If you still have access to Word 2003, you can add the controls from the old
Forms toolbar - I used the forms toolbar as an example at
http://www.gmayor.com/Toolbars_in_word_2007.htm . This should allow you to
Word much as before. Fields you protect with the lock button on the old
toolbar will still be refillable. As for the integration with Outlook, I
cannot comment. Protected forms and mail merge never worked happily
together.
If you are reading addresses from Outlook, you may find
http://www.gmayor.com/Macrobutton.htm useful. This method works with Office
2007 and may be integrated with the new form controls to give you what you
want?
--
Graham Mayor - Word MVP
My web site
www.gmayor.com
Word MVP web site
http://word.mvps.org
Donna wrote:
I had developed an Invoice Form in Word 2003. It allowed me to go
into a contact in Outlook, use the mail merge feature there, and
select an existing document (i.e., the generic invoice form) and then
generate an invoice pre-filled with the client address information.
Then the form automatically filled in a date field, and allowed me to
enter some data such as "work performed", "hours", "rate discount",
etc. and then it calculated the various sub-totals (e.g., parts and
labor) and then computed the final totals. It worked great. I turned
on protection to fill in the form and let it calculate the results.
Now I have "upgraded" to Word 2007 and I am ready to tear my hair out!
Outlook still allows me to merge a contact into my old invoice form,
but then the trouble begins. If I protect the form, none of the
legacy fields can be filled in. It only recognizes fields added with
the new 2007 field formats. Also, before, when I opened up the newly
created document after clicking "Okay" in Outlook to perform the
merge, the resulting document had already been "merged" and it was
ready for me to click "protect" and then enter new data and have it
automatically calculate. Now it opens a document that has a button
that says "complete merge." If I do so, I lose all aspects of the
"form" fields.
In essence, BEFORE I had a nice solution that allowed Mail Merge and
Forms to work perfectly together. Now, instead of what was once
simple elegance to create form fields, when you click on field
properties in Word 2007, it opens up a Visual Basic scripting tool!!
That is not user-friendly! Although the "legacy" fields still exist,
they do not work as they once did, namely the protect feature does
not recognize them as legitimate fields to be filled out. And there
is no equivalent of the simple-to-use "calculated" field, rather
there is a complex scripting language (VBS) to be dealt with.
Perhaps I am missing something... even though I have struggled with
every combo I can think of to make it work in the new version of
Word!! If anyone else has experienced any similar trials with
converting their old 2003 functioning forms into Word 2007, I would
be most grateful to hear how you made it work! THANKS!
PS The title did not show properly in my first post. Sorry about that!