How do I create a form in MS Word that can be filled out? ?

Question

Usually when I use Word to create a document, the lines move when somebody tries to fill in data. How can I create a form where somebody can enter a name, date, etc. without the lines moving to the next line?

Answer 1

This is one of the places Word demonstrates its bias toward printed documents versus electronic ones.

In short, I don't know of any satisfactory way of doing what you want.   There doesn't seem to be a way to satisfy all of the following:

1. Underlining of blank characters to the end of the line and

2. Non-erasure of the underline when data is entered and

3. Non-expansion of the underlined space when the data is entered.

2 and 3 in particular work against each other, especially since you can't control the user's Insert/Overtype mode keyboard setting.

All that being said, the best way to get underlining of blank characters is to put a non-breaking space (CTRL/SHIFT/Space) at the end of each line of ordinary spaces and set the entire thing to Underline (CTRL/U).  The keyboard would have to be in Overtype mode to avoid pushing blanks to the next line.

The alternative is to use underscore characters, but they get wiped out as data is entered.

Good luck with this dilemma.

Answer 2

This should help:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/H...

Answer 3

You should look at using Word forms - with fields rather than some kind of underlined "space" where someone types something. Fields are a much better option for forms.