format field for social security number

[Guest]

I have created a Word table with social security number as a column. I will
need various others to type in data. I wanted to format the field so that all
they have to do is type the numbers and it tabs from the first section to the
second and the last. And then tab to the next column. I can't get it to do
that. Help!
Thanks,
Carolina Girl

 

[Guest]

What you need to do is a little bit complicated, but it isn't really hard. I
don't know what version of Word you're using, but these instructions are
fairly generic. I think they'll work on most versions of Word.

In the SS cell of your table, you will need to insert three text form
fields, separated by hyphens. (You can insert the form fields from the Forms
toolbar.) Then right click on each form field, select Properties, and select
Type to be "Number" and select Maximum Length to the number appropriate for
that field in a SS number (3 for the first field, 2 for the second, and 4 for
the third).

Then when all other changes to the form are complete, protect the document
for Forms and it should work.

 

[Guest]

I appreciate your help. I have done that much thus far. Unfortunately, it
will not tab from one field to the next after "filling in" the numbers.
Carolina Girl

 

[Guest]

I would be interested in knowing this too. Do you think a macro would work?
(but I'm not sure how to do it!)

 

[Jay Freedman]

The text form field you can insert into the body of a document from the
Forms toolbar has no way to force an exit/jump to the next field.

If that feature is absolutely required, you'll have to create a UserForm,
which is a custom dialog box you program with VBA
(http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Userforms/CreateAUserForm.htm). You put text
fields (confusingly called textboxes) on the dialog to accept the user's
entries. In the code that drives the UserForm, you can write a procedure
that's called each time a key is pressed in each field; if the field
contents are the right length (and all digits), then the cursor gets moved
to the next field. When the user clicks the OK button in the UserForm, more
code runs and transfers the entries from the UserForm fields to fields or
bookmarks in the body of the document.

You could create a small UserForm to accept only the SSN, and the macro that
displays that UserForm could be made the On Entry macro of the SSN field in
the document. With that in place, as soon as the user tabs or clicks into
the field in the document, the UserForm pops up to get the entry.

Alternatively, you could create a large UserForm that collects every piece
of information from the user to populate the entire document, all at once.
Then the document itself doesn't have to be protected at all (or it can be
completely protected, including all the entry locations). The macro that
displays the UserForm would be named AutoNew or AutoOpen, or both
(http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/DocumentEvents.htm).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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