[javascript] Scroll back to the top of scrollable div

<div id="containerDiv"></div>

#containerDiv {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0px;
  width: 400px;
  height: 100%;
  padding: 5px;
  font-size: .875em;
  overflow-y: scroll;
}

document.getElementById("containerDiv").innerHTML = variableLongText;

How to reset the scroll position back to top of container div the next time?

I tried the existing answers to this question, and none of them worked on Chrome for me. What did work was slightly different:

$('body, html, #containerDiv').scrollTop(0);

For those who still can't make this work, make sure that the overflowed element is displayed before using the jQuery function.

Example:

$('#elem').show();
$('#elem').scrollTop(0);

This is the only way it worked for me, with smooth scrolling transition:

  $('html, body').animate({
    scrollTop: $('#containerDiv').offset().top,
  }, 250);

When getting element by class name, don't forget the return value is an array; Hence this code:

document.getElementByClassName("dropdown-menu").scrollTop = 0

Would not work. Use code below instead.

document.getElementByClassName("dropdown-menu")[0].scrollTop = 0

I figured other people might encounter a similar problem as I did; so this should do the trick.

For me the scrollTop way did not work, but I found other:

element.style.display = 'none';
setTimeout(function() { element.style.display = 'block' }, 100);

Did not check the minimum time for reliable css rendering though, 100ms might be overkill.

This worked for me :

document.getElementById('yourDivID').scrollIntoView();

these two codes worked for me like a charm this first will take to scroll to the top of the page but if you want to scroll to some specific div use the second one with your div id.

$('body, html, #containerDiv').scrollTop(0);
document.getElementById('yourDivID').scrollIntoView();

If you want to scroll to by a class name use the below code

var $container = $("html,body");
var $scrollTo = $('.main-content');

$container.animate({scrollTop: $scrollTo.offset().top - $container.offset().top + $container.scrollTop(), scrollLeft: 0},300);

Another way to do it with a smooth animation is like this

$("#containerDiv").animate({ scrollTop: 0 }, "fast");

2020 UPDATE

You can use .scroll() to easily scroll elements or window. It has a built-in smooth scroll effect so basically the code couldn't be simpler.

Standard properties:

var options = {
    top:       0,        // Number of pixels along the Y axis to scroll the window or element
    left:      0,        // Number of pixels along the X axis to scroll the window or element.
    behavior:  'smooth'  // ('smooth'|'auto') - animate smoothly, or move in a single jump
}

DOCS: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/scroll

SEE ALSO: .scrollIntoView() https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/scrollIntoView

DEMO:

document.getElementById('btn').addEventListener('click',function(){

  document.getElementById('container').scroll({top:0,behavior:'smooth'});
  
});

/*DEMO*/
#container{
  width:300px;
  max-height:300px;
  padding:1rem;
  margin-left:auto;
  margin-right:auto;
  background-color:#222;
  color:#ccc;
  text-align:justify;
  overflow-y:auto;
}
#btn{
  width:100%;
  margin-top:1rem;
}

<div id="container">
  <div>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.</div>
  <button id="btn">Scroll to top</button>
</div>

If you want to scroll with a smooth transition, you could use this!

(Vanilla JS)

const tabScroll = document.getElementById("tabScroll");
window.scrollTo({
  'behavior': 'smooth',
  'left': 0,
  'top': tabScroll.offsetTop - 80
});

If your target users are Chrome and Firefox, then this is good! But unfortunately this method isn’t supported well enough on all browsers. Check Here

Hope this helps!!

scrollTo

window.scrollTo(0, 0);

is the ultimate solution for scrolling the windows to the top - the best part is that it does not require any id selector and even if we use the IFRAME structure it will work extremely well.

The scrollTo() method scrolls the document to the specified coordinates.
window.scrollTo(xpos, ypos);
xpos Number Required. The coordinate to scroll to, along the x-axis (horizontal), in pixels
ypos Number Required. The coordinate to scroll to, along the y-axis (vertical), in pixels

jQuery

Another option to do the same is using jQuery and it will give a smoother look for the same

$('html,body').animate({scrollTop: 0}, 100);

where 0 after the scrollTop specifies the vertical scrollbar position in the pixel and second parameter is an optional parameter which shows the time in microseconds to complete the task.

As per François Noël's answer "For those who still can't make this work, make sure that the overflowed element is displayed before using the jQuery function."

I had been working in a bootstrap modal that I repeatedly bring up with account permissions in a div that overflows on the y dimension. My problem was, I was trying to use the jquery .scrollTop(0) function and it would not work no matter how I tried to do it. I had to setup an event for the modal that didn't reset the scrollbar until the modal had stopped animating. The code that finally worked for me is here:

    $('#add-modal').on('shown.bs.modal', function (e) {
        $('div.border').scrollTop(0);
    });

If the html content overflow a single viewport, this worked for me using only javascript:

document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0].scrollTop = 0;

Regards,

The ID Should have the id of the corresponding div that has the overflow css property.

document.querySelector('#YOUR_OVERFLOWED_DIV').scrollTop = 0;