Testing Forms

[Guest]

When testing a form, I'll fill in all the fields with x's. In the older
version of Word, it used to be that all you had to do was unlock and relock
the form to make all those x's go away. In Word 2003, the information stays.
Is there a fast and easy way to make all the filled in information in a form
go away without actually having to delete each field individually?

 

[Jay Freedman]

When testing a form, I'll fill in all the fields with x's. In the
older version of Word, it used to be that all you had to do was
unlock and relock the form to make all those x's go away. In Word
2003, the information stays. Is there a fast and easy way to make
all the filled in information in a form go away without actually
having to delete each field individually?

Hi Ginny,

I'm guessing that you're abusing the proper template/document relationship.
If you always leave the fields blank in the template, they'll always start
blank in new documents based on that template. Do your testing in such a
document, not in the template. When you're done testing, discard the
document.

If you insist on testing in the template, you can put this macro in the
template to imitate the old behavior (which was removed precisely because
most people didn't want it!):

Sub ClearFields()
Dim oFld As FormField
For Each oFld In ActiveDocument.FormFields
If oFld.Type = wdFieldFormTextInput Then
oFld.TextInput.Clear
End If
Next oFld
End Sub

 

[Guest]

I'm not using a template. It's a regular word document with a table and form
fields to create the form. I understand why they changed this
feature...you'd lose all your filled in information when actually filling out
a form if you unlocked to make a change and then relocked unless you did an
F11 in each field. But I'm just testing it by typing garbage in the fields
and want to get rid of all the garbage at once. This has nothing to do with
a template.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

It has everything to do with a template. Your document should be a template.
When you are using one document as the basis for new documents, the original
should be a template.

If you use Tools > Protect and protect your document for forms, it will
reset the fields.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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[Guest]

I think we're talking about two different things (I'm probably explaining it
wrong), but it doesn't matter because I made it work with the macro Jay
suggested. That's the short version...I'd probably confuse myself even
further if I tried to tell you the long version!! LOL!! So, thank you to
both Jay and Charles...I appreciate your help very much!!