How do I limit characters typed into a Word Table cell?

[Guest]

How DO I limit the characters typed into a cell on a Word table to the
visible area only?I have set exact dimensions for the cell and that limits
the visible characters but it doesn't limit the actaul characters typed in.
For instance - I can see 10 characters in a cell but there are really 25
characters in the cell. I would like to be able to limit the user input to
only the number of visible characters.

Thanks for your help!
Maureen

 

[Jay Freedman]

How DO I limit the characters typed into a cell on a Word table to the
visible area only?I have set exact dimensions for the cell and that limits
the visible characters but it doesn't limit the actaul characters typed in.
For instance - I can see 10 characters in a cell but there are really 25
characters in the cell. I would like to be able to limit the user input to
only the number of visible characters.

Thanks for your help!
Maureen

The only method Word provides to limit the number of characters as
they're being typed is to place a text form field in the cell, open
the field's Properties dialog and set the number of characters
allowed, and protect the document for forms. As a side effect, this
will prevent characters from being typed *anywhere* in the document
that isn't in a form field -- but it doesn't sound like this is what
you want.

The only alternative is to write a macro (probably one that intercepts
the Save function, and maybe another that intercepts the Print
function) to examine the table cell after the fact, and prevent
saving/printing if there are too many characters there. Users rightly
consider such long-after-the-fact intervention to be annoying.

What are you doing with the document after the user completes the
input? Maybe that processing could simply discard the "invisible"
characters.

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