Issues Inserting Checkbox

R

Ray

Hi,

I am building a form in Word 2002 and i'm tryin to add a
checkbox. The Help instructions say i need to:

1.Place my cursor where i want to insert the box
2. Choose from the toolbar: Insert-Field-MacroButton-
CheckBoxFormField

I did that but when i press okay to accept the changes,
the box does not appear on my form. I don't know what i'm
doing wrong. Please Help!

Ray
 
J

Jay Freedman

Hi, Ray,

I don't know where you found those instructions, since they don't
appear in my copy of Word 2002 Help. But it isn't going to work
anyway. First, here's what's happening:

The MacroButton field you inserted contains the name of Word's
built-in command for inserting a checkbox form field. The MacroButton
field itself is now invisible because it doesn't have a third word
(the displayable text) in the field code. Select the line that
contains the field and press Shift+F9 to open up the field code, which
will look like this:
{ MACROBUTTON CheckBoxFormField }
If you type something like Click Here between the CheckBoxFormField
word and the closing brace, and then press F9 to update the field,
only the Click Here will remain visible. Then you can double-click
those words, and the field will execute the CheckBoxFormField command
to insert a checkbox form field that replaces the MacroButton field.

But... it's a nonworking checkbox. If you click it, all you'll do is
select it. If you double-click it, you'll get its Properties dialog.
To make it actually check and uncheck, you have to go to the Tools >
Protect Document dialog, select Forms, and click OK (or else use the
lock icon on the Forms toolbar). But then you won't be able to edit
anything else in the document!

Visit http://www.addbalance.com/word/download.htm and download Charles
Kenyon's checkbox add-in for an alternative. It's more complicated,
but it works without killing the rest of the document. The
alternative, if you can use checkboxes, text fields, and dropdowns for
everything changeable in your document, is to make a full-blown
protected form; for that, see this series of articles:

Please Fill Out This Form
Part 1: Create professional looking forms in Word
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=22

Part 2: Adding Automation to your Word forms.
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=46

Part 3: Learn more VBA (macros) to automate your forms.
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=119

Part 4: Use custom dialog boxes in your Word forms
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=127

Part 5: Connect your AutoForm to a database to save input time and
keep better records!
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=136
 
C

Charles Kenyon

See yesterday's response to your post on Issues with Inserting a Checkbox in
the customization.menustoolbars newsgroup. Please do not multipost.
--
In the Microsoft Word newsgroups it is considered bad form to post separate
messages to multiple newsgroups. If you need to post in more than one forum
(unusual) please post a single message with both forums in the header of
that single message. That way (1) your question and the various answers stay
together, (2) less space is used on the news servers, (3) less bandwidth is
used on the Internet, (4) you only have to check one forum for answers that
appear in both forums, and (5) you won't unnecessarily annoy the people you
are asking for help. This isn't meant to criticize you. We were all
beginners once and the only way to learn is to try. (BTW, a number of the
Microsoft newsgroups don't want posting in more than one newsgroup, period.
Check the FAQ.)
Take a look on the MVP FAQ website under "getting help" for more reasons ase
well as other suggestions for getting answers more easily and quickly. <URL:
http://www.mvps.org/word/FindHelp/Posting.htm>
 
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