Remove content controls in Word

Question

Old Word documents with fillable form fields can be "flattened" using Ctrl-Shift-F9 to convert all fields to plain text. How is this accomplished in Word 2016, without having to manually right-click each individual form field and remove the content control?

It seems fairly ridiculous that there is not a one-click solution. I have seen VBA code that claims to do it, but I should not have to build a macro for a feature that used to be built in. Even a button in the Developer tab would be acceptable.

Answer 1

If you save the document in Word 97-2003 (*.doc) format, you will see

Answer 2

The quickest and simplest way to get the Content Controls all converted to text is as suggested by Doug and Jay: conversion to the .doc format. If for some reason that is not correct, write back and I or someone else will try to come up with a macro solution. For that to work, though, the environment in which you will be operating must allow macros to run.

Answer 3

Doug is correct. One more point: you can then save the result as a .docx file again, and the content controls will not come back.

Answer 4

Hi dr.nixon,

Thank you for posting your query in Microsoft Community. From your description, you would like to remove content controls in Word. Doug and Jay Freedman’s suggestions are right, and I will offer another solution:

(1)Right-click the text in the content control you should see an option that lets you remove the content control.

(2)If the option is not in the right-click menu, it means the content control has been locked. In this case, you need to go to File>Options>Customize ribbon>Main tabs>Developer>click Properties in the Group for controls, and deactivate the checkbox(es) that lock the content controls.

If the issue persists, we would like to collect information below for further investigation:

1.Please provide us the screenshot of all these steps been done that we can know more clearly how the issue looks like.

2.The screenshot of the version of your Word. ( Go to File> Account> About Word).

Regards，

Amiu

Answer 5

Hi dr.nixon,

***

1)Right-click the text in the content control you should see an option that lets you remove the content control.

***

Amiu

Please re-read the question. Perhaps read the responses posted days before yours. The request was for a method that did not require changing each content control individually.