How to protect cells in a table

[TH]

This is probably a stupid question but I can't seem to figure it out.
With every Word upgrade they seem to make it worse, not better. I have
a table in a document that is going to be form, I want to protect
certain cells so that you can simply tab through the non-protected
cells but I for the life of me cannot figure out how to protect the
document. When you go to the protect document feature, it now has some
idiotic "wizard" thing that runs you through some steps that do not do
what I want, nor do I see anything remotely like I want. In the older
versions of Word, you simply highlighted the cells you wanted to
protect, go to "protect document" and protect them so they can't be
edited. Please let me know how to do this in Word 2003. Thanks for
your help.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Instead of the dialog box, Word 2003 presents a task pane for Document
Protection.
The following is from Word Help:

On the Tools menu, click Protect Document.

In the Protect Document task pane, under Editing restrictions, select the
Allow only this type of editing in the document check box, and then click
Filling in forms in the list of editing restrictions.

To protect only parts of a form from accidental changes, click Select
sections, and then clear the check boxes for the sections (section: A portion
of a document in which you set certain page formatting options. You create a
new section when you want to change such properties as line numbering, number
of columns, or headers and footers.) you don't want to protect.

Note To protect only parts of a form from accidental changes, those parts
must be in separate sections. (On the Insert menu, click Break to create
section breaks.)

Click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection.

To assign a password to the form so that others don't accidentally change
the form's display content, type a password in the Enter new password
(optional) box, and then confirm the password. Users who don't know the
password can still enter information in the form fields.

For general information on protected forms, see also
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/FillinTheBlanks.htm.

 

[TH]

Instead of the dialog box, Word 2003 presents a task pane for Document
Protection.
The following is from Word Help:

On the Tools menu, click Protect Document.

In the Protect Document task pane, under Editing restrictions, select the
Allow only this type of editing in the document check box, and then click
Filling in forms in the list of editing restrictions.

To protect only parts of a form from accidental changes, click Select
sections, and then clear the check boxes for the sections (section: A portion
of a document in which you set certain page formatting options. You create a
new section when you want to change such properties as line numbering, number
of columns, or headers and footers.) you don't want to protect.

Note To protect only parts of a form from accidental changes, those parts
must be in separate sections. (On the Insert menu, click Break to create
section breaks.)

Click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection.

To assign a password to the form so that others don't accidentally change
the form's display content, type a password in the Enter new password
(optional) box, and then confirm the password. Users who don't know the
password can still enter information in the form fields.

For general information on protected forms, see alsohttp://word.mvps.org/faqs/customization/FillinTheBlanks.htm.

thank you for you response, however, I have studied your post for a
while and attempted to apply and am totally lost. I have at table and
I want some cells to be editable, where others I want protected, but I
can only seem to get the entire document protected, rather than
specific cells. I remember older versions of word allowed me to not
only protect specific cells, but make it so I could create a "tab
order" so when people would tab to the next cell, it would go in the
order I set up (it was eventually saved as a template). I am not using
any form fields, simply table and certain cells are "form fields"
where text is filled in.

 

[Stefan Blom]

Well, form protection require form fields. However, since you are using Word
2003, you can make use of a different type of editing restrictions. Display
the Protect Document task pane, and do this: Click the "Editing
restrictions" check box, and choose "No changes (Read only)"; then select
the relevant cells and use the "Selections" list to specify which users
should be able to edit them. When you are done, click "Yes, Start Enforcing
Protection."