Is there a way to prevent forms with filled fields from being save

[hippiechick333]

I'm working in Word 2003, creating medical forms which end users wish to be
able to fill on their personal computers... due to federal privacy
regulations the patient info filled on the forms cannot be retained on
unsecured computers or forwarded electronically (i.e. email)...

Is there any way to create fillable form templates/documents in Word which
users can fill, then print, but not save the filled data?

 

[Jay Freedman]

I'm working in Word 2003, creating medical forms which end users wish
to be able to fill on their personal computers... due to federal
privacy regulations the patient info filled on the forms cannot be
retained on unsecured computers or forwarded electronically (i.e.
email)...

Is there any way to create fillable form templates/documents in Word
which users can fill, then print, but not save the filled data?

Word has nothing reliable, certainly not to the standards of HIPAA. Although
you can include macros to do this, you cannot guarantee that every user will
allow macros to run, so such a scheme is worthless.

I think that with a full copy of Adobe Acrobat you can make a PDF form that
will forbid saving data. Anyone who has the free Acrobat Reader can fill in
and print the form. Although I've seen such forms, I don't have Acrobat
myself, so someone else will have to tell you how to work with it.

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

 

[hippiechick333]

Thanks for the response Jay... that's pretty much what I thought... I'm more
familiar with Acrobat anyway so will explore using this format!

hc3