Forum Discussion

questionaboutword's avatar
questionaboutword
Copper Contributor
Mar 09, 2023

Cannot delete text in legacy tools form field

I'm having issues deleting and selecting legacy form fields in ALL my world documents.   I have several documents with legacy tools form fields to enter text.  I then protect the document so only t...
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP's avatar
Doug_Robbins_Word_MVP
MVP
Mar 09, 2023

questionaboutword Instead of following the practice of "emptying" the formfields so that you can reuse the form, it would be better to save the form as a template and use File>New and select that template whenever you want to use the form.

However, if you assign a macro containing the following code to the keyboard or the Quick Access Toolbar so that you can run it while the form is protected, it will reset all of the formfields in the document

With ActiveDocument
    If .ProtectionType = wdAllowOnlyFormFields Then
        .Unprotect
        .Protect wdAllowOnlyFormFields, False
    Else
        .Protect wdAllowOnlyFormFields, False
    End If
End With

Finally however, your mention of Legacy Formfields indicates that you are using a version of Office that supports the use of Content Controls and it would probably be better if you re-designed the form to use Content Controls rather than Legacy FormFields.

Resources