How to Create a Fillable Form in Microsoft Word | Create a Tab Through Form in Word

In this video I demonstrate how to create a fillable form in Microsoft Word: the form will be fillable on-screen. To create a fillable form in Word you need to use content controls. With content controls you can create drop-downs, date pickers & check boxes as well as controls for regular text. Once the content controls are in place, form fillers can easily tab through them when completing the form.

To protect your form, Microsoft Word allows you to restrict editing for form filling. With this restriction in place form fillers will only be able to edit content controls leaving the rest of the form protected from accidental changes.

Table of Contents:

00:00 - Introduction
01:15 - Starting the Form
02:32 - Using the Plain Text Content Control
04:14 - Using the Drop-down List Content Control
05:33 - Using the Date Picker Content Control
06:07 - Using Check Box Content Controls
07:40 - Using the Picture Content Control
08:34 - Using the Rich Text Content Control
09:37 - Using the Repeating Section Content Control
10:51 - Using the Building Block Gallery Content Control
14:53 - Restrict Editing for Forms
16:47 - The 'Remove content control when contents are edited' property
17:16 - The 'Content control cannot be deleted' property
18:05 - The 'Contents cannot be edited' property
18:47 - The 'Show as': Bounding Box or Start / End Tag property
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[wayneedmondson]

Hi Chester. Cool example! Thanks for showing how to design this form. Thumbs up!!

[lavelclaytorsProjectswPurpose]

Thank you so much for sharing. Very informative. Can this be converted to a Google docs? If so, will the placeholders and restrictions still work?

[richardburton]

Have you done one of how to email a fillable form across to other people

[dawnvannosdol]

I have no restrictions on my document and I have tried to save it as multiple type documents (i.e., docx., docm., .dotx), but I can't figure out a problem with the Building Block option. It will only open and work for me, but if I send it to anyone to use, it won't work. Any suggestions?

[TheSquirrelMommy]

I'm having a heck of a time with tab order in a Word form. I remember a time when this used to be easy to enter the preferred tab order, but now it appears to be gone. Can anyone help? I'm using Word 365.

[carolynecaraballo]

is it possible to link a check box to a different place in a document add text to that location - example if the user clicks in the box it would got to a different area and add a row with text

[susanfair]

When I restict editing to "filling in forms", and then email the form to someone to use, they receive a message that the form is read only. Is if mandatory to create Word fillable forms in a table? I created the form I desired, and then inserted text boxes with content controls next to the field names. How can I lock down all fields on the document and only have fillable fields? Thank you!

[botrrun]

is there a way to create a field and limit the number of words the field can contain i.e. 250 words?