Text Form Field Too Small

[zugzug21]

Hello All,

I am trying to create an electronic form using Word 2003. I have
created a table with four columns and two rows. It looks like this:

Request Number: ___________ Request Date: ___________
Requested By: ___________ Team Name: ___________

Since I cannot draw the table just consider the underscores to be the
second and forth columns (they are not there in my document).

Since I only want people to fill in the areas where the underscores
are, I opened the Form toolbar and inserted a "Text Form Field" into
that area. By default it creates the Text Form Field about the width
of one tab length. I also have border shading turned on so to the
person filling the form out it appears like they can click anywhere in
column two or four to enter the information (and of course that is not
the case).

The form works well if you are tabbing through and filling out the
information. If the "Requestor" is too long it will wrap within the
column and that is exactly what I want it to do. The problem is if I
want to use the mouse to click directly in the area next to "Requestor"
I have to make sure I click in the small area where the text form field
is. If I click slightly to the right of that field it tries to tab to
the "Team" entry area.

What I am trying to accomplish is to set columns two and four to be
"Text Form Fields". If someone clicks in the area next to "Request
Number" and enters a single character I don't want word to
automatically readjust the Text Form Field size to 1 character. This
causes big problems if someone wants to click back and edit the field.
They would have to click directly on the single character because the
rest of the area is now uneditable whitespace.

Some things I have tried:

Attempt: Insert 4 or 5 Text Form Fields in each editable column
Problem: This looks good but when you tab through the form you have to
tab through each section. It also (of course) considers each of these
as separate text fields and creates whitespace after you enter all of
the information in the first one.

Attempt 2: I tried to see if I could "Merge" these fields into one Text
field.
Problem: Word won't let you do this.

Attempt 3: I defaulted to a bunch of spaces to make the width the
entire size of the table column.
Problem: When they edit this field it will either shrink the field down
as soon as they start typing which causes problems if you want to mouse
click the area and edit later. It may also leave the spaces and
therefore create a row-wrap of whitespace.

This is driving me crazy. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Jezebel]

Protect the document for forms (or at least that sectino of it). Then the
user can't click anywhere but within your fields, no matter how you format
the table.

 

[zugzug21]

Protect the document for forms (or at least that sectino of it). Then the
user can't click anywhere but within your fields, no matter how you format
the table.

I do have it protected. The problem is is order to allow for the
person to enter data you have to create text form fields. That is my
problem. I cannot increase the width of the text form field without
seeing the issues I included in my first post.

Thanks,
Ryan

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

I don't think you're understanding what Jezebel is saying. The size of the
form field is immaterial if the space allowed for the text is adequate.
Users really should be using Tab to get from field to field, but if they
insist on clicking, they will not be allowed to click anywhere but in the
form field, thereby assuring that they fill in text in the right place. If
you just want to get the appearance of a larger field, you can increase the
number of nonbreaking spaces in the form field, but note that when users
click in a form field (instead of tabbing to it), the entire field is not
selected, and the more spaces you add, the more you increase the risk that
there will be spaces before and after the data the user enters.

 

[Cindy M.]

What I am trying to accomplish is to set columns two and four to be

"Text Form Fields". If someone clicks in the area next to "Request
Number" and enters a single character I don't want word to
automatically readjust the Text Form Field size to 1 character. This
causes big problems if someone wants to click back and edit the field.
They would have to click directly on the single character because the
rest of the area is now uneditable whitespace.

There's not a lot you can do, really. A possibility would be a macro
that fires when the form field is exited. If the content is less than n
characters (however many you find is useful), the macro will add spaces
to the end of the text. If it's more than n characters, it can delete
any spaces at the end of the text. Rough example

Sub TrimFormField()
Dim ffld As Word.FormField
Dim content As String
Dim minNumChars As Long

minNumChars = 5
Set ffld = ActiveDocument.FormFields(Selection.Bookmarks(1).Name)
Debug.Print ffld.Name
content = ffld.Result
If Len(content) < minNumChars Then
content = content & Space(minNumChars - Len(content))
Else
content = RTrim(content)
End If
ffld.Result = content
End Sub


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

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