Word Forms-Highlighting completed text form fields only 1

[brukus]

Hello,
I made a form in Word 2003 to collect information (about 20 pieces of data), but only some of the information changes frequently (eg. Address rarely changes, but Space for Lease can change frequently).

I need to find a way to highlight only the text form fields that have data entered by the user (without asking the user to highlight the text field him/herself). Is this possible using Word?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[macropod]

Hi brukus,

I need to find a way to highlight only the text form fields that have data entered by the user

Aren't all fields udated by the user at some time? Or do you mean you only want to have the fields updated before the last save (or print) shaded? In any event, if you're using a document protected for forms, the user wouldn't be apply to change the shading (except for turning field shading on/off - but that affects all fields at once).

Manipulating the shading through code would be fairly straightforward, but it seems to me that you probably wouldn't want something that automatically resets all shading immediately the document is opened - otherwise you wouldn't then be able to see what was last updated.



[MS MVP - Word]

 

[brukus]

Thanks for the reply, but I believe my situation is a little more straight forward than that.

This is an example of what I would like to do. The user gets a protected document (user input info in brackets, form info is black) See example below:

What changes do you have, please specify below (only fill out fields with changes, if there are no changes to a field, please leave it blank):
Name:
Address: <111 Main St.>
Phone Number:

The top of the form contains a jpg of the ad that we currently have. The client has indicated that name and phone number have no changes, but his address has changed to 111 Main St.

I would like to have <111 Main St.> be highlighted automatically (when the user inputs the information) so it would be easier to see which fields have changes when I print out the form. Remeber this form has about 20-30 fields.

Thanks again.

 

[fumei]

The top of the form contains a jpg of the ad that we currently have. The client has indicated that name and phone number have no changes, but his address has changed to 111 Main St.

1. How do you know the client has indicated anything at all????? If the client HAS indicated it....why didn't you change it when you found that out?

If you can tell me how it has been indicated...then I can tell how to make that one highlighted.

I am not sure what the relevance of the JPG is. If you are thinking about picking up infomation from it, forget it.

Or are you, as macropod suggested, looking for something to detect changes at all?

Gerry

 

[macropod]

Hi brukus,

If the fields for the unchanged data are to remain blank, then all you need to do is to format each field with the attributes you want. To do this for a given field, simply:
. unprotect the document
. select a field
. press Shift-F9 to reveal the field code (eg {FORMTEXT})
. format the field with the attributes you want
. repeat the above three setps for each field
. protect the document
Now, any fields the user skips over will not have your shading format, but any that have data in them will have it.

Cheers

[MS MVP - Word]

 

[brukus]

Thanks for the info. I tried it and when I highlighted the {FORMTEXT} field, every field was highlighted (regardless of whether there was text in the field or not after I protected the document and filled in some text).