Forms

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Forms' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Allowing Only Form Field Changes
Word allows you to protect a document so that only form fields can be changed.

AutoFormat Within Form Fields
When entering information into protected form fields, Word doesn't apply the formatting inherent in the AutoFormat As You Type feature. This tip explains how why this is so and discusses one possible workaround.

Calculating Form Fields
Word enables you to create forms with fields that users fill in. You can even create calculations based on what users enter into form fields. Here's how to get those calculations to automatically update whenever you change information in the form.

Converting Forms to Regular Documents
Word allows you to protect documents that are intended to be used as forms. If you want to convert the form responses back to regular text, you need to follow a couple of steps that will stop the data from being changed, as described in this tip.

Creating Traditional Forms
Are you using Word to create a traditional form; one that will be printed on paper and then filled in? This tip is full of advice on how you can make those forms look the best they can look.

Entering Calculations in a Form Field
Creating a field that will calculate two other form fields.

Entering Many Items In a Drop-Down Form Field
One of the controls you can add to a Word form is a drop-down form field. This field is similar to drop-down lists used in various dialog boxes. If you have many, many items you want in the drop-down list, then you may need to consider different options, described in this tip, for getting the type of form you want.

Field Calculations in Locked Forms
When you lock a form, you make the form fields in the document accessible. If you have a form field that is calculated based on the contents in other fields, you may wonder how you can make sure Word always recalculates the value shown in the field. This tip discusses the settings you need to make in order to get the proper calculation done automatically.

Protecting Parts of a Document
Word doesn't require you to protect entire documents. Instead, you can protect different sections within a document, as described in this tip.

Read-Only Documents
Using both Word and Windows, there are a variety of ways you can mark a file as read-only so that it cannot be changed. This tip discusses the different techniques you can use.

Saving and Using a Form
Once your form is completed, with all the form fields in place and configured properly, you need to save the form properly so that you can later use it. This tip explains how to save the form as a template and then create a new document based on that template.

Saving Form Data for a Database
When creating forms, you can save the data users enter into its own file.

Spell Checking Forms
Word includes some specialized tools that allow you to create forms that can be later filled in by users of your document. Unfortunately, spell-checking what people put in the form controls can be problematic. This tip describes the problem, along with some workarounds you can use.

Text Form Fields in Word 2007
Word allows you to create fill-in-the-blank forms that are great for collecting information from users. A staple of such forms is the text form field. For at least one Word user, how that form behaved in Word 2007 was causing some problems.

Understanding Forms
Word provides a set of tools that you can use to easily create data entry forms. Before you can hop into the actual forms, however, it is helpful to understand what forms are and how they can be used. This tip covers the basics, including a high-level overview of how you create forms.

Undesired Font in Form Fields
If you get unwanted formatting in your form fields, it could be because of the way you are formatting the line on which the form field appears. This tip discusses the way that form field formatting occurs and provides examples of how you can format the fields.

Unprotecting a Word 2003 Form in Word 2007
Many people, as they move from one version of Word to another, need to grapple with how to accomplish familiar tasks in the new environment. In no instance is this need more pronounced than in Word 2007. In this tip you discover how you can modify forms you protected originally in Word 2003.

Working with Form Fields
Word provides a set of tools that you can use to easily create data entry forms. These tools allow you to insert form fields and modify the properties of the fields so that they do exactly what you want. This tip explains how to enter and modify form fields according to your needs.