restricted editing blocking some text boxes

Question

I have a form that I created and some of the text boxes once I put the restrict editing on will not allow filling out these text boxes.  The text boxes at the top of the form work correctly but when I try and select the text box to enter information it just jumps back to one of the controls at the top.  It works great until I put on the protection not sure what is going on.

Answer 1

To understand what's happening in your form, I need the answers to two questions.

1. What kind of "text boxes" are in the form? There are "content controls", "legacy text form fields", and "ActiveX text boxes", all in the Controls group of the Developer tab. (Note that none of these are related to the text boxes you can create from the Insert > Text Box button.)

Are you sure that the text boxes that don't work are exactly the same kind as the ones that do work?

2. What kind of editing restriction did you apply? There are several kinds in the dropdown:

Answer 2

To understand what's happening in your form, I need the answers to two questions.

1. What kind of "text boxes" are in the form? There are "content controls", "legacy text form fields", and "ActiveX text boxes", all in the Controls group of the Developer tab. (Note that none of these are related to the text boxes you can create from the Insert > Text Box button.)

Are you sure that the text boxes that don't work are exactly the same kind as the ones that do work?

2. What kind of editing restriction did you apply? There are several kinds in the dropdown:

They are all activeX textboxes. 

The only restriction I put on the form is the filling in forms option.

The highlighted controls do not work.  Funny thing is the date one at the bottom does work?

Answer 3

Forms restriction is not required for ActiveX forms (and in fact, as you've seen, does not work). In fact, however, some of your controls look like Content Controls, and it also appears that you are in Design Mode.

Answer 4

Michael, Suzanne is correct on all counts. The items that say "Click here to ..." or "Choose an item", enclosed in blue shapes, are content controls. The ones that are just black rectangles are ActiveX fields. The fact that you can see the blue shapes of the content controls indicates that Design Mode is turned on.

There are two ways to fix the form so it works. Which way is preferable depends on whether the form should be usable in Word 2003 and earlier. Only versions of 2007 and later can use content controls.

In any case, first turn off the protection, because you can't manipulate the boxes while it's turned on. Also click the Design Mode button in the Developer tab to turn it off.

If all users have at least Word 2007, delete all of the rectangular boxes and replace each one with a content control, either a Rich Text or a Plain Text control. It appears that you've used a borderless table to align many of the boxes. That's good; if there is a table, continue to use it, otherwise insert a table (or several tables) and place each control in a separate cell.

The Group content control, which surrounds the entire form and is invisible when Design Mode is turned off, performs the same function as the forms protection would -- preventing editing of the text that's not within one of the other content controls.

If some users of Word 2003 must be able to use the form, then you have to go the other way: Delete each content control and replace it with a legacy form field, and replace each ActiveX text box with a legacy form field. (ActiveX controls are really not very good in Word forms and should be avoided wherever possible.) The "Area" item will have to be replaced by a Dropdown form field. Unfortunately, there is no form field equivalent to the date picker content control, so that will have to be replaced with a text form field.

Be sure to remove the Group content control by clicking the Group button in the Developer tab and clicking the Ungroup item in the menu. After all the entry points have been converted to form fields, apply the "Filling in forms" editing restriction to make the form fields work.

Answer 5

Everyone using the form will be using word 2010 so that will not be a problem.  I can try changing to a plain text control.  I have code in there to make the specific actions text boxes actually need to grow as the text grows so I put in a textbox.height = textbox.linecount * 18 in there to make them grow.  Will that work with the plain text control as well?

There is no table I just lined them up manually.