Working in a created form: Issue - Rich Text Conrols

[Phil J W]

So I've created a form and have a bunch of Rich Text Control feilds. I lock
the form down and tested it with various team members. For some reason
clicking in one of the feilds and tryin to type fails right away, it doesnt
work until you click out of that control feild and click anywhere else in the
docement then go back to that feild. Is there a way i can make that feild
active allowing the user to click in it right away and edit?

Thank you.

Phil

 

[Jay Freedman]

So I've created a form and have a bunch of Rich Text Control feilds. I lock
the form down and tested it with various team members. For some reason
clicking in one of the feilds and tryin to type fails right away, it doesnt
work until you click out of that control feild and click anywhere else in the
docement then go back to that feild. Is there a way i can make that feild
active allowing the user to click in it right away and edit?

Thank you.

Phil

Is this Word 2007, and are the "rich text control fields" actually rich text
content controls?

Content controls are not supposed to be locked like legacy form fields. Unlock
the document. Then select the entire document and click the Group button next to
the content controls, and choose Group from the popup. That will give you the
same effect as locking, that nothing outside the content controls will be
editable.

 

[Phil J W]

This is word 2007 and and rick text control feilds. Using the group option
does work, but it diasables other feilds i have within my document like check
boxes. In this rich text feilds i also have done some formating like included
bullets and stuff, and when the user hits enter tio the next line the bullets
continue, but when the form is group the user can no longer go to another
line with another bullet. Thanks for your help so far!

Phil

 

[Phil J W]

I've actualy got the legacy feilds working no9w, ive split my form into
sections and locked certain sections, now with the rich text commands once i
group them im still having the issue of not being able to creat more bullet
points as i previously stated. Thanks.

 

[Jay Freedman]

I can't say I understand the design decisions that led to this situation,
but it appears that form protection anywhere in the document -- even though
the content control is in an unprotected section -- prevents you from
applying bullets or any style in a rich text content control. This occurs
even without grouping. The status bar shows the message "This modification
is not allowed because the selection is locked". This is the same behavior
you get in Word 2003, for example, if you try to modify a picture in an
unlocked section of a protected form -- you can insert pictures there, but
you can't format them in any way without unlocking the entire form.

The best solution I can suggest is to replace the check boxes with the
content-control-based version that MVP Greg Maxey describes at
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Custom_CC_Checkboxes.htm, and replace any other
legacy form fields with their content control equivalents, so the form can
be grouped but completely free of forms protection.

After grouping without forms protection, you'll find that you can't apply
bullets or numbering in the rich text controls as direct formatting from the
Home tab of the ribbon or from the minibar, but you can apply List Bullet or
List Number paragraph styles.

 

[Phil J W]

"This occurs even without grouping. The status bar shows the message "This
modification is not allowed because the selection is locked"

I'm not sure if i understand, if the form is locked and my controls are UN
grouped I can have different level bullets like this:

•
o

As soon as i group everything i can have multiple lines of bullets but not
different levels...thats my current issue. Thanks agian.

 

[Phil J W]

I also realize if i tyope in three lines of text (3 different bullets) when
its GROUPED and i move the cursor up to the second line with the up arrow, i
can then change the bullet or change the level of the bullet. I just wiosh
there was a work around because the end user may not know of this process....