Sorry I wasn't clear, but you have helped me get started. It's a
little hard to explain. We receive Word documents with information
already completed on the first page and the cursor at the top of the
second page. The information on the first page is what is protected.
On the second page, the users are to write a narrative. We have other
Word files containing most of what needs to be written in the
narrative in the unprotected area beginning on the second page. The
macro is invoked with a keyboard hotkey and looks at the characters to
the left of the cursor until a space is found and then selects that
text. The macro expands six digits that make a valid date into a
spelled out date, and if the selection isn't a valid date it looks for
a file with the name of the selection and inserts one space and then
the file, like an autotext entry would so. Some of these inserted
files contain places where the user has to enter some things, such as
a date or the information from yet another file. An example might be
File1 containing: "The petition dated {Quote} was postmarked on
{Quote}. Precedent case no. {Quote} establishes that where the date of
the document and the postmark differ, the postmark date is the
controlling date." File2 would contain a citation for the precedent
case. When we have used this with our unprotected documents, the user
could type file1 and the hotkey, and the text from file 1 would be
inserted with the insertion point after the word "dated." The user
could enter the six digits for the date and the hotkey to invoke the
macro again to expand the date. Then the user would hit F11 and the
insertion point would move to the location following "postmarked on"
where users would use the macro again to expand that date. Then the
user would hit F11 again to move to the location after "case no."
where he or she would enter File2 and the hotkey to insert the
citation.

Your suggestion solves the problem of putting the insertion point at
the place where the user has to make the first entry, but if the
protection is turned back on after the file is inserted, then F11
won't advance to the next location.  If there is no method to advance
to the next field with protection on, then is there a way to delay
turning the protection back on for some period of time, like 1 minute?
This would give the user time to enter the values, but minimize the
chance that he or she would inadvertently change anything on the first
page.

Again thanks for your help.