Use of an ampersand in a drop-down list of a form document

[Peari]

How do I get "S&P 500" (without the quotes) to appear as an item on a
drop-down menu in a protected form document?

 

[Greg Maxey]

Peari,

The following posted by Cindy Meister may help:

The ampersand is dedicated to marking a "hot-key" for each selection in
the drop-down list. KB article Q125892 has the details.

The only solution I know is to use a macro that, when you exit the
dropdown field, sets an immediately adjacent text box to the "label" of
the selection, then sets the drop down to a selection that is a space (in
the example, the first entry). For example:

Sub DisplayDropDownContent()
Sel = ActiveDocument.FormFields("DropDown1").Result
ActiveDocument.FormFields("Text1").Result = Sel
ActiveDocument.FormFields("DropDown1").DropDown.Value = 1
End Sub

 

[Malcolm Smith]

How do I get "S&P 500" (without the quotes) to appear as an item on a
drop-down menu in a protected form document?

I think you enter "S&&P 500"

- Malc

 

[Peari]

That doesn't work.

I think you enter "S&&P 500"

- Malc

 

[Peari]

Thanks for the assistance.

However, I did what was prescribed - several times in a variety of different
iterations - without any success. Can you be more explicit or word the
explanation somewhat differently. For one thing, where do you actually
position the macro after you create it? I tried to choose it in the
"Drop-Down Form Field Options" dialog box in the "Run macro on ... Exit"
field, but that didn't seem to change anything.

Please help. I'm in a time crunch to complete this project.

Peari

 

[Jay Freedman]

It isn't going to work, and there's no way you can make it work.* See
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q212101, which describes the problem but
conspicuously doesn't give any solution.

*Well, I can think of one "solution" -- hack the font file (Tahoma.ttf) to
change some other character glyph so it displays an ampersand, and use that
character to write your entry. Of course, if you need to distribute the form
to other PCs, the hacked font file will have to go with it...

 

[Malcolm Smith]

Ah! Apologies; I wrongly assumed a control on a dialog box...

- Malc

 

[Peari]

That's amazing that there's no way to make that relatively simple action
happen. It's just astounding to me.

SP