M
MattWood
I need to protect text required by legal and finance in a wide variety of
contract templates. The contracts are authored using MS Word 2003, but a
subset of users will use Word 2007 to modify them. Users are technically
sophisticated employees who use the contract templates to customize contracts
for customer engagements.
Case # 1 (no problem):
In the simplist case, I have been able to insert text fields for everything
that requires user input. Click Tools > Protect Document, select Editing
restrictions and specify Filling in forms, start enforcing protection and
assign password. All of this works well.
Case # 2 (one problem):
Same as Case # 1, but in one part of the document there are four paragraphs
(200-400 characters each) describing different payment terms. The user must
decide which paragraph is applicable and delete the others. Currently, the
document is a form that has a number of text fields and uses several tables
for formatting. I still don't have an acceptable solutin for this case.
Attempted solutions:
* I decided to display all four paragraphs, each with a check box field. I
figured that it didn't matter if customers see all four as long as one is
clearly selected. Legal and finance don't agree; they don't want the
inapplicable paragraphs to display.
* I set up unlimited text fields for the four paragraphs, saved the template
as a .dot file, protected it as in Case # 1. Then, I opened the protected
file and pasted in the four paragraphs, each in its own text field
(unfortunately, they're too long to be default values), and saved the
template again. This almost works as the user can delete the text in the
three inapplicable fields, but the user cannot delete the fields themselves.
Shaded, empty fields don't look very good, and even unshaded, it's odd to
have the extra space. Most contracts will be converted to PDF before sending
to customers so leaving unused text entry fields shouldn't be a huge issue,
but some of our users send out source files even though they shouldn't....
Case # 3 (many problems):
In this case there is typically a 10-20 page contract. The user must:
* Be able to edit text in text boxes on the Title Page
* Be able to update the TOC
* Be able to display one paragraph containing payment terms and delete the
others
as in Case # 2
* Be able to add new paragraphs, lists, tables and graphics
* Not be able to modify the section containing Terms and Conditions
* Not be able to modify sentences/paragraphs required by legal/finance
throughout the document though some of them must contain editable text
fields
or, at least, unprotected parts where dates and amounts can be entered.
Attempted solutions:
* I tried protecting the document with No changes (Read only) editing
restrictions,
but was not able to select exceptions at a granular level. If I selected
the Title
Page or TOC as an exception, I could not select other portions of the
document
and visa-versa. Selecting other sections/paragraphs/sentences seemed to
work,
but when I started enforcing protection some selected components were
protected and others were not. The result seems inconsistent and
unpredictable,
and certainly didn't work as I expected. Unfortunately, you can
restrict to read only or filling in forms, but not both at the same time.
* I tried breaking the document into many continueous and Next page section
breaks, but contrary to some of the posts I read here, I did not see an
option to
select specific sections. Section breaks don't work well at at sentence
or within
sentence levels anyway, and introducing a large number of sectin breaks
into a
document has it's own drawbacks.
Sorry for the long message, but does anyone know of practical approachs for
protecting text as described in Case # 2 and 3? Thank you!
contract templates. The contracts are authored using MS Word 2003, but a
subset of users will use Word 2007 to modify them. Users are technically
sophisticated employees who use the contract templates to customize contracts
for customer engagements.
Case # 1 (no problem):
In the simplist case, I have been able to insert text fields for everything
that requires user input. Click Tools > Protect Document, select Editing
restrictions and specify Filling in forms, start enforcing protection and
assign password. All of this works well.
Case # 2 (one problem):
Same as Case # 1, but in one part of the document there are four paragraphs
(200-400 characters each) describing different payment terms. The user must
decide which paragraph is applicable and delete the others. Currently, the
document is a form that has a number of text fields and uses several tables
for formatting. I still don't have an acceptable solutin for this case.
Attempted solutions:
* I decided to display all four paragraphs, each with a check box field. I
figured that it didn't matter if customers see all four as long as one is
clearly selected. Legal and finance don't agree; they don't want the
inapplicable paragraphs to display.
* I set up unlimited text fields for the four paragraphs, saved the template
as a .dot file, protected it as in Case # 1. Then, I opened the protected
file and pasted in the four paragraphs, each in its own text field
(unfortunately, they're too long to be default values), and saved the
template again. This almost works as the user can delete the text in the
three inapplicable fields, but the user cannot delete the fields themselves.
Shaded, empty fields don't look very good, and even unshaded, it's odd to
have the extra space. Most contracts will be converted to PDF before sending
to customers so leaving unused text entry fields shouldn't be a huge issue,
but some of our users send out source files even though they shouldn't....
Case # 3 (many problems):
In this case there is typically a 10-20 page contract. The user must:
* Be able to edit text in text boxes on the Title Page
* Be able to update the TOC
* Be able to display one paragraph containing payment terms and delete the
others
as in Case # 2
* Be able to add new paragraphs, lists, tables and graphics
* Not be able to modify the section containing Terms and Conditions
* Not be able to modify sentences/paragraphs required by legal/finance
throughout the document though some of them must contain editable text
fields
or, at least, unprotected parts where dates and amounts can be entered.
Attempted solutions:
* I tried protecting the document with No changes (Read only) editing
restrictions,
but was not able to select exceptions at a granular level. If I selected
the Title
Page or TOC as an exception, I could not select other portions of the
document
and visa-versa. Selecting other sections/paragraphs/sentences seemed to
work,
but when I started enforcing protection some selected components were
protected and others were not. The result seems inconsistent and
unpredictable,
and certainly didn't work as I expected. Unfortunately, you can
restrict to read only or filling in forms, but not both at the same time.
* I tried breaking the document into many continueous and Next page section
breaks, but contrary to some of the posts I read here, I did not see an
option to
select specific sections. Section breaks don't work well at at sentence
or within
sentence levels anyway, and introducing a large number of sectin breaks
into a
document has it's own drawbacks.
Sorry for the long message, but does anyone know of practical approachs for
protecting text as described in Case # 2 and 3? Thank you!