Problems Protecting a Document

[Bob]

I have a document that contains 3 sections:
Section 1 contains a table with form fields
Section 2 contains a table with no form fields
Section 3 contains just body text
I clicked on Tools, Protect Document..., but all the choices are grayed out.
I can't select anything in the Protect Document task pane.
Can anyone tell me why? Thanks.
Bob

 

[Bob]

After some searching, I found the following 2005 post by Beth Melton which
fixed the problem:

I finally found the root of the issue. Apparently at one time the
template was a Form Letter for Mail Merge. It no longer has an
attached data source but the Main Document Setup is still "Letter".

To rectify:

- Go to View/Toolbars/Mail Merge
- On the Mail Merge toolbar locate "Main Document Setup"
- Select "Normal Word document"
- Click OK

Result: The Protect Document task pane will now be enabled.

I haven't quite decided if this is a bug, since you can still use VBA
and ActiveDocument.Protect to protect the template, but I'll pass this
information along.

Thanks for your help and sticking with the thread. As I noted
previously, I suspect there have been others encountering the same
issue so with your help we now have a solution.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP