Is it possible to make Heading 1, 2, 3 paragraphs non-editable?

[Guest]

We pull topics from a database into a Word template and need to be able to
'protect' the headings from being edited or deleted. Any suggestions?

 

[Jezebel]

Attach a note to users: "Please do not edit the headings." In principle you
could put each heading in its own section, then protect those sections, but
in practice asking politely will be about as effective, and a great deal
less work.

If it really matters, you'll need an after-the-event control check to
compare the headings with the database; because there's nothing you can do
in Word to *guarantee* that the headings won't be edited (eg, if the user
can edit the document at all, they can delete your headings completely and
insert their own).

 

[Guest]

OK thanks. Actually the root of the problem is that we store the topic Id as
a bookmark in the topic heading (hence the need to protect the heading). But
if we could position the bookmark somewhere else, where it can be protected,
then that could be a solution maybe. Do you have any ideas in this direction?

 

[Jezebel]

Hard to make suggestions without more information. If it's a case of
associating additional info with the document, that you want to be sure
stays put, you could put the info into Document Properties (accessible via
File > Properties > Custom) or Document Variables (accessible only via VBA).

 

[Guest]

When importing, our application breaks up the Word document and stores it to
the dB as a bunch of XML chunks. Each chunk (topic) begins with a H1, H2, or
H3 heading. We then pull from the dB, edit, and save back to the dB.
Currently the topic ID is inserted in the topic heading as a bookmark and
needs to be there for the save back to dB. Problem is that we can open an
individual topic, or a chapter (several topics) or even the whole document
(all topics). This has tremendous advantages for the user but it also means
we have to manage more than one topic ID per Word session, and this rules out
Doc Properties and I think Doc level variables. What we really need is to put
the ID somewhere in the topic XML, somewhere where it is not stripped out by
Word and can't be deleted accidentally by the user. We've tried subsections,
but Word strips it out from those.

 

[Klaus Linke]

Hi Steve,

Since it sounds as if you're using Word2003, you can protect the headings
against being edited (from the document protection task pane)... no need for
(sub)sections.

Regards,
Klaus

 

[Guest]

Thank you Klaus.

You're right, we do have 2003 (stupid of me not to have mentioned this
before). As it happens I started messing around with Doc Protection over the
w/e and, yes, it seems to work perfectly! Hope we can a build to: select the
whole document and set to Read Only, then set exceptions to Everyone, then
select the headings only and uncheck Exceptions, then turn protection on. A
shame we can't associate doc protection to styles - that would make it a
synch to implement

Thanks a lot, Steve