Protected forms - how to include headers/footers

Question

I am designing a protected template in Word2010, to be filled in as a form. All is fine, except that when I protect the document to a form, the headers and footers become unavailable. Our form has some information that needs to be entered into the headers/footers. How do I get around this?

Answer 1

The whole point of protected forms is that data entry is restricted to the form fields themselves. If you want to reproduce some information from those fields in the header/footer then you are going to have to use either a styleref field to include the content of a field formatted in a particular style, or you will need a macro to force the update of a REF field. REF fields in the document body will update if the calculate on exit check box of the feeding field is checked. REF fields in the header will not. Styleref fields update automatically.

You can use the example code at http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm to force the REF update, but note that you cannot force users to run your macro if they choose not to.

An alternative, as you have Word 2010, would be to use content controls, which do not require the document to be protected.

Answer 2

If the information to be placed in the header/footer is provided in the body of the form, you can use a StyleRef field to include it in the header or footer, but otherwise it is not possible. See http://sbarnhill.mvps.org/WordFAQs/StyleRef.htm for more on using StyleRef.

If all users of the form will be using Word 2007 or 2010, you could use content controls instead of legacy form fields.