Thanks, Charles. I guess I'm just too ignorant -- what do you mean by "not
complete the merge" or "freeze the mergefields..." or "freeze the formfields
but not the mergefields and then performing the merge"?

st.
"Charles Kenyon" wrote in
message ...
Completing a mailmerge automatically gets rid of fields. The way I use
formfields and mailmerge together is to not complete the merge. I display
the merge on screen, protect the document for forms, and fill in the
formfields. I freeze the mergefields if I want to save the document. This
works for dealing with one record at a time, which is how I use mailmerge.
If you want to actually do a merge of many records, and have the same
information in your formfields for all records, I would recommend using my
method, freezing the formfields but not the mergefields and then
performing
the merge.

Fill-in fields are designed for mailmerge. They let you vary your input
for
each record. You are right, they are clunky.

Another method would be to put the paragraphs with your formfields in
AutoText (assuming no merge fields in said paragraphs). Then perform your
merge and after the merge, insert your formfields and protect the
document.
Still very clunky.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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"zSplash" zNOSPAMSplash@ gci.net wrote in message
...
I think I should have referred to "formfields" instead of "textboxes" in
my
first post.

So, I use mailmerge to get fields from a data source. Then, once the
mailmerge has completed, I want to be able to manually fill-in fields
(i.e., formfields). Other than using "fill-in" fields (whose clunky
boxes are nerve-wracking), how can I incorporate
formfields in a mailmerge?

That is, in a regular document, I'd put in formfields, and then protect
the
document. As the user tabs through the document, he can enter whatever
he wants in the formfields.

I have coded to do this using bookmarks, but is there something better?

TIA