I use Office 2k at work and am looking for a solution to meet a variety of
needs. I need to keep documents password protected so they are not editable
yet allow for a section that is editable for a mailmerge. I know in excel you
can select certain cells to be protected and others not to be. Is there a way
to do something similar to accomplish this?

You can protect PARTS of documents by inserting continuous section breaks.
Then, when you go to Tools--Protect document, and choose Forms, you'll have
the option to choose the sections you want to protect.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.piersontech.com
www.mrexcel.com


"batty6842" wrote in message
...
I use Office 2k at work and am looking for a solution to meet a variety of
needs. I need to keep documents password protected so they are not
editable
yet allow for a section that is editable for a mailmerge. I know in excel
you
can select certain cells to be protected and others not to be. Is there a
way
to do something similar to accomplish this?

Unfortunately that button marked "sections" remains grayed out, even when
forms is selected. :-/

"Anne Troy" wrote:

You can protect PARTS of documents by inserting continuous section breaks.
Then, when you go to Tools--Protect document, and choose Forms, you'll have
the option to choose the sections you want to protect.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.piersontech.com
www.mrexcel.com


"batty6842" wrote in message
...
I use Office 2k at work and am looking for a solution to meet a variety of
needs. I need to keep documents password protected so they are not
editable
yet allow for a section that is editable for a mailmerge. I know in excel
you
can select certain cells to be protected and others not to be. Is there a
way
to do something similar to accomplish this?

Word 2003 provides much more in the way of protection options.

Mailmerge and forms are inherently incompatible. I do use them together
sometimes but it is really a kludge.

Do you actually need formfields that someone can fill in or are you just
trying to protect your document? If the latter, you could put together a
macro that would unprotect your document, perform the merge and then
reprotect the resulting document. You could provide for user input with
fill-in fields during the merge.

--
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!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

"batty6842" wrote in message
...
I use Office 2k at work and am looking for a solution to meet a variety of
needs. I need to keep documents password protected so they are not
editable
yet allow for a section that is editable for a mailmerge. I know in excel
you
can select certain cells to be protected and others not to be. Is there a
way
to do something similar to accomplish this?

Sorry. I had forgotten to insert the sections first.

The actual problem is even with only sections protected the mail merge
option is still grayed out when the document is protected, even though the
merge fields are not in a protected section.

"Anne Troy" wrote:

You can protect PARTS of documents by inserting continuous section breaks.
Then, when you go to Tools--Protect document, and choose Forms, you'll have
the option to choose the sections you want to protect.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.piersontech.com
www.mrexcel.com


"batty6842" wrote in message
...
I use Office 2k at work and am looking for a solution to meet a variety of
needs. I need to keep documents password protected so they are not
editable
yet allow for a section that is editable for a mailmerge. I know in excel
you
can select certain cells to be protected and others not to be. Is there a
way
to do something similar to accomplish this?

If you unprotect the document and run the merge, your formfields will be
disabled, even when the document is reprotected after the merge. This is why
I asked you about the purpose of the protection.
--
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!
--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

"Diana Jordan" wrote in message
...
Sorry. I had forgotten to insert the sections first.

The actual problem is even with only sections protected the mail merge
option is still grayed out when the document is protected, even though the
merge fields are not in a protected section.

"Anne Troy" wrote:

You can protect PARTS of documents by inserting continuous section
breaks.
Then, when you go to Tools--Protect document, and choose Forms, you'll
have
the option to choose the sections you want to protect.
*******************
~Anne Troy

www.piersontech.com
www.mrexcel.com


"batty6842" wrote in message
...
I use Office 2k at work and am looking for a solution to meet a variety
of
needs. I need to keep documents password protected so they are not
editable
yet allow for a section that is editable for a mailmerge. I know in
excel
you
can select certain cells to be protected and others not to be. Is there
a
way
to do something similar to accomplish this?