Hidden field emptied in online form

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Charles Kenyon - 03 Dec 2003 02:40 GMT

I am working on an online form (Word 97-2003) and have certain parts display
only if needed. These parts are tables which if the sum for the table is 0
is hidden text. Unfortunately when I tab from a field in the table (hidden
text) Word empties the field. Not only is the text that I originally
inserted missing, so is the default text for the field.

Is there any way to get around this? If not, I suppose I can intercept the
print commands and mark the text hidden at that time - and reverse after the
print!

TIA

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Charles Kenyon

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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 08 Dec 2003 12:43 GMT

Hi Charles,

> I am working on an online form (Word 97-2003) and have certain parts display
> only if needed. These parts are tables which if the sum for the table is 0
> is hidden text. Unfortunately when I tab from a field in the table (hidden
> text) Word empties the field. Not only is the text that I originally
> inserted missing, so is the default text for the field.

I'm just not seeing this. Perhaps I'm not setting up my test document
correctly. Here's what I did:

1. Inserted a table
2. Put a couple of text form fields in the table
3. Selected the table and formatted as hidden
4. Put another formfield outside the table
5. Protected the document

I can enter text in all the form fields, tabbing from field to field. None of
the entries is removed (Word 2003)

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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Charles Kenyon - 09 Dec 2003 02:25 GMT

Hi Cindy,

Using Word 2002 SP-2 the numerical entry in a text field is converted to 0.
The table is hidden by changing the font attribute to hidden, not through a
table style. The formfield is set to Number type with a default of $ 0.00
and a number format of $ #,###0.00;($ #w##0.00). Both fill-in and calculate
on exit are checked.

I've found that if only the field is formatted as hidden text, it responds
normally. If the entire row is so formatted, it reverts to 0. I also tried
changing the default number to 2.00. Upon typing anything in and then
tabbing out of the field, it goes to 0, not to the default or what was
typed.

I've worked around it by setting it up so that none of the fields are
hidden when text is entered. When the doc is printed, each table is checked
and if there are no entries, it is hidden at that time, printed, and
unhidden. This workaround is OK for my purposes. However, if you are curious
and want to look, I'll be happy to email you the template.

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> Hi Charles,
>
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> This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
> reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail :-)

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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 14 Dec 2003 11:29 GMT

Hi Charles,

I confirm, and I see it in Word 2003 as well. (So far) it seems to be limited
to fields of the "number" type; I don't see it with regular text fields.

So, another approach you could possibly use would be to not set the type as
"number", but leave it as text. You could then use an "Exit" macro to check
that the field actually contains a number; another possibility would be an IF
field with REF field that would display a message if the content isn't
numerical.

I'll report this to Microsoft. Thanks for following up on it :-)

> Using Word 2002 SP-2 the numerical entry in a text field is converted to 0.
> The table is hidden by changing the font attribute to hidden, not through a
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> tabbing out of the field, it goes to 0, not to the default or what was
> typed.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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Charles Kenyon - 15 Dec 2003 22:26 GMT

Hi Cindy,

Thanks for double-checking this anomoly for me. I've worked around it by not
having the table rows hidden during data entry but only at time of printing.
It works OK. I'll keep your suggestions in mind if the work-around becomes
problematic in the future.

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> Hi Charles,
>
[quoted text clipped - 28 lines]
> This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or
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Cindy M -WordMVP- - 16 Dec 2003 11:09 GMT

Hi Charles,

> Thanks for double-checking this anomoly for me.

And in the meantime, MS has confirmed it's a bug present in
all current (i.e. Word97 and onwards) versions of Word.
It's logged, and who knows <g>, it may even get fixed!
Thanks for pointing it out :-)

Cindy Meister

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