find the QuickMark (Ctrl + Shift + Q). Scroll a little more, click a different spot, then insert the QuickMark again (Ctrl + Q). Go to a different part of the document, then find the new QuickMark (Ctrl + Shift + Q). Got the idea?