Drop-downs and links: can both work in a protected doc?

[Style Council]

Hello. We have questionaires for customers that include drop-downs and links.
We want to protect the documents, but when we add protection, the links no
longer work. Is there any way to protect and have both drop-downs (arrow
appears) and links work? Thanks.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hello. We have questionaires for customers that include drop-downs and links.
We want to protect the documents, but when we add protection, the links no
longer work. Is there any way to protect and have both drop-downs (arrow
appears) and links work? Thanks.

There are two ways to make it work.

One way is to separate the document into sections (using continuous section
breaks), with the hyperlinks in different sections than the dropdowns. In the
Protect Document task pane, after selecting protection for forms, click the
"Select sections" link and uncheck the sections that contain the hyperlinks.
Only the sections containing dropdowns should remain checked so they become
protected.

This has the drawback that users can edit the unprotected sections of the
document. Also, you can't tab through an unprotected section from the last form
field in one protected section to the first form field in another protected
section -- the cursor will land in the unprotected section, where the Tab key
will insert a tab character.

The other way is to add macro programming as described in
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/HLinksInForms.htm. This allows the
whole document to remain protected. The drawback of this one is that you can't
ensure that users will enable macros if they have a high security level. If
macros are disabled, the hyperlinks won't do anything.

 

[Style Council]

Jay,

Thanks for the tips. I have tried both, but neither work. I will try the
macros method again, though. Could I be having difficulty because our
Implementation dept who gave this Word document to me use Word 2003 and I use
Word 2007? Is there anything I need to do to account for this version
discrepency? Thanks for your help.

 

[Jay Freedman]

No, both methods should work in either version, or in a Word 2003 template
(*.dot) used in Word 2007.

What does happen when you try each method? Is the hyperlink completely inactive,
or is there some sort of activity or error message?

Do you have any add-ins enabled that might be interfering? In the case of the
macro method, are you sure macros are enabled?

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

 

[Style Council]

Thanks Jay. I have finally got three of the four links to work by doing the
section break method. Maybe I should just delete and add the last link again.

As far as the macros go, I see the applicable macro (FollowLink) in the
Macros list. I thought I have to select it and click Run before I can add
the content that preceeds the link text. Is that right? When I do click Run,
I get a message "The requested member of the collection does not exist." I
have gotten this both when macros were disabled and enabled. Thanks again.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Hi Kevin,

No, you don't have to run the FollowLink macro from the Macros dialog, not
before, during, or after creating the MacroButton field. Clicking the completed
MacroButton field runs the macro for you -- but only if macros are enabled.

 

[Jay Freedman]

Rereading this, I think a signal may have gotten crossed here. When you said
"doing the section break method", did you mean that you inserted section
breaks to separate the hyperlinks from the form fields and left that section
unprotected? If so, then you don't need the FollowLink macro at all. You can
remove the macro from the template and not worry about it any more.