I frequently find myself looking for a certain word in a document or
in a web page. Of course I press CTRL F to bring up the Find box.

For instance I may type 'hiking' in the Find box, and hit Enter. It
finds the next instance of that word (assuming it's there). Now I
close the Find box, and do some reading. Shortly after that I want to
search for the word 'hiking' again. Press CTRL F.

If I perform this sequence in MS Word or Excel, the word 'hiking' will
already be in the Find box the second time it's opened. However if I
do this in a browser window, the box will be empty and I'll have to
type 'hiking' again, and again, and again.

Is there a way to get the word to stick in the Find box. I'm using IE6.

Hello patrice29,

I have been looking for an answer for you for a few hours now and I
finally found it! I knew that it was possible to do this because I HAD
done it in the past, but was unable to figure it out for a long time
myself. Nevertheless, I was stubborn and was determined to find a
solution.

Here are the instructions:

1. Open up IE6 for me (I have version 6.0.2800 on Windows XP).
2. Look for any word, it doesn't matter if it appears on the page or not.
3. Click Cancel.
4. Go CTRL-F again and note that the word appears there to search again!

If you press ESC to exit the find dialogue or if you press the X, it
will NOT work. You MUST press the cancel button to have it save your
last search. I knew that it was possible to do this, but had forgotten
the method. Hopefully this is the answer you were looking for!

All the best,

tisme-ga


Search Strategy:

searched newsgroups and internet to no avail, then I decided to just
try until I finally used the cancel method.

---

Clarification of Answer by tisme-ga on 25 Jan 2004 14:33 PST

PS: If you don't like using the mouse to press cancel, use SHIFT-TAB
and press ENTER.

tisme-ga

Thanks for the help. It seems an easy solution now, but I always close
by clicking the X. A bad habit I guess.

I tried this out.  I didn't like to use the mouse to click cancel, so
I tried holding Shift plus Tab, then Enter to close the dialogue box,
but that doesn't work.  Can you reclarify that?

Oh I see now, you just have to press tab and cycle through.

You forgot the best option!

Install the google toolbar!  It has a search box built into it.  As
you type words to search for, those words become new buttons on the
toolbar.  Clicking those buttons will search for that word in whatever
webpage you are currently using.

The google toolbar can be found here:
http://toolbar.google.com/

This is in addition to searching the Internet, and providing links to
other google services.  Better yet, you can contribute idle computer
time, and help google earn more money.