Question

I need a non-editable field in a word form that can be read in vba.

Currently I use a text field, which is hidden. As in:

ActiveDocument.FormFields("DocID").Select
    Selection.Font.Hidden = false
//do read then re-hide it.

However users can still ‘tab’ in to this text field and overwrite the document ID that is there and thus invalidate the vba macro. And unfortunately that is what happens.

I can set the text field property ‘Fill-in enabled’ to false which gives the desired effect in the form, i.e the user cannot edit it. However now this text field cannot be read in vba.

ActiveDocument.FormFields("DocID").SomeProperty 
//throws error 'The requested member of the collection does not exist'

So my question is, is there a way I can store a hidden variable in a word form that can be read in a vba macro?

Unfortunately this has to be a Word-97 compatible solution.

Answer 1

You could use custom document properties instead, see here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa537154(v=office.11).aspx