Please excuse my ignorance -- mailmerge is completely new to me. So, if I
am trying to create a form that uses 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., textboxes, dropdown boxes in a non-mailmerge
form on a protected doc). Other than using "fill-in" fields (whose clunky
boxes are nerve-wracking), how can I incorporate text boxes in a mailmerge?

That is, in a regular document, I'd put in textboxes, and then protect the
document. As the user tabs through the document, he can replace the
textboxes with whatever he wants. Is there something similar in mailmerge??

TIA