[Mike G.]

Donna:

I share your frustration and just found an easy, eloquent solution from one
of the other MVPs. I tried it and it worked for me. Maybe it'll work for
you to.
Best regards, Mike

--Solution from Jay Freedman, Microsoft Word MVP
"You can add the old Lock icon to the Quick Access Toolbar. Click the
down arrow at the right end of the toolbar and choose "More Commands".
In the dialog, select the category "Commands Not in the Ribbon",
select the Protect Document command in the list, and click the Add
button to copy it over to the list on the right. You can then click
the Modify button and choose the icon -- the lock icon is in the
middle of the third row."

"Donna" wrote:

Well I sort of developed a work-around - there may be an easier way but here
it is in case anyone else needs this...

I divided the document into 2 docs: Part 1 and Part2. Part 1 is just the
mail merge table for name and address fields. Part 2 is the forms part with a
placeholder table for the mailmerge data from Part 1. I perform the merge out
of Outlook using €œexisting doc€� Part1 and then in the new document created
by that process, I click on "Finish and merge," with the option to "edit
individual" results. I then cut and paste the name and address section into
Part 2's placeholder table. The form can now be filled in using the Protect
document feature without wiping out the N&A fields, since they have become
merely text and not active fields any longer.

The problem seems to be that you can no longer use mail merge and forms in
the SAME document. If you merge, it wipes out the ability to fill in a form
or if you can fill in the form it wipes out the mail merge data. Too bad - it
used to work fine in Word 2003! (I may have mentioned that a few hundred
times, huh! Sorry, just frustrated!)
LOL,
Donna :-)




"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!