How to insert a checkbox without adding any Macros?

[bassplr19]

I want to add a checkbox to a word document that doesn't DO anything except
be checked or unchecked. I do not want the document opening, asking if
macros should/shouldn't be enabled. Is this possible?

 

[Jay Freedman]

If you insert a checkbox formfield but don't protect the document for forms,
you can double-click the field to open its Properties dialog and change its
default value from unchecked to checked and vice versa. Yes, that's clunky,
but it's the only method that doesn't involve either macros or forms
protection (which has its own huge set of annoyances).

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

If it's Word 2007, I think you can do this using the obsolescent
"ActiveX" type of checkbox control.
a. go into the Developer tab
b. In the Controls group, click on the "Legacy Tools" icon and select
the checkbox under "ActiveX Controls"
c. Set its properties to what you need and set the checkbox state to
the starting point you need
d. click Design Mode to switch /off/ design mode
e. save the file as a .docx. (If you did anything like double-clicked
on the control, Word will have inserted a bit of VBA and will tell you
that it cannot save VBA in a "macro-free" document. So click the Yes
button, because a macro-free document is exactly what you want.
f. Close and re-open the document. You shouldn't see any macro
warnings, because there are no macros. You should be able to
check/uncheck the box, because unlike previous versions of Word, Word
does not appear to put you back in "Design mode", which prevents the
checkbox from being used.

Doesn't work in Word 2003 or earlier because Word switches Design Mode
back on when you re-open the document (as per point (f) ) and I think
you would need VBA to fix that.


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

 

[bassplr19]

Thanks, so the answer is Microsoft won't let me do something simple but have
to make it complex.