How To Create Word Forms With ActiveX Controls

by Gerald Robinson

Shows you how to use ActiveX form controls, traditional bookmarks, and embedded Excel worksheets to create forms in Word. We will use a checklist that use these three concepts (ActiveX form controls, embedded Excel worksheets, and traditional bookmarks and references) and also add a flowchart to the checklist. ActiveX controls don’t need form locking (either for a section or the entire form) but have limited formatting without using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). To overcome some of those formatting limitations of ActiveX controls, an embedded Excel worksheet can be used. This allows you to overcome the formatting problem without locking the form, but adds to the size of the file. It also allows you to add features that are unique to Excel, such as a dynamic hyperlink, to your Word documents. With a change to one or more drop down boxes, you can create a new hyperlink. I use one at the end of the checklist to link to the current monthly billing worksheet. Bookmarks are a really cool feature in Word that allows you to write something once (setting the bookmark) and repeat it multiple times (reference to the bookmark). This volume uses traditional bookmarks which use a square bracket ([ ]) on either side of the bookmark with the bookmark contents between the brackets.

84 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 14, 2012