document protection + Microsoft Ink Annotations

[cgijag]

Hello,
I've seen a few posts regarding protecting a Word document (by sections) and
the Ink (comments/annotations) feature using a tablet pc. It seems that even
though you setup protection by section the ink feature is disabled. I
haven't had any luck getting confirmation whether this will be fixed (or if
theres a workaround). Anyone else had any luck? thanks. I cross posted
this in general word questions but it may belong here.

 

[Gordon Bentley-Mix]

Document protection disables many potentially useful features - sometimes
seemingly for no good reason. Although I've not worked with Ink in a
protected document, it actually makes sense that Ink would be one of the
disabled features; it would potentially allow you to add "content" to a
protected section, thus technically defeating the protection. I suspect that
the reason it is disabled for the entire document (and not just for the
protected sections) is because Ink is carried in a different 'layer' in the
document, and it may not be possible to establish a correlation between the
Ink layer and the text layer that is locked or unlocked by the document
protection. This may be why the various drawing-related functions are
disabled as well.

There is no workaround apart from unprotecting the document, and since it is
undoubtedly "by design", it is unlikely that it will ever be "fixed" as MSFT
doesn't view it as a bug.
--
Cheers!

Gordon Bentley-Mix
Word MVP

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[Cindy M.]

My reply has been posted to the duplicate question in the
docmanagement newsgroup. It outlines the "why" and presents
the outlook for future verions, plus a workaround for 2007.

Cindy Meister

 

[cgijag]

Here is Cindy's response from the other thread for those who have the same
question (thanks again Cindy!)

"The reason this is a problem is that "ink" is superimposed on the document
as a
Shape (floating graphic), in a special layer. When forms protection is
activated, this layer is inaccessible - no workarounds, no "fixes". It's
inherent in the way the functionality was designed, back in the early 1990s.
This graphics layer was added to Word some five years later (for version 97).

Given that the Word team is now focussing on Content Controls (new in 2007)
and
isn't planning to do anything at all with the Form fields, I don't expect
this
to change.

If you have 2007 you can use grouped content controls to limit text input,
and
use Inking at the same time."