That's true -- or, more precisely, you lock the entire document and then
unprotect the parts that should be editable, which could be everything
except the blocked cells.
The big drawback with this is backward compatibility. Opening such a
document on any version earlier than 2003, the entire document is locked as
if it were protected for forms, but with no form fields.
The problem of losing field contents when reprotecting a document has also
been solved in Word 2003 (but only if you use the lock icon on the Forms
toolbar instead of the Tools menu). For earlier versions there's a macro fix
(
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/...lfResetOff.htm).
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP FAQ:
http://word.mvps.org
Suzanne S. Barnhill wrote:
I believe Word 2003 does allow protection of just specific parts of a
document, perhaps even down to specific table cells, but I haven't
used this type of protection, so I'm not confident of this.
"Debra Ann" wrote in message
...
From my experience working in WordPerfect/Word for over 25 years,
most people I have spoken too have a great dislike for protected
forms. I worked in WordPerfect for 5 years (20 years ago) and have
now been working in Word for 15 years and, as much as I LOVE word, I
HATE the fact that Word does not give the option of locking cells in
their tables and only allows us to use form fields which requires us
to protect the form to use it. I have annually sent an email to
Microsoft over the last 15 years requesting that they offer their
users the options of locking cells. They still have not. I can't
tell you how many happy customers they would have if they would just
offer that feature.
Our company of 5,000 people have to use approximately 100 forms that
have been created with form protection and it stops the users from
doing a bunch of different things (can't edit headers/footers
anywhere in the document, when a company form is updated they can't
unlock their old form to make a change or they'll lose their
information in the field cells once it is locked back up --- BIG
PROBLEM, can't insert the locked form into another document, etc.).
All in all, I have not heard one good thing about using forms versus
simply having a form in a table where the cells are blocked.
Changes to the forms could be made so much easier.
Someone in Microsoft please take the hint!!! I love your software
and can't say enough about it except for this one major issue that
has been haunting our company employees for the last 15 years every
since we moved to Microsoft Word.
--
Debra Ann
"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote:
This is exactly what forms protection does. It prevents entry of
text in any part of the document (including tables) that is not a
form field. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customizat...nTheBlanks.htm and
especially the forms tutorials by Dian Chapman that this article
links to.
--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.
"jjjdel" wrote in message
...
Suggest you create a way to lock a cell in a table so it cannot be
typed
in
until unlocked. This is helpful for use in forms that use tables.
When moving from cell to cell using the tab key, locked cells
should be simply bypassed and the cursor should land in the next
unlocked cell. Locked cells can contain instructions or other
matter that does not need to be changed. It would be helpful to
have an option to unlock all locked cells in an entire table for
ease in editing. After editing, the same cells can be easly
relocked.
This feature is available in WordPerfect and its absence is one
source
of
my
frustration with Word.