How do I lock settings for a student for testing purposes

[sdhcteacher]

I am a teacher and am working with a student who is in the autism spectrum.
He is very knowledgeable about computers. One of his writing accomodations
is to type on the computer but I need to lock all the settings so that he can
not use spell check or grammar check or change margins etc.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

If he is very knowledgeable about computers, he will likely be able to work
around any restrictions you place on him. Have you really thought about why
you are imposing these restrictions? What real purpose does it serve?

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Jay Freedman]

I am a teacher and am working with a student who is in the autism
spectrum. He is very knowledgeable about computers. One of his
writing accomodations is to type on the computer but I need to lock
all the settings so that he can not use spell check or grammar check
or change margins etc.

You have my sympathies, but my best advice is not to allow this student to
use Microsoft Word for this purpose. The combination of technical knowledge
and obsessive behavior is going to be very hard to contain. Word is designed
for maximum flexibility and maximum ease of use, and there is almost no way
to lock it down -- especially when the person you're trying to limit
probably knows more about the program than you do and is willing to spend a
lot of time getting around your restrictions.

You can remove the spelling and grammar feature from Office as follows: Go
to Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, select Microsoft Office, and click
the Change button. Choose to add/remove features. Under the Office Shared
Features group, mark the Proofing Tools as "Not Available". (If the student
is ever left alone with the computer, he may reinstall the feature, so
you'll have to check it occasionally.)

If the Office version is 2003 or 2007 (I can't remember now whether this was
in Office 2002), you can use the Protect Document task pane to restrict
formatting to a selection of styles and/or to specific areas of a document,
and this could be applied to the Normal template used to create blank
documents. The selection can be protected with a password. I can't tell
whether this will let you restrict all the things you want -- "etc." covers
a lot of ground.

Good luck!

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

 

[Ned23]

That's a very interesting question. What kind of a test is it? Will the
student be supervised? You can create a form and then lock the form with a
password. Then as long as the student is supervised periodically during the
test, you can make sure he does not fiddle with it. You can make the text
portions of the test graphical so that the only place to type is in a form
field.

You might also want to try using Adobe Acrobat since PDF files cannot be
edited with the adobe reader. You'll need access to the acrobat editor
file.