how to set up both autotext and fill in forms in protected doc

[pvr]

Imported old autotext into Word 07 but need to use these in protected
document with fill in fields that have drop down lists. I have tried
Developer option but does not allow both to occur in same document. If
unprotected the autotext works but only fill in fields work if protected but
not autotext. Help? both were 97 templates.

 

[Graham Mayor]

Autotext does not work in a protected form. What *exactly* are you trying to
achieve, and what is the relevance of the drop down fields to the autotext?

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[pvr]

autotext includes thousands of client names to choose to insert into the
document by typing in the first 6 letters of the last name into a table box.
The drop down pick lists in the protected portion are for other areas from
standard text in the document to fill in from the drop down. I also need to
insert comment text in the same document that is not standard to either and
is filled in by the user directly. I have found in other posts that to
insert a section break and/or do macro record to unprotect that section, then
insert the button command and then reprotect for the autotext section, which
I think will work, unless you have other suggestions. This is a legal
template we share with those who do not have the time to spare to learn and
are not that user friendly in WORD 07. Previously autotext was in normal.dot
and the protected document was in another dot. This also needs to be
backwards compatible. I saved the legal.dot into the old normal.dot, saved as
dotx and applied the developers section to attach the autotext and got it to
work either one way or the other but not both at the same time. Would
something in legacyzone apply?

 

[Graham Mayor]

Whereas in Word 2003 autotext has autocomplete and will work in a form
field, 2007 does not have autocomplete, the autotext works in a different
manner and will not work in a protected form - nor will Word 2003 autotexts
work in a Word 2007 environment or vice versa if vba insertion is involved.
Creating a cross platform template, as you appear to envisage, is a
non-starter if you need autotexts.

Autotext will work in an unprotected section, albeit there is no
autocomplete so you are going to have to know the names of your 'thousands
of clients' in order to be able to press F3 at an opportune moment. Frankly
it doesn't seem all that practical to me?

A better bet would be to store the client details in Outlook (or some other
database format) and read the required customer details into the form. For
Outlook, the method may be similar to that shown at
http://www.gmayor.com/Macrobutton.htm . How easy it would be to transfer
your autotext entries to a new data format rather depends on how you have
used autotext, but the following macro will put them all in a document,
which you may be able to reformat to save a lot of re-keying:

Dim atEntry As AutoTextEntry
For Each atEntry In _
ActiveDocument.AttachedTemplate.AutoTextEntries
With Selection
.TypeText atEntry.Name
.Range.InsertAutoText
.TypeParagraph
End With
Next atEntry

Or you could create a userform to collect and insert data into your form
Word MVP FAQ - Userforms
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Userforms.htm

Another posibility, nothing to do with Word, would be to investigate a third
party text insertion tool such as GhostTyperXML, which I use for storing
standard texts for reproduction in the newsgroups and elsewhere. This
application will work with both Word 2003 and 2007 protected forms.


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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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