The Navigation Pane in Microsoft Word is a sidebar that typically appears on the left side of your screen. It is an incredibly powerful tool for jumping between headings in a long document, viewing page thumbnails, or searching for specific words. However, if you are working on a smaller laptop screen and simply want to focus on typing a short essay or reading a single-page letter, the Navigation Pane takes up nearly a third of your horizontal workspace. To create a cleaner, wider view of your document, you can quickly hide it.
How to Hide the Navigation Pane
Unlike deep system settings, the Navigation Pane is meant to be toggled on and off frequently depending on what you are currently doing.
- Open your document in Microsoft Word.
- Look at the main Ribbon toolbar at the very top of the screen.
- Click on the View tab.
- Look for the section labelled Show (usually located towards the left-middle of the ribbon).
- You will see three checkboxes: Ruler, Gridlines, and Navigation Pane.
- Click the checkbox next to Navigation Pane to uncheck it.
The sidebar will instantly disappear, and your document will automatically stretch to fill the newly freed space.
The Faster Keyboard Shortcut
If you find yourself opening and closing the Navigation Pane constantly to search for words, using the mouse is too slow. Instead, you can instantly toggle the sidebar by pressing Ctrl + F on your keyboard.
Pressing this shortcut opens the Navigation Pane directly to the “Search” tab. Once you are finished finding your word, simply click the small “X” in the top-right corner of the pane to instantly close it again and return to full-screen writing.