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A Word 2007 annoyance: disappearing vertical scroll bar

103 Comments

This is odd. A couple of times in the last week Microsoft Word has decided I no longer require a vertical scroll bar. The only way I know to turn it back on is to go into Word options, Advanced, and check the option Show vertical scroll bar.

But how is it getting unchecked? My first assumption was that I must have inadvertently pressed an obscure key combination that toggles the vertical scroll bar, but I can’t find any such shortcut. A bug?

By the way, did you know you can get a complete list of Word commands and shortcuts? Click the Developer ribbon, then Macros, then select Word commands from the Macros in drop-down list. Select the macro ListCommands, then click Run. Word will offer you a document containing either Current Keyboard Settings, or All Commands. The All Commands list is 46 pages long, and contains roughly 2000 commands, none of which hides the vertical scroll bar.

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103 thoughts on “A Word 2007 annoyance: disappearing vertical scroll bar”

  1. my vertical scroll in Word 2007 (i have a mac) under Word/Preferences/ View/ check the box for vertical scroll bar.

  2. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! My scrollbar disappeared months ago, and it was driving me crazy!!! Mil Gracias!!!

  3. Oh, thank you for posting on this! My scrollbar magically disappeared this morning.

    It is amazing how I can be so in love with MS Word and loathe it all at the same time 🙂

  4. It is amazing how I can be so in love with MS Word and loathe it all at the same time

    Actually that is quite common 🙂

    Tim

  5. So my scrollbar has never dissappeared, but the scroll wheel functionality doesn’t work. Any quick fixes for that?

  6. Thank you, it happened to me few weeks ago when I opened a document that was password protected and has no vertical scroll bar and since then it disappeared.

  8. Thank you very much–this has been a problem for a long time on a system at my work!!! Thank you, thank you!!!

  10. Click the colorful button in the top left of the MS Word 2007 screen (this is the Office button)! The Word Options button is in the bottom right next to the Exit Word button.

  11. This happened at work months ago and I just learned to live with it, although it is a real pain when viewing huge multi-page docs. My Mom recently got a new Mac with MSO for Mac and after a few MS Word updates began to complain that her scroll bar was missing. Possibility of the update script toggling this functionality off. Way to go Microsoft. Thanks for the help!

  12. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Why would anyone NOT want a scroll bar? WORD is such an annoying program sometimes!

  13. Thanks I’ve been trying to find my missing scroll bar for sometime ;-( and thanks to this web site I’ve found it

  14. Just wanted to say thank you for the tip–I spent an hour trying to problem solve my missing scroll bar before I gave up and googled it. Grateful in Dubai.

  15. Thank you! My scroll bar disappeared today. Very annoying.

    BTW, on my version of Word for Mac, I click on Preferences (not Options). Then I click on View. The scroll bar check boxes are in the lowest section called Window.

  18. @Bob

    I’m pretty sure it is related to previewing documents, for example by double-clicking a Word document in an email, or by using the preview pane in Explorer.

    Tim

  19. Thank You;
    I could not find this and searched for the word Scroll not Scrollbar.
    I was actually creating poor word docs as I could not navigate and was forced to try to use the arrow keys.

  20. Thanks for the tip! My vertical scrollbar disappeared suddenly today (using Word 2008 for Mac). Now it’s back.

  25. What a great example of the great value of the internet, many people all contributing something of what they are skilled in. I hope they don’t mess it up.

    Comment about what causes this disappearance: I don’t use Outlook, ever. So I dunno about that theory. I am using Vista (out of laziness) on this computer and Windows 2007.

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