Unprotecting a footer in a protected document

One of our medical forms must have an identical footer on each page containing the patient name and ID number. The patient name and ID are entered by the user of the form. The document is protected which has caused the footer to be unavailable for updating. Am I missing something in the set up of the form sections? Can the footer be indentified as a section in the protected document and therefore be left unprotected? Please advise.

I assume that the patient name and ID are being entered into a formfield in
the body of the document. If that is the case, check the calculate on exit
property of those formfields and in the footer of the document, insert a
cross reference to the text of the bookmarks assigned to those formfields.
Then when you protect the document and the user enters the name and ID and
exits from those fields, the cross reference in the footer will be updated
to show the information.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Stephanie" wrote in message
...
One of our medical forms must have an identical footer on each page
containing the patient name and ID number. The patient name and ID are
entered by the user of the form. The document is protected which has caused
the footer to be unavailable for updating. Am I missing something in the set
up of the form sections? Can the footer be indentified as a section in the
protected document and therefore be left unprotected? Please advise.

I have followed the steps below and it works well but only if the document is left unprotected and the update field option is used in the footer. If the document is protected the footer does not update from the cross referenced fields. What have I done incorrectly or missed? I appreciate your assistance!

----- Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote: -----

I assume that the patient name and ID are being entered into a formfield in
the body of the document. If that is the case, check the calculate on exit
property of those formfields and in the footer of the document, insert a
cross reference to the text of the bookmarks assigned to those formfields.
Then when you protect the document and the user enters the name and ID and
exits from those fields, the cross reference in the footer will be updated
to show the information.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Stephanie" wrote in message
...
One of our medical forms must have an identical footer on each page
containing the patient name and ID number. The patient name and ID are
entered by the user of the form. The document is protected which has caused
the footer to be unavailable for updating. Am I missing something in the set
up of the form sections? Can the footer be indentified as a section in the
protected document and therefore be left unprotected? Please advise.

Are you tabbing out of the field after changing it? Other means of leaving
the field may not trigger the updating.

Otherwise, I have used a StyleRef field successfully with the subject
information having a unique character style format (that looks just like the
underlying paragraph format).
--

Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide

See also the MVP FAQ: http://www.mvps.org/word which is awesome!
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"Stephanie" wrote in message
...
I have followed the steps below and it works well but only if the document
is left unprotected and the update field option is used in the footer. If
the document is protected the footer does not update from the cross
referenced fields. What have I done incorrectly or missed? I appreciate your
assistance!

----- Doug Robbins - Word MVP wrote: -----

I assume that the patient name and ID are being entered into a
formfield in
the body of the document. If that is the case, check the calculate
on exit
property of those formfields and in the footer of the document,
insert a
cross reference to the text of the bookmarks assigned to those
formfields.
Then when you protect the document and the user enters the name and
ID and
exits from those fields, the cross reference in the footer will be
updated
to show the information.

--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for
the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions
forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP
"Stephanie" wrote in message
...
One of our medical forms must have an identical footer on each page
containing the patient name and ID number. The patient name and ID
are
entered by the user of the form. The document is protected which has
caused
the footer to be unavailable for updating. Am I missing something in
the set
up of the form sections? Can the footer be indentified as a section
in the
protected document and therefore be left unprotected? Please advise.

That's exactly it, thank you. It 's such a small thing but what a big impact!