When I try to open a word document that is already open, I want it to just activate the window where the file is open.

How can I do that?

sometimes it takes time to check if an ms word document is already open, I don't to have to have to check through a bunch of open word documents to see if it's in there or not, I just want to double click the icon of a word document, and if it's open then go to it, if not then open it.

With the doc/docx or shortcut to the doc/docx , I have some files where when I double click , it activates it when already open. I have other files where double clicking will bring up a "file in use" dialog box. I can't find what is the cause. I want it to always activate the window rather than reopen it.

update- maybe that is default behaviour to activate when already open, and after a crash I had that stopped. i'll try deleting the working files and starting ms word again, idea from here