Protect part of a row in a form table?

[Guest]

I'd like to be able to leave a column of cells in a table in a form
unprotected, but protect the cells in the rest of the row. I'm successfully
using "continuous" section breaks to protect horizontally divided sections of
the form, but that won't work for vertically defined portions.

Is there any way to do this other than making those cells (the ones I think
I want to be editable by the user) text boxes?

 

[Jay Freedman]

If you're using other form fields elsewhere in the document and that's
why you're protecting the document for forms, then the answer is that
your last paragraph is correct -- you'll have to use text form fields
to provide places for users to type.

If, instead, you're using protection only to prevent changes by users,
AND if all your users have Word 2003 (or 2007, eventually), then
there's another answer. Instead of protecting for forms, you can
protect the document for editing. This is in the Protect Document task
pane, in the Editing Restrictions area; set the dropdown to "No
changes (Read only)" and then create exceptions in the document for
the particular cells that should allow editing.

You can't have both kinds of protection in the same document, so
choose carefully. Also, if the document is opened in earlier versions
of Word, it will all be locked.

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

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Jay. Your first assumption (other form fields elsewhere) was the
correct one. Also, I'm still running Word 2002 and expect many of the
potential users of this for are, too, or even earlier versions. Text form
fields are easy enough and will do the job.

Thanks for the information.