Description: When using the Find Bar (Ctrl+F), the search term is remembered when the document is closed and then reopened, as long as LO is not exited. When the document is reopened and the Find Bar is called up, the search term is displayed. However, the Find Next and Find Previous controls are inactive. The controls are activated only if the old search term is replaced with a new search term (even if the new search term is the same as the old one). Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open a Writer document. 2. Ctrl+F to open Find Bar. 3. Enter search term. Example: "side" 4. Use Find Next to search for the term. 5. Close the document but do not exit LO itself. 6. Reopen the document. 7. Ctrl+F to open Find Bar. The old search term appears in the Find field. Example: "side". However, Find Next and Find Previous are inactive and cannot be used. Note: Workaround is to enter a new search term in the Find field. If you want to reuse the old term, reentering it is necessary. (Old term can be reentered by Ctrl+A in the find field, Ctrl+X to cut it, Ctrl+V to paste it back in, whereupon Find Next and Find Previous become active.) Actual Results: Find Next and Find Previous are inactive and cannot be used. Expected Results: Find Next and Find Previous should be active. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Version: 7.6.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community Build ID: dd47e4b30cb7dab30588d6c79c651f218165e3c5 CPU threads: 20; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 22631; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US Calc: CL threaded
Clicking [Enter] does the job, I think because if nothing is found before, there is no next to search for.
Thanks for pointing out that pressing Enter works. However, it is not intuitive that Enter would work when Find Next and Find Previous are inactive and grayed out. Further, pressing Enter does search for the term in the find field. However, Find Next and Find Previous still remain inactive, even when the term in the find field was found. I also note that in the other search tool, Find and Replace (Ctrl+H), Find Next is active immediately, even if "nothing is found before", once even one character is entered in F&R's find field. This is the most user helpful functionality, and I recommend that the Find Bar follow this pattern.
It has always behaved like this. Bibisecting with Linux 44max, the feature of prepopulating the findbar was added in commit ed01da53ff04b1cfd6708e12f26d06cb9288a61f fdo#84256 Prepopulate findbar with last search term