Locking Cells in a Table So They Cannot Be Typed In

[jjjdel]

Suggest you create a way to lock a cell in a table so it cannot be typed in
until unlocked. This is helpful for use in forms that use tables. When moving
from cell to cell using the tab key, locked cells should be simply bypassed
and the cursor should land in the next unlocked cell. Locked cells can
contain instructions or other matter that does not need to be changed. It
would be helpful to have an option to unlock all locked cells in an entire
table for ease in editing. After editing, the same cells can be easly
relocked.

This feature is available in WordPerfect and its absence is one source of my
frustration with Word.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

This is exactly what forms protection does. It prevents entry of text in any
part of the document (including tables) that is not a form field. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/FillinTheBlanks.htm and especially
the forms tutorials by Dian Chapman that this article links to.

 

[Debra Ann]

From my experience working in WordPerfect/Word for over 25 years, most people
I have spoken too have a great dislike for protected forms. I worked in
WordPerfect for 5 years (20 years ago) and have now been working in Word for
15 years and, as much as I LOVE word, I HATE the fact that Word does not give
the option of locking cells in their tables and only allows us to use form
fields which requires us to protect the form to use it. I have annually sent
an email to Microsoft over the last 15 years requesting that they offer their
users the options of locking cells. They still have not. I can't tell you
how many happy customers they would have if they would just offer that
feature.

Our company of 5,000 people have to use approximately 100 forms that have
been created with form protection and it stops the users from doing a bunch
of different things (can't edit headers/footers anywhere in the document,
when a company form is updated they can't unlock their old form to make a
change or they'll lose their information in the field cells once it is locked
back up --- BIG PROBLEM, can't insert the locked form into another document,
etc.).

All in all, I have not heard one good thing about using forms versus simply
having a form in a table where the cells are blocked. Changes to the forms
could be made so much easier.

Someone in Microsoft please take the hint!!! I love your software and can't
say enough about it except for this one major issue that has been haunting
our company employees for the last 15 years every since we moved to Microsoft
Word.

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I believe Word 2003 does allow protection of just specific parts of a
document, perhaps even down to specific table cells, but I haven't used this
type of protection, so I'm not confident of this.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

You can relock an old form after making a change. In Word 2003 just use the
lock button on the toolbar. In earlier versions it takes a macro. You can
also make your tabular form in Excel and apply its much more complex
protection scheme. Then, if needed, you can import a portion of the Excel
worksheet into a Word document, retaining the Excel features. (Of course
this requires both the software and hardware to run both programs at the
same time.)

What you are talking about is what Word calls an "online form." There are
work-arounds for most of the problems you cite. For more about online forms,
follow the links at http://addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm#Forms or
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/FillinTheBlanks.htm especially Dian
Chapman's series of articles. You may also want to look at
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/LinesInForms.htm. These include
links to instructions on relocking a form retaining data.

Hope this helps,
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Jay Freedman]

That's true -- or, more precisely, you lock the entire document and then
unprotect the parts that should be editable, which could be everything
except the blocked cells.

The big drawback with this is backward compatibility. Opening such a
document on any version earlier than 2003, the entire document is locked as
if it were protected for forms, but with no form fields.

The problem of losing field contents when reprotecting a document has also
been solved in Word 2003 (but only if you use the lock icon on the Forms
toolbar instead of the Tools menu). For earlier versions there's a macro fix
(http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/MacrosVBA/TurnFmFlfResetOff.htm).

 

[SAnne]

I'm new to the Discussion Group so I'm not sure I responded in the correct
place with my first post.

I have to say that I agree 100% with jjjdel. In WP, locking a cell is
quick, simple, and painless. If Word had the same ability to lock a cell in
a simple table it would make using Word far less frustrating.

 

[SAnne]

Why go to all that fuss? WordPerfect has a great feature that allows a user
to lock just 1 or more cells, as needed. It's quick. It's simple. It
doesn't need a complex protection scheme.

Why doesn't Microsoft do the same thing? I can't tell you how frustrating
it is to have to tab past each and every cell each time I use this form.
This one frustration alone makes me want to persuade my client to use
WordPerfect.

If WordPerfect programmers can do it, why can't Microsoft Word?