MS Word 2008 - Text Boxes Not Editable By User

Hi there,

I have created a MS Word document for a client, which needs to be completed by users.

The document was created in the following way:

File: New Document: Insert Picture: Insert JPEG from file: Format Picture: Send Behind Copy: Draw Text Boxes over blank spaces in JPEG to be filled by the users.

When I send the document to the client they can not double click and fill in the text boxes.

I then attempted to convert the Text Boxes to frames instead, which worked. But when I get to the second page, pages start disappearing from the document when the text boxes are converted!!

I am attaching two images: One of the current (blue) text boxes, that don't work. And one of the (black) frames, that do work.

Can anyone tell me how to format the document for all text boxes to be converted to text frames automatically?

PLEASE HELP!!

Thank you,
Chenél

I don't know the answer to your question as I stopped using Office 2008 years ago and am not sure if the current version of Office works the same way. Anyway, Word is not a good way to send a fill in document to a client. Much easier to use PDF. Of course that means you need to spend money on a good program such as Acrobat. But if it's for business purposes, that's the way to go.

Chenel said:

Can anyone tell me how to format the document for all text boxes to be converted to text frames automatically?

Click to expand...

I don't know how to convert all of them at once, but here are instructions for how to create a form in Word with fill-able text boxes:

Step 1: Show the Developer tab
1. On the Word menu, select Preferences.
2. Under Authoring and Proofing Tools, click View.
3. Under Ribbon, check the Show developer tab box.

Step 2: Open a template or use a blank document
You can start with a blank document and create your own form. Or, to save time, you can start with a form template.
1. On the File menu, click New from Template.
2. In the Search box, type form.
3. Double-click the template you want to use.

Step 3: Add content to the form
1. In the document, click where you want to add a content control.
2. On the Developer tab, click Text Box, Check Box, or Combo Box.
3. To set specific properties for the control, click Options, and then configure the properties that you want.
NOTE: To create a list of drop-down items in a combo box, select the combo box placeholder, click Options, and then add the items that you want to appear in the drop-down list.
4. Repeat steps 1 through 3 for each control that you want to add.

Thank you, chscag. But unfortunately it has to be Word, as the document needs to plug into a Word-based operating system on the client's side. Thanks anyway.

Thank you, Randy. But all the documents have already been created, only the text boxes need to be 'activated'. There are too many of them to start from scratch! Thanks anyway.

Is there any mandatory in using exactly Office 2008 for this purpose? Because I can't make up any valid reason to torture yourself in such a fashion. Use Office 2018, Adobe Acrobat, every online tool to edit pdf, basically anything but 10 yrs old version of MS Office!