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How to protect portions of documents at a more granular level?
I need to protect text required by legal and finance in a wide variety of
contract templates. The contracts are authored using MS Word 2003, but a subset of users will use Word 2007 to modify them. Users are technically sophisticated employees who use the contract templates to customize contracts for customer engagements. Case # 1 (no problem): In the simplist case, I have been able to insert text fields for everything that requires user input. Click Tools Protect Document, select Editing restrictions and specify Filling in forms, start enforcing protection and assign password. All of this works well. Case # 2 (one problem): Same as Case # 1, but in one part of the document there are four paragraphs (200-400 characters each) describing different payment terms. The user must decide which paragraph is applicable and delete the others. Currently, the document is a form that has a number of text fields and uses several tables for formatting. I still don't have an acceptable solutin for this case. Attempted solutions: * I decided to display all four paragraphs, each with a check box field. I figured that it didn't matter if customers see all four as long as one is clearly selected. Legal and finance don't agree; they don't want the inapplicable paragraphs to display. * I set up unlimited text fields for the four paragraphs, saved the template as a .dot file, protected it as in Case # 1. Then, I opened the protected file and pasted in the four paragraphs, each in its own text field (unfortunately, they're too long to be default values), and saved the template again. This almost works as the user can delete the text in the three inapplicable fields, but the user cannot delete the fields themselves. Shaded, empty fields don't look very good, and even unshaded, it's odd to have the extra space. Most contracts will be converted to PDF before sending to customers so leaving unused text entry fields shouldn't be a huge issue, but some of our users send out source files even though they shouldn't.... Case # 3 (many problems): In this case there is typically a 10-20 page contract. The user must: * Be able to edit text in text boxes on the Title Page * Be able to update the TOC * Be able to display one paragraph containing payment terms and delete the others as in Case # 2 * Be able to add new paragraphs, lists, tables and graphics * Not be able to modify the section containing Terms and Conditions * Not be able to modify sentences/paragraphs required by legal/finance throughout the document though some of them must contain editable text fields or, at least, unprotected parts where dates and amounts can be entered. Attempted solutions: * I tried protecting the document with No changes (Read only) editing restrictions, but was not able to select exceptions at a granular level. If I selected the Title Page or TOC as an exception, I could not select other portions of the document and visa-versa. Selecting other sections/paragraphs/sentences seemed to work, but when I started enforcing protection some selected components were protected and others were not. The result seems inconsistent and unpredictable, and certainly didn't work as I expected. Unfortunately, you can restrict to read only or filling in forms, but not both at the same time. * I tried breaking the document into many continueous and Next page section breaks, but contrary to some of the posts I read here, I did not see an option to select specific sections. Section breaks don't work well at at sentence or within sentence levels anyway, and introducing a large number of sectin breaks into a document has it's own drawbacks. Sorry for the long message, but does anyone know of practical approachs for protecting text as described in Case # 2 and 3? Thank you! |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.docmanagement
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How to protect portions of documents at a more granular level?
Hi Matt,
For cases 2 & 3, separate the editable text and TOC from the rest of the document via Section breaks, and leave those Sections unprotected. As you've noticed, Section breaks work at the paragraph level. When protecting a document with multiple Sections, Word activates the 'Sections' button so that you can click itand choose the Sections to unprotect. With Case 3, however, it sounds as if you might be better off with a basic template holding the static text, then using Word's AutoText facility to insert and edit the variable clauses as you go. This could be driven from a UserForm, so that if a string needs to be inserted into the template at specific locations, the user doesn't have to find them. -- Cheers macropod [MVP - Microsoft Word] "MattWood" wrote in message ... I need to protect text required by legal and finance in a wide variety of contract templates. The contracts are authored using MS Word 2003, but a subset of users will use Word 2007 to modify them. Users are technically sophisticated employees who use the contract templates to customize contracts for customer engagements. Case # 1 (no problem): In the simplist case, I have been able to insert text fields for everything that requires user input. Click Tools Protect Document, select Editing restrictions and specify Filling in forms, start enforcing protection and assign password. All of this works well. Case # 2 (one problem): Same as Case # 1, but in one part of the document there are four paragraphs (200-400 characters each) describing different payment terms. The user must decide which paragraph is applicable and delete the others. Currently, the document is a form that has a number of text fields and uses several tables for formatting. I still don't have an acceptable solutin for this case. Attempted solutions: * I decided to display all four paragraphs, each with a check box field. I figured that it didn't matter if customers see all four as long as one is clearly selected. Legal and finance don't agree; they don't want the inapplicable paragraphs to display. * I set up unlimited text fields for the four paragraphs, saved the template as a .dot file, protected it as in Case # 1. Then, I opened the protected file and pasted in the four paragraphs, each in its own text field (unfortunately, they're too long to be default values), and saved the template again. This almost works as the user can delete the text in the three inapplicable fields, but the user cannot delete the fields themselves. Shaded, empty fields don't look very good, and even unshaded, it's odd to have the extra space. Most contracts will be converted to PDF before sending to customers so leaving unused text entry fields shouldn't be a huge issue, but some of our users send out source files even though they shouldn't.... Case # 3 (many problems): In this case there is typically a 10-20 page contract. The user must: * Be able to edit text in text boxes on the Title Page * Be able to update the TOC * Be able to display one paragraph containing payment terms and delete the others as in Case # 2 * Be able to add new paragraphs, lists, tables and graphics * Not be able to modify the section containing Terms and Conditions * Not be able to modify sentences/paragraphs required by legal/finance throughout the document though some of them must contain editable text fields or, at least, unprotected parts where dates and amounts can be entered. Attempted solutions: * I tried protecting the document with No changes (Read only) editing restrictions, but was not able to select exceptions at a granular level. If I selected the Title Page or TOC as an exception, I could not select other portions of the document and visa-versa. Selecting other sections/paragraphs/sentences seemed to work, but when I started enforcing protection some selected components were protected and others were not. The result seems inconsistent and unpredictable, and certainly didn't work as I expected. Unfortunately, you can restrict to read only or filling in forms, but not both at the same time. * I tried breaking the document into many continueous and Next page section breaks, but contrary to some of the posts I read here, I did not see an option to select specific sections. Section breaks don't work well at at sentence or within sentence levels anyway, and introducing a large number of sectin breaks into a document has it's own drawbacks. Sorry for the long message, but does anyone know of practical approachs for protecting text as described in Case # 2 and 3? Thank you! |
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