Content control font changes to gray text

[Nih]

I am working on a word doc that has a few content controls in them, all are
working except for one. I set up the control the way I want, protect the
document, close it and when I reopen it the text I type in that content
control changes to a gray font (same font as the "click here to enter text"
tag)

I have tried creating a whole new document from scratch and this same
control has the same problem on the new doc.

Any ideas?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I am working on a word doc that has a few content controls in them, all are
working except for one. I set up the control the way I want, protect the
document, close it and when I reopen it the text I type in that content
control changes to a gray font (same font as the "click here to enter text"
tag)

I have tried creating a whole new document from scratch and this same
control has the same problem on the new doc.

Any ideas?

I don't know whether it has any relation to this problem, but if
you're using only content controls and not legacy form fields, then
you should not protect the document.

If you want the same effect as forms protection when there are only
content controls,

- Select the entrie document, or at least the area you want to protect
(it must contain at least some regular text in addition to the content
controls).

- On the Developer ribbon, click Group > Group.

You'll then be able to fill in the content controls; you can put the
cursor anywhere in the regular text, but trying to change it will just
result in a message on the status bar that the area can't be edited.

To reenable editing of the text, use Group > Ungroup.

 

[Nih]

Thanks for the suggestion Jay but I still have the same problem. The font
changes to gray as soon as you save and close the document, even before the
protection is turned on.

It makes zero sense as we have other documents that work fine but if I start
a new one from scratch it has the same problem.

 

[Jay Freedman]

I'm stumped. I could come up with some very far-fetched possibilities, but
nothing that sounds reasonable.

Let me see if I have the right facts:

- You create a new blank document based on the Normal.dotm template and
insert some content controls. (Are these plain text controls or rich text
controls?)

- You enter text into the controls, and so far they behave as they should,
with black text appearing.

- You save, close, and reopen the document, and now one (or is it more than
one, or all?) of the controls shows the text with gray font color.

Here are a few things to look at. I can't make any of them reproduce your
situation, but maybe there's some combination of factors at work.

- Compare the Properties dialogs of the controls that turn gray to the
dialogs of the controls that don't change. Are there any differences? If so,
how did they get there?

- Is there anything different about the environment of the controls that
turn gray? Are they inside a table, or in a paragraph that has different
formatting than the others?

- With Word shut down, go to the folder %appdata%\Microsoft\Templates and
rename the Normal.dotm file to something else, like oldNormal.dotm. Restart
Word, which causes it to create a new Normal.dotm, and try making another
document with content controls. Do these behave properly? If so, you can
copy any customized styles and macros from oldNormal.dotm to the new
Normal.dot, and then delete oldNormal.dotm.

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

 

[Nih]

Yes I can create a new document and add in a few content controls, for
example this particular one had a date picker then the rich text control.
Everything looked the way I wanted but once I saved and closed the document
the next time it is opened the font on the rich text control reverts to light
gray text when you type in the control.

The strange part is it only seems to happen to the first rich text control
placed into the document, the others work fine. If I create the control
further down the page it works fine until I move it to that top spot.

I am going to try creating the new normal template but this problem occurs