Mixed protection styles

S

Stephen Quist

Hi,

With Word 2003 I'm trying to set up a document with mixed form and free-form
elements.

I would like the document to have a region with check boxes that behave as
check boxes and possibly some text fields.
Another region of the document would have tables, real Word Tables, that are
filled in by one or more reviewers. The tables are variable in size and the
users should be able to expand the tables as necessary.

I have the check boxes in place but when a user clicks on one he get a
dialog box to specify whether it should be checked or unchecked. I
understand this is normal when the "Protect Form" lock is off. When I set
Protect Form, the check box behaves normally. It clicks on and off just as
it should. The trouble comes when I try to then edit the tables. They are
protected also so nobody can enter any data into them.

So I tried Protect Document. I can select the tables in the document and
permit users to freely edit the tables. OK, that's good. But then the check
boxes are rendered inactive. That's bad. I tried selecting the region with
the check boxes and set that to be freely editable. I can change the check
boxes, but now only through the dialog box! I'm back where I started -- if
the users can enter text in the tables they can interact with the check
boxes through the dialog box only.

Am I missing something? Is there a way get a portion of the document
protected for forms and the rest of the document unprotected for editing?

Steve
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

You can protect specific sections of a form and leave others unprotected,
but you will need to insert section breaks to divide the sections. You then
have to use Tools | Protect Document (rather than the padlock button on the
Forms toolbar) for the initial protection. This will allow you to specify
which sections are to be protected.
 
S

Stephen Quist

Thanks. Once I noticed the section selection link (in teeny-tiny print) I
was able to do what I needed to.

Steve
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

The size of the type in your Help task pane is dependent on the View | Text
setting in Internet Explorer. But I agree that the fact that the link does
not appear until after you have (a) created sections and (b) made the
various required settings for form protection doesn't help.
 
S

Stephen Quist

It's one of those cases where if you know where it is and how to do it you
can find it.

If you don't know, good luck. I kept setting Editing Restrictions to
"Comments" or "Tracked Changes" because I focused on the free-text tables. I
didn't even see the section selection until after I chose 'Filling in forms"
*and* put in section breaks around the form fields.

It's almost like they deliberately made it hard to do.

Steve
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

You didn't see it because it wasn't there. That's my point. It doesn't
appear unless you have inserted section breaks and chosen "Filling out
forms."
 
S

Stephen Quist

Thanks for the help. We noticed another problem.

The regions in the document proper behave as expected. But with Protect
Document on we cannot change the Header, Footer or Document Properties. We
could probably get around the Header and Footer issues if we could edit the
Custom values in the Properties. Those, unfortunately are grayed out. Is
there a way around this?

Steve
 
S

Suzanne S. Barnhill

When you protect any portion of a document for forms, you lose about half of
Word's features in the entire document. That's just the way it is. You can
work around these difficulties with macros.
 
Top