Creating drop down list on MAC will lock down to entire document for editing

Question

Hello.

I am working on a template, which will be used by a staff of 15 people. I would like to make use of drop-down lists. I created a few drop-down lists using the Combo-Box button on the Developer ribbon. The problem is the the Drop-Down List works only when Protect Form is turned on. When the Protect Form is turned on, the rest of the document is not editable. I would like to make the template more user friendly, so that whoever is using it won't have to open the Developer Ribbon and click the Protect Form button back and fourth when they need to use the drop down menus. Does anyone know of a workaround this issue? 

Thanks!

Answer 1

In fact, you most probably don't want people to turn the protection off -- that leads to unwanted modifications of a 'personal' nature :-) A Password generally is recommendable.

In order to have portions of a document protected & others not, you need to insert Section Breaks. You can then impose protection on a per section basis... When you go to Tools> Protect Document & select the Forms option the Sections button will be active. Leave the checks in place for the Sections to remain protected. See Word Help on how to Insert, delete, or change a section break.

Answer 2

You can use Section Break > Continuous within a given page.

Section breaks can be within columns.

Section breaks can be used to separate rows within a table.

Answer 3

As Jim suggested, you can use as many instances of Section Break (Continuous) as you need [within reason :-)] on a single 'page'... Unlike the others they don't impose page breaks.

You cannot protect table columns. The flow of a document is top to bottom, so you can 'segment' it horizontally but not vertically. Depending on the specific requirements you may be able to use an embedded Excel Sheet rather than a Word table.

Answer 4

Hey Bob 

thanks for replying back.  

Is it possible to only have a section of a single page protected not the rest?

because inserting a section break will start the new section break on the same or the next page  .

For example : protecting a single column or row in a table.