Expanding Form

Question

This may be unusual, but it is something I see fairly regularly and think there must be a solution.

When putting together a fillable form, there may be times when there are more than one item of the same type that needs to have information entered. Rough example; A user may have 5 widgets each with unique serial number and stored in different locations and each having different numbers of sprockets.  The form might then have 5 blocks of entries with fields for these items. A user filling out the form who has only one widget, has a lot of blank space. Worse, the user with 7 widgets has no way to enter the remaining two.

Ideally, the form would allow the entry of a widget's information, then create a new blank entry when the last field is completed. The document dynamically expands based on how many widgets each user has, thus there is no empty wasted space, or not enough space.

This may be beyond the scope of what Word can do with forms and might require  a different method of data entry, but having been tasked with doing this via Word, I figured I'd reach out and see if there is a solution that someone may have already come up with, or determined it not feasible. 

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

It can do this using macros that are written (programmed) not recorded.

First try using a repeating section content control. That may get you close enough. It will repeat the section, complete with filled-in information if any.

Answer 2

Thank you for the direction. I'll look at trying just that and respond with how it goes. If there ends up being anything that can be shared it will be.