Forms and spell checking

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I have what I believe is a Form Document in Word. Sorry, l know very little about Word and wish I used it more to know it better. This is an review form where one enters names, dates, and has a number of rows with “grey boxes” wehre I enter data and scores ann so on. However, when I go to run Spell CHeck, it’s greyed out. Also, the text is black in a dark grey box. How do I get this “back to normal” so I can run spell check and read it easily? I have a bunch of these to do, so I’d like to make it a little easier. Would those grey boxes print? TYIA

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I have what I believe is a Form Document in Word. Sorry, l know very little about Word and wish I used it more to know it better. This is an review form where one enters names, dates, and has a number of rows with “grey boxes” wehre I enter data and scores ann so on. However, when I go to run Spell CHeck, it’s greyed out. Also, the text is black in a dark grey box. How do I get this “back to normal” so I can run spell check and read it easily? I have a bunch of these to do, so I’d like to make it a little easier. Would those grey boxes print? TYIA

If the document is a form it is “protected” and a number of facilities like spell checking will be greyed out. The idea of course is that the person filling in the form has limited scope for changing things – they can only type in the fields they are intended by the document creator to fill in, and they can’t change anything else. If the form was protected with a password, you’ll need to know what the password is. But it may have been protected without the use of a password.

I’m not sure what version of Word you are using, but in mine (Word 2003) you can go to the Tools menu and click on Unprotect Document. If it needs a password it will ask for it. You can then do what you like with the document and protect it again afterwards.

The grey background in the fields is controllable – see the screenshot below of the Help item on this.

Does this help?

Ian

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You need a macro to spell check a document protected for forms. See How to enable the spellchecker in a protected document.

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Thanks! The form was not password protected and I am able to spell check. Will keep the macro for future use. However, now that I have run Spellcheck, and I want to add some text to the boxes, when I try and click the boxes, the whole box is selected and I cannot get into the text to change things. What a nuisance. I hesitate to reinstate Protection because I cannot interpret what the checkboxes would do.

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The easiest way to toggle protection on and off is to click the “lock” button on the Forms toolbar. This has the added advantage that it preserves the content of already filled-in form fields.

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The easiest way to toggle protection on and off is to click the “lock” button on the Forms toolbar. This has the added advantage that it preserves the content of already filled-in form fields.

Ok, i put up the toolbar; it is handy. But when I run spellcheck with protection off, I am told everything is OK. Yet I see obvious errors, even when I select the whole document and F7 it again.

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The form fields have probably been set to “Do not check spelling or grammar” automatically. Try the following:
– Make sure that the document is not protected.
– Press Ctrl+A to select the entire document.
– Select Tools | Language | Set Language…
– Click the check box “Do not check spelling or grammar” until it has been cleared.
– Click OK.
Now start the spell check again.

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The form fields have probably been set to “Do not check spelling or grammar” automatically. Try the following:
– Make sure that the document is not protected.
– Press Ctrl+A to select the entire document.
– Select Tools | Language | Set Language…
– Click the check box “Do not check spelling or grammar” until it has been cleared.
– Click OK.
Now start the spell check again.

Ideally, the whole document should be set to ‘no proofing’, then reset just the appropriate formfields (eg not including names & addresses) to allow proofing. That way, the spell check’s action is limited to just the user-data that might require it. You wouldn’t want the user being prompted to ‘correct’ anything else …

Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

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