Button in the garage works, but remote will not open or close garage door?

It sounds like your door sensors may be bad or misaligned. Make sure the small light on each sensor is lit and not flickering. That could be the cause of your having to hold the wall button down until the door is closed. You can buy a universal remote but if you only had one remote before it could be the receiver that has quit. A new remote would not fix that but the only way to find out is to try.

It could be the garage door motor that is acting up. Try closing it with the button in the garage. If that's not the case, you may need a different garage door opener.

Check to see if your child/animal security beam is working correctly. It is an "Electric Eye" mounted about 12 in off of the floor on two mounting points and one side shoots an infra red beam across to a receiver. These points must be reasonably aligned to flash a beam (cannot see) from one point to another. This beam keeps the door open if it is interrupted . If it is not aligned, then the door opener sees a problem and will not close the door electrically. You must aligned the beam by bending the transmitter or receiver untill you can close the door by the remote. Also check to see if something placed in the garage is not blocking the beam first.

Check the sensors in the doorway. Sounds like they may be misaligned. They need to be pointing at one another to work properly.

It sounds like a case of your keypad losing signal strength enough that it cannot transmit through the closed door. If a new battery doesn't do the job a new keypad will.

You need to reprogram the remotes by briefly pushing the learn button on the garage door opener until it flashes once, then release the button on the garage door opener.

Now press the remote button once until you hear the garage door opener click, now press the remote button once again and the remote should be programmed to work for that garage door opener.

DO NOT press and hold the garage door opener learn button for more than 10 seconds or you'll erase all programs and have to relearn all the remotes, including your car ones.

Hope you found this very helpful and best regards.

If the small light in your wall control is blinking it is in the lock mode. Press and hold for 3 seconds the button with the icon of a lock. This will toggle the lock function off.

UNPLUG THE UNIT AND WAIT 5 MIN.
WHEN YOU PLUG IT BACK IN CLAER ALL CODES BY HOLDING DOWN THE PROGRAM BUTTON FOR 20 SECONDS.
NOW TRY TO PROGRAM EACH REMOTE AND KEYPAD - IF THERE IS STILL A PROBLEM CHANGE THE BATTERIES AND REPEAT THIS PROCEDURE.

I HOPE THIS HELPS

If you look were the small wires attach to the opener there should be a red program button and instructions on how to program remotes.

I have the exact same situation, except my model (139.53607) is older than yours and does not even have an LED. Remotes only works after after shop light goes off (5 minutes or so), but wall button works fine. Did call Sears Service and the tech told me the logic board is probably shot. Don't want to waste money on service call so I'll probably have to buy a completely new unit in the Spring and go through the winter without the use of a remote.