[Shane[_2_]]

Greetings,
Using Word 2003 sp2 in Windows XP sp2.

I've been asked to use a PDF file with heavy tables/lines and limited text
to create a 'form our users can fill out and save electronically'
I use Acrobat and so can create "data fields" in that program, but the
end-users don't have Acrobat and so we've opted to use Word. No biggie,
should be workable.

Converting to Word has been... unpleasant. So I hit on the idea of saving
the PDF as a JPG and using it as a background. That way I figured I could
put in some 'data entry' fields in the right places and people can fill out
the form. The difficulty is that text boxes are not real familiar to our
end-users who would likely move them and/or delete them while trying to
enter text.
..
I tried a "Text Form Field" but that's based on the formatting of the
document text (It seems I have to put it on a line, and hitting 'Tab' simply
moves the cursor one tab-space), so I won't end up with something they can
open, fill in a field, hit 'Tab' to get to the next field, and go from
there.

Ultimately, I suppose I could create an 'invisible' table with appropriate
cells locked, but that's a rather heavy, clunky way to work.

Is there a way to insert something similar to the Text Form Field that
doesn't rely on the actual paragraph formatting? I need something I can
place anywhere, regardless of text formatting (There won't BE any text on
this document, just the background and the fields). Ideally, I'd want to be
able to have them open the document and find the cursor in the first field,
then when they fill it out and hit Tab or Enter, it would go to the second
field and on from there.

I think I was able to do this in WordPerfect, but I've not used it in years.

Any ideas?? I figure there's some rather obvious thing I'm just missing!

Thanks,

Shane