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In today’s Ask the Admin, I’ll show you how to add content controls to your documents in Word 2016.
Date Picker Content Control in Word 2016 (Image Credit: Russell Smith)
Using a form in a Word document may seem like a feature that’s only useful for creating questionnaires, but content controls such as text fields, checkboxes and drop-down menus can also be used in collaboration scenarios where you want to share a document but guide colleagues on where they should provide input.
When used alongside the ability to restrict editing in a document, as I demonstrated a couple of weeks ago on Petri in An Office 365 Tip on Restricting Editing in Word 2016, content controls are especially useful in ensuring that only specific parts of a document can be modified.
Before you can add content controls to a document, you need to enable the Developer tab in the ribbon.
You should now see the Developer tab on the ribbon, and now you’re ready to add form controls to Word documents.
Unlike the old Active X controls used with VBA, content controls in newer versions of Word aren’t a security risk and are compatible with Open XML Automation. Let’s look at the available content controls on the Developer tab.
Rich Text Content Control in Word 2016 (Image Credit: Russell Smith)
Rich Text Content Control properties in Word 2016 (Image Credit: Russell Smith)
I’m not going to detail every control available in Word in this article, as they’re quite self-explanatory to use, but let’s have a look at one more. The key to controlling the input information is to set restrictions in the Properties for each content control you add to a document.
Date Picker Content Control properties in Word 2016 (Image Credit: Russell Smith)
Once you’re done adding controls, you can save the document as a standard Word file or template, or add further editing restrictions to ensure users can’t edit text or other content elements not contained in a content control.
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