Copying/selecting text in Word text form fields

February 26, 2018 11:26 AM

My organization has created a new Word document with fillable text form fields. After I enter text into these fields, Word does not allow me to copy or select text in any sort of normal manner; it generally selects the entire field, or will allow me to place the cursor in the middle of the field and then select everything in the field before the cursor, but it won't allow me to, e.g., select the second line and move it before the first line. It will allow me to select a single word. This is extremely frustrating, as the numbered list in one text field needs to correspond to the numbered list in a second text field, and being able to rearrange things is fairly necessary. Any ideas on fixing it? Windows machine running Word 2016.

I have very basic knowledge of creating templates, no knowledge of Macros. I'm not running into this problem on any other templates, with or without text form fields, so I'm guessing there's something funky with this particular template.

Bonus points if anyone can tell me how to allow spell-checking in the fields, too.

posted by lazuli to Technology (4 answers total)

I am typing this on an iPad so I haven't Word in front of me and can't precisely tell you what to try but I'll go with: Go to Word "backstage view" options > advanced > editing options and uncheck the "Automatically Select Entire Word" option. If it works, make it the default.

Not sure about spellcheck within fields in a form template.
posted by bz at 11:24 PM on February 26, 2018

Response by poster: Switchin out of "automatically select entire word" now allows me to select paragraphs, but if I try to select part of a paragraph, it still selects everything in the field before the cursor.
posted by lazuli at 1:19 PM on February 27, 2018

I have this issue in Access and my (probably overly simplistic and lame) workaround is to use the keyboard to select text rather than the mouse; for example, I put the cursor at the start of the text I want, hold down Shift, then hit the right arrow key until everything's selected. I can then copy and paste normally. I've never tried it in a word text form field but maybe it works there too?
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 7:43 AM on March 1, 2018

Response by poster: CheesesOfBrazil, yes, selecting with the keyboard works, but I know that I'm more comfortable with that than most of the other staff are, and I would love to find a solution that the other staff members could use. It's also just bizarre to me that it's just this one document template that's so finicky.
posted by lazuli at 7:46 AM on March 1, 2018