Using QuickParts in Protected Word 07 Document

[Scott]

My organization very recently began using Word 07/Vista. Some users in the
department I support heavily rely on autotext. The primary documents they
work with, though, are protected documents (on a cover page, the sections
containing names/addresses are protected, the remaining sections of the
document are unprotected) and I have discovered that the Quick Parts
galleries are "disabled" in protected documents.

I found that entering the first four characters of an autotext name and
pressing F3 will play out the autotext, but many users have a voluminous
number of autotext entries and cannot (or should not) be expected to remember
the name of each.

I experimented with creating a macro to insert an Autotext List field, so I
could run the macro, and in the field inserted in the document right click
and get a list of the available autotext entries, insertable by clicking a
selected one.

The autotext is played out in a field, though, so that attempting to select
a portion of the inserted text for editing/deleting, etc. almost invariably
selects the entire text in the field. One of the more Word experienced users
reported seeing this in another context and had difficulty in accurately
selecting only portions of text, so I can only imagine the cries of outrage I
would hear from the less experienced users... Also, if additional text is
entered following the inserted text (without taking proper precautions), the
additional text is entered in the field, compounding the selection issue.

Completely unprotecting the documents is not an option, but I believe that a
process that would unprotect the document, allow access to Quick Parts, then
re-protect the document, could possibly be viable if it could be done
"securely" - that is without the chance of a user
intentionally/unintentionally gaining access to the protected sections at any
point.

So, my questions are: Is there a method I haven't thought of to easily
circumvent the disabling of the Quick Parts galleries in protected documents,
and if not, is there a viable secure method of unprotecting - allowing access
to Quick Parts to insert an autotext entry - then re-protecting the document?

I could possibly get (grumbling) developer support if a programmatic
solution is necessary, but of course, I would prefer a simpler, quicker
solution.

Any and all suggestions will be appreciated.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Scott,

If all the users have Office 2007, and if you're willing to rework the documents
a bit, I think you can get everything you want.

Word 2007 has a new feature called content controls. They're partial
replacements for form fields. If your description of a protected cover page with
fields followed by unprotected sections applies to most or all of the documents,
then:

- Replace the form fields for names and addresses with text content controls.
- Select the entire cover page and insert a Rich Text content control, so it
encloses the whole page.
- In the Properties sheet for the Rich Text control, check the boxes so the
control can't be edited and can't be deleted.

This will allow the users to enter name/address data in the inner content
controls but they can't change anything else on the cover page. Because nothing
in the document will have forms protection, the galleries and spell checking and
everything else will work normally in the rest of the document.

You'll find the content control buttons on the Developer tab of the ribbon.

If that doesn't work for you, then yes, it is possible to use a macro to
unprotect, manipulate the document, and reprotect. That technique is used in
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/SpellcheckProtectDoc.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so all
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[Scott]

Good morning Jay,

Thank you for the quick response, but unfortunately I don't believe this
method will work for us. I apologize for not including a bit of important
information - our organization requires that all documents be in the Word
97-2003 .doc format.

I did a cursory test after reading your response and found a text control I
added and protected from editing and deleting was converted to static text
when the document is saved in the .doc format, so the protection of the text
was lost.

Also, to clarify, the names and addresses on the cover page are inserted
into text boxes when the preliminary document is created by an in-house
application. The names and addresses are the sections that are protected -
we have to guard against users making changes to the names and addresses on
the Word documents - any changes must be made in our database via the
application that creates the documents.

The rest of the document is fair game for editing by the users.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Yes, that is a very different scenario from the one I was thinking of. Given
this information, let me suggest another direction.

Word documents (both 97-2003 .doc format and 2007 .docx format) can contain
information in "document variables". These variables are stored in the saved
document file, and they can be displayed by DocVariable fields. However,
there is no user interface that permits setting or changing their values;
those abilities are accessible only through automation (macros or outside
programs that use the Word object model interface).

If you can modify the application that creates the documents so that it
places the name and address data into document variables instead of directly
into text boxes, and if the template is modified to use the corresponding
DocVariable fields instead of text boxes, you'll have just about what you
want without forms protection.

You may need a couple of additional macros in the template to ensure that
the document's fields are updated whenever the document is printed or saved
(http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/InterceptSavePrint.htm). The reason is
that the DocVariable field's contents can be edited, but those changes will
be discarded each time the field is updated. There is an option to update
fields before printing, but there isn't one to update fields before saving.

 

[Kelley]

Holy smokes. Will converting these types of documents to InfoPath make a
difference? I'm finding myself in the exact same boat as Scott.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Sorry, I don't have any experience with InfoPath, so I can't tell you what it
will or won't do.