How to Create Fillable Forms in Word

Did you know that you can create forms in Word that people can fill out? When you hear about fillable forms, it is almost always related to Adobe and PDF documents because that’s the most popular format.

However, Word is also quite a powerful tool and you can use it to quickly create forms that you can either print or send via email, etc. If you need to create a survey that will go out to many people and you want all the responses tallied for your automatically, it might be best to useGoogle Docs to create the survey.

In this article, I’ll show you how to create a form with text boxes, check boxes, a date picker and a list box. You can also make your forms a lot better looking if you use tables to organize everything.

Enable Developer Tab

By default, you can’t create forms in Word unless you enable theDevelopertab in the ribbon. Since it’s not used by a lot of people, Microsoft disabled it by default. To enable the tab, click onFileand thenOptions.

On the left-hand side, click onCustomize Ribbonand then check theDeveloperbox in the right-hand list box.

Click OK and click on the tab in the ribbon. The section we are most interested in isControls.

Creating a Form in Word

The Controls section has about eight different controls that can be added to your Word document: Rich Text, Plain-Text, Picture, Building Block Gallery, Checkbox, Combo Box, Drop-Down List, and Date Picker.

To insert a control, just click on it and it will appear wherever your cursor was located. In my example below, I created a table and added two plain-text boxes for first name and last name.

By default, each control has its own filler text. For a plain text control, it isClick or tap here to enter text. You can edit this text for any control by clicking on theDesign Modebutton that is to the right of the control icons.

You’ll see some blue placeholders appear on the left and right of any controls you have added to your document. Select the text and change it to whatever you like. Click on theDesign Modebutton again to exit the mode.

Next, click on your newly added control so that it is highlighted and then click onProperties, which is directly below the Design Mode button. Each control will have a standard set of options with custom options at the bottom based on what type of control it is.

Here you can give the control a title, change the color, style the text and specify whether or not the control can be edited or deleted. At the very bottom are the control specific options, which for the case of a plain text control, is whether you want to allow multiple lines or not. That last option is useful if you need someone to type in a paragraph of text.

So what’s the difference between a plain-text control and a rich text control? Well, not much. In a rich text control, you can change the font/color settings for each word individually, whereas the plain-text control will apply the formatting to all the text. You would think the plain-text control would not allow bold, font changes or color changes, but it does.

Next, I went ahead and added a drop down list control to my form. You’ll see it saysChoose an itemand that’s it. In order to add items to the list, you have to click onProperties.

Click theAddbutton and then type in a name for your choice. By default, theDisplay NameandValuewill be the same, but you can change it if you like. There really is no reason to change the value unless you are writing Word macros and refer to the controls in code.

Once you have added all your choices, go ahead and click OK and you’ll now be able to select the options from the drop-down list.

The only difference between the dropdown list control and the combo box control is that the latter allows the user to enter their own value if they please. In the dropdown list, you have to choose from one of choices in the list. In the combo box, you can either choose from the list or type in your own value.

The date picker control works just like any date picker you have probably used on airline booking sites, etc. When you click on it, a calendar appears and you can simply click on the date to select it.

If you click on thePropertiesbutton, you’ll see that there are quite a few options for the date picker control.

You can choose a different format to display the date and choose a different calendar type. The picture control is another nice option that will allow users to insert a picture easily.

When the user clicks on the image, a dialog will appear where they can choose a picture from their computer, from Bing image search or from OneDrive. They also have options for Facebook and Flickr.

Now let’s add a few checkboxes to our document. Note that when you add a checkbox and try to type text into it, it will tell you that the selection is locked. I believe this is by design. You have to click next to the checkbox and then type in your text.

Lastly, you can insert a building block control, which lets you pick content from Quick Parts and AutoText. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my post onhow to use AutoText and Quick Parts in Word. In my example, I added some quotes to a custom AutoText and then linked the control to it via the Properties dialog.

Once you have all the controls in your document the way you want, it might be a good idea to protect the document so that user can only fill out the form fields and that’s it. To do this, click onRestrict Editingon theDevelopertab.

In the pane that shows up on the right, click on the dropdown underEditing restrictionsand chooseFilling in forms. Make sure to check theAllow only this type of editing in the documentbox.

ClickYes, Start Enforcing Protectionand then enter a password if you like. Now only the form fields will be editable and everything else locked/protected. The user can easily use the TAB key to move between the different form fields.

Overall, Word isn’t the greatest tool for making forms, but it’s decent and probably more than enough for most people. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!

Founder of Help Desk Geek and managing editor. He began blogging in 2007 and quit his job in 2010 to blog full-time. He has over 15 years of industry experience in IT and holds several technical certifications.Read Aseem’s Full Bio

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How to Create Fillable Forms in Word#

Enable Developer Tab#

Creating a Form in Word#