Word: Vertical Scrollbar Auto-Hiding in Print Layout View

Hi all,

What an unfortunate and badly thought-out "feature". I just converted to Word 2013 and have really been annoyed by this as I need to see the scrollbar at all times for some of my work.

In any case, until Microsoft fixes it (if they ever), I've written the AutoHotkey script below that completely fixes the issue for me (scrollbar always visible!) Maybe others here will find it useful. What the script does is that it checks if the active window is Word, and then if it sees that the mouse pointer hasn't been moved for two seconds, it quickly moves it by one pixel then quickly moves it back to its original position (so there is a barely perceptible blinking of the pointer when that happens), and this is enough to keep the scrollbar always visible. Works perfectly for me.

Feedback welcome. Just let me know if you need any help getting it to work, are unfamiliar with how to run an AutoHotkey script, or encounter any issue.

#SingleInstance, force
Setbatchlines, -1
SetMouseDelay, 10
Sendmode, Input
Mousegetpos, xpos, ypos
Loop
{
Sleep, 2000
Mousegetpos, xpos2, ypos2
IfWinActive, ahk_class OpusApp
    {
    If (xpos2 = xpos) and (ypos2 = ypos)
        {
        Mousemove, % xpos2+1, ypos2, 0
        Mousemove, % xpos2, ypos2, 0
        }
    }
xpos := xpos2
ypos := ypos2
}
Return

There is a new feedback forum here:

http://word.uservoice.com/

Here is the link to the UserVoice Suggestion: https://word.uservoice.com/forums/304924-word-for-windows-desktop-application/suggestions/9732945-stop-the-scroll-bar-from-fading-in-word-2013

Vote for it.