Creating forms in word

While using a word form to mark a student’s project submission, I noticed that every time I typed on the underlined bit, the letters pushes the underline away. Now, pathologists often have a bit of obsessive compulsive personality trait, so this matter deserves some serious research. The article by Word MVPs Suzanne S. Barnhill and Dave Rado is probably the easiest for simple Word users like me to follow. The process is quite simple.

  • Use 1 row multi-column tables for each line that contains text and underlined entry fields.
  • Set 0 for cell margins
  • Set no borders for text cells, and bottom border for entry fields, i.e. the text goes in one cell (which has no borders), the adjacent underlined field goes into the next cell (which a bottom border).
  • Afterwards the tables can be joined together (by deleting the blank lines between the tables) and the height of cells adjusted. Also remove gridlines from view.

The end result is a form that can be printed but also entered digitally.

For multiline fields, one can select the underlined paragraphs and edit borders for the paragraphs and choose a dotted line for bottom border (other borders off) and edit the paragraph properties to make it single line and 6pt above each paragraph.

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