I'm trying to create a lease form for my real estate company in Word 2010. (We already have them in Wordperfect but we're switching word processors). Here's what the document needs to have:

1.  Keyboard prompts for the user to type in data (Landlord name, tenant name, monthly rent, start & end dates, etc)

2.  The ability to have some of those fields repeat throughout the document. For instance, if the user types the Landlord name once, it should populate in other places throughout the document).

3.  The ability for the user to jump from one data entry field to the next, rather than having to manually search for the text fields.

Hopefully the above can be accomplished without complex programming (it's easy to do in Wordperfect). I've done some research about fill-in fields or control fields, but I can't get either to do #2 and #3 above.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Mike

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Reply from Richard Rost:

This should help with SOME of your issues:

1. First, turn on the DEVELOPER TAB for your Ribbon. Go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon. On the right side put a check in the box for the DEVELOPER tab.

2. Now, load up your document. Go to the new Developer tab, in the Controls section, and click on DESIGN MODE.

3. To place form fields where you want the user to input data, use the PLAIN TEXT CONTENT CONTROL in the Controls section. There are also controls for rich text (with formatting), check boxes, drop-down lists, and more.

4. Once you've got your form fields in place, turn off Design Mode. You can now test data entry if you want.

5. Protect your document so users can ONLY enter data into the form fields you specified and not change the rest of the document. Click on RESTRICT EDITING in the Protect section. Check option #2 and select "filling in forms." Then click #3, "Yes, start enforcing protection." Enter a password.

This should get you started. YES, you can use some macros or VBA to prompt the user for input and then fill in some fields with that data (like asking for a person's name once and then filling that into a bunch of different boxes) but that's a little more advanced, and I don't have time right now to go into all of that. I really haven't covered much with Word Macros or VBA in my lessons, but this would make a great seminar, so perhaps I'll cover it in the near future.

AS A SIDE NOTE... personally if this is all you need, I would do this in MICROSOFT ACCESS. You can set up your legal documents as REPORTS and then make a fill-in form to ask the user to fill in the details. That data would get saved in a table for permanent record-keeping, and you could print out a nice formatted report with all the data. You could even put the text of the document itself into a table. Oooh... another great idea for a seminar. :)