Master/Sub, Forms or Fields... Oh My!

[Duff]

First let me say what a wonderful group here!

Perhaps I just don't understand the terminology or I really haven't seen
what I'm looking for yet.

I have a document created in Word 8 with sections containing "fields" to be
filled in by 3 different people (actually "groups" of people). In the past
the document was printed out and completed by hand. What I am attempting is
having the document (template) available on the server (W2K). Person from
group #1 opens the file, completes the sections related to his/her dept then
saves the file with the client's name in the client's folder. Person from
group #2 goes to the client's folder, opens the document, completes the
respective section and saves it in the same folder. Person from group #3
does the same as #2. This way any one of the 3 can start the process of
filling out the "form".

Here is the part I'm lost at. I want to be able to "lock" each person's
(group's) section so it can not be edited by anyone other than that person.
My original thought was to save the sections as 3 separate files with write
access only to the "group" that should be filling those sections. But then
someone would have to merge the 3 files back into one document to maintain
the "form's" format and layout.

I'm not sure if there is a Word function to do this or if VBA is needed. Any
and all input is appreciated

Every person accessing this document will be using Word 10 or above if that
helps with responses.

TIA

Duff

 

[Charles Kenyon]

You would need to use vba. The terms Master and Subdocument refer to a
dangerous Word feature you don't want to be using.

You could set up an AutoOpen macro that would check the username and then
enable/disable fields in particular sections depending on the username of
the person opening the document. This could be defeated rather easily,
though, by opening the document without allowing the macro to run. I suppose
you could have it disable all of the fields before saving. The vba work
would not be that difficult but likely would be tedious.

An alternative might be to turn on track changes so that you could track who
made what change and simply have policies as to who can work on what. (I
don't know that track changes works in protected forms; I've never tried it.
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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[Duff]

Thank you for the input Charles. I am back on this "project" and will try
implementing your suggestion!

Duff