MS Word - Forms - Problem with accessing after reopening

Hi

I never before used MS Word to make a form. I tried today, I thought it worked. Made a nice-looking form, but after protecting it, when I save it and reopen it, I can't work in it, nor type anything in - or even unprotect it for that matter. When I save it without protecting it first, however, then reopen it, it automatically opens in design mode - which is obviously not how I want the receivers to find it, either - they're supposed to just be able to type in their name and address into the textboxes, etc.

How did I get here? OK. I was making a registration form. Decided instead of just typing and leaving empty spaces to make a proper form, with text- and checkboxes. So I opened the "forms" toolbar but did not like the textboxes it has, at all. Through Help I found that you can also open a toolbar with the ActiveX controls and find more options there (View -> Toolbars -> one that in Dutch is called "Werkset Besturingselementen" - like, the controls toolbar). So I did and used the textboxes from there.

For each textbox, I modified the size and went into its properties to adapt at least two settings, though I doubt this is what caused the problem I now have. I changed SpecialEffect (from fmSpecialEffectSunken to fmSpecialEffectFlat, which makes the textbox invisible), and BorderStyle (opting for 1 - single, which makes the textbox show up again, but then with a plain, single line around it). For bigger textboxes I also toggled the MultiLine and EnterKeyBehaviour settings to "true" and made sure WordWrap was set to "true". That was cool, to find out how that works.

OK, fine - so I had pretty textboxes now that do what I want, added a bunch of checkboxes as well, formatted the rest of the form, looks good.

Now to try out filling in the form, you have to toggle the designmode on the controls toolbar off. So I toggled the design mode off, yep, you can fill it in.

But when I now save the file and reopen it however, it reopens in design mode. And so, if you click on a textbox, you can change its size and stuff but not actually type things in it; first you have to open the controls toolbar and toggle design mode off. So thats no way to send this file out.

In the Word helpfiles, it says that if you want to send the form out and want others to open it in Word and fill it in, you have to protect the document. You can do so through the Extra->Protect Document file menu, check "forms" and optionally add a password. You can also just toggle the "protect form" button on the "forms" toolbar.

So I did that - works. I can now fill in all the textboxes, use "enter" to skip from one textbox to the next (except for the ones whose EnterKeyBehaviour setting I toggled), I can check the checkboxes, great. I save it, close the file. Reopen the file to make sure it still works - and its totally locked. I cant click on any word, but neither can I click into any of the textboxes, or check any of the checkboxes - nothing. Also, on the "forms" toolbar the "protect/unprotect document" button is blanked out, as in n/a; same with the "undo document protection" item in the Extra menu - cant click it. On the controls toolbar, the open/close design mode button, too, is blanked out, cant click it: only the "properties" and "view programme code" buttons are available.

I get this whether or not I use the password option in the "protect document" menu.

So now I have two files (cause I kept a back-up): one thats protected but that you cant actually fill in; another you can open but that opens in design mode. Since this is a simple registration form thats supposed to go out to a lot of people who dont want to be bothered about whats up with it, just wanna type in their address, etc, neither will do. Anyone out there got a clue about what I did wrong or should do next?