Protected Forms Checkboxes vs. ActiveX Controls vs. Any Alternativ

[spunkymuffmonkey]

Hi all,

I wanted to ask the community if there is a preferred route as regards
checkboxes within Word 2003 documents.

Having experience of protected form checkboxes I do like them, but don't
like the scale of the restrictions that come with protected forms (sure they
can be worked around but why have to)!

I do like ActiveX controls but I understand from a previous post that
overuse of them can be the cause of scrolling and/or performance issues.

So, I wondered if anybody has a view or even any suggestions regarding any
alternatives that would be useful to me.

It's worth mentioning that some of the forms I have to produce can sometimes
contain 100 checkboxes and that our preferred method of creating
documentation is using MSWord so that it can be saved into a CaseWork
Document Management System (so no webforms etc can be used!).

Anyway, hope this gets the grey matter working!

Thanks for looking.

 

[Jay Freedman]

At whatever golden moment in the future you can be sure that your user base
consists only of Word 2010 or later versions, you can make your forms using
only content controls. (Word 2007 has content controls, but not of the
checkbox type. While you can use Word 2010 to insert checkbox content
controls in a document and they'll show up in Word 2007, they'll be inert
there.)

Until then, probably the best alternative is a userform
(http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Create_and_employ_a_UserForm.htm) that sets
document properties, combined with DocProperty fields in the document body.
The userform code stays in the base template for the forms, so that won't
impact your management system. With the large number of controls you need,
you should probably be looking at using a MultiPage container in your
userform to group the checkboxes into smaller batches.

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

 

[Jay Freedman]

Where I said "document property" and "DocProperty", they should be "document
variable" and "DocVariable". Greg's article covers that well.

 

[spunkymuffmonkey]

As always, many thanks for your views and for the link Jay.

The golden moment you speak of is so far in the future that it's more of a
golden haze. Working for a local public authority within the UK who's
bracing for the extreme cuts that inevitably the winning party of the
upciming general election will make, I should be asking if Microsoft still
support Word 97!