Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Word versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Word 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Word, click here: Converting Forms to Regular Documents.

Converting Forms to Regular Documents

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated February 19, 2019)

As you are working with forms in Word, there may be times when you want to convert the responses to your form back to regular text. (There are many times when regular text is much easier to work with than answers in forms.) To do the conversion, follow these steps:

Unprotect the form. (The way you unprotect a form varies by version of Word and has been covered in other WordTips.)
Select the whole document either by pressing Ctrl+A or by choosing Select All from the Edit menu.
Press Ctrl+Shift+F9.

Now all the fields in the document have been changed to unlinked, regular text. You can now edit the document as you normally would.

The caveat here, of course, is that all of your fields are changed to regular text. Thus, if you had other fields in the document (such as fields for dates or sequential numbers), these are also changed to regular text by this process.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1338) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Converting Forms to Regular Documents.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is nine minus 1?

2017-10-18 14:29:32

Rich

Is it possible to create a document that is fully protected from editing, but allow it to be copied and have the copy editable?
I want to create a form that others save under a different name and revise (not just fill in blanks).
Thanks,

2015-10-16 08:22:23

Steve DeWeese

THANK YOU!!! After trying to insert a caption, my screen greyed out with 4 hazy vertical lines. I had to reset the page layout but could not edit. I did these steps and viola - success. Thank you for saving my document.

2014-11-07 02:04:15

Alexandre Dunlop-Brière

Thank you!!

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