Online forms- tables or frames??

[JR Hester]

I am looking for some simple forms assistance. Using Office 2000, I need to
design a form that will retain its layout after fields are filled in. The
form must have multiple fields on the same line, otherwise it is unusable.

Regardless of the field length set in properties, the onscreen form field
placeholder remains at 5 characters long. This forces me to use spaces or
tabs to position the next field or data label in proper position. These
spaces, tabs, CR then are inserted between end of one field and beginning of
next when the form is completed online, which of course with insert mode on,
corrupts the layout.

I have read thru a number of articles about using tables to limit length of
fields. This is not an option as this form is being emailed to Blackberry
users. Tables appear as a hyperlink that user must activate to see contents,
then they are unable to return to remainder of the document.

I was interested in the text frames options, however I have been unable to
insert a frame following a textual label, regardless of my formatting options
the frame precedes the text label or sits on a separate line. What am I doing
wrong in position my text frame?

Is this issue resolvable without VBA? I am not comfortable working in the
VBA language at this time.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SlIgSGVzdGVy?=,

My opinion is that Word is not the right tool for what you need. Word is based
on text-flow; that's what the form fields are designed to do.

You could TRY using the ActiveX fields from the Controls Toolbox, but they're
rather resource-intensive so no idea how Blackberry will handle them.

I suspect you should be looking at an HTML form (to be used in a web browser).
Or possibly InfoPath.

I am looking for some simple forms assistance. Using Office 2000, I need to
design a form that will retain its layout after fields are filled in. The
form must have multiple fields on the same line, otherwise it is unusable.

Regardless of the field length set in properties, the onscreen form field
placeholder remains at 5 characters long. This forces me to use spaces or
tabs to position the next field or data label in proper position. These
spaces, tabs, CR then are inserted between end of one field and beginning of
next when the form is completed online, which of course with insert mode on,
corrupts the layout.

I have read thru a number of articles about using tables to limit length of
fields. This is not an option as this form is being emailed to Blackberry
users. Tables appear as a hyperlink that user must activate to see contents,
then they are unable to return to remainder of the document.

I was interested in the text frames options, however I have been unable to
insert a frame following a textual label, regardless of my formatting options
the frame precedes the text label or sits on a separate line. What am I doing
wrong in position my text frame?

Is this issue resolvable without VBA? I am not comfortable working in the
VBA language at this time.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 17 2005)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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