Using Form Protection with a Template for a Mail Merge

[Guest]

I'm creating a template for a mail merge and need to protect the form fields.
Obviously, the idea is to protect all of the text except for the form fields
so that the user can't accidently change the key portions of the text.

It appears that though a Word doesn't all a protected form to be used as a
mail merge as the MAIL MERGE option remains greyed out until I unprotect the
form.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Yes the two features are not compatible, principally because formfields in a
protected document have bookmark names assigned to them and if you have them
in a mail merge main document and you execute the merge to a new documents,
you would end up with multiple instances of bookmarks with the same name.

The following macro can be used to preserve bookmarks during a MailMerge

' Throwaway Macro created by Doug Robbins to "preserve" bookmarks during a
MailMerge
'
Dim abm As Bookmark, bmrange As Range, i As Long, Result As Document, j As
Long, k As Long, linkrange As Range, linktarget As String
Dim Source As Document
Set Source = ActiveDocument
i = 1
For j = 1 To Source.MailMerge.DataSource.RecordCount
For Each abm In ActiveDocument.Range.Bookmarks
System.PrivateProfileString("c:\bookmarks.txt", "bookmarkNames",
"bookmark" & i) = abm.Name & Format(j)
i = i + 1
Next
Next j
For Each abm In ActiveDocument.Range.Bookmarks
abm.Range.InsertBefore "#"
abm.Range.InsertAfter "#"
Next
With ActiveDocument.MailMerge
.Destination = wdSendToNewDocument
.Execute
End With
Set Result = ActiveDocument
k = 1
Selection.HomeKey wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
Do While .Execute(FindText:="#*#", MatchWildcards:=True,
Wrap:=wdFindContinue, Forward:=True) = True
Set bmrange = Selection.Range
bmrange.Characters(bmrange.Characters.Count).Delete
bmrange.Characters(1).Delete
Result.Bookmarks.Add System.PrivateProfileString("c:\bookmarks.txt",
"bookmarkNames", "bookmark" & k), bmrange
k = k + 1
Loop
End With
For i = 1 To Result.Hyperlinks.Count
linktarget = Result.Hyperlinks(i).SubAddress
Set linkrange = Result.Hyperlinks(i).Range
linkrange.Select
linktarget = linktarget &
Format(Selection.Information(wdActiveEndSectionNumber))
Result.Hyperlinks.Add Result.Hyperlinks(i).Range, "", linktarget
Next i

Source.Activate
Selection.HomeKey wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
Do While .Execute(FindText:="#*#", MatchWildcards:=True,
Wrap:=wdFindContinue, Forward:=True) = True
Set bmrange = Selection.Range
bmrange.Characters(bmrange.Characters.Count).Delete
bmrange.Characters(1).Delete
Loop
End With

However, as you probably want to end up with individual documents for each
record in the data source, you may better off to use the addin that you can
download from
http://www.gmayor.com/individual_merge_letters.htm



--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP