Charles and Paul,

Thanks for responding so quickly. I've learned a lot from each of you over the years. I really appreciate the contributions you have been making to the Word community.

These documents were created in Word 2003 a long time ago. Neither of them had Content Controls at the start of this effort. I'm modernizing copies of these files using Word in Office 365 (presumably Word 2019).

Before trying to add the Content Controls, I saved both documents as .docm files. These files will be used like forms and the functionality of Content Controls will be helpful to users. I have a bunch of them to do; so, creating the Content Controls in one .docm file and copying the applicable Content Controls to subsequent .docm files will save me a lot of time and reduce user confusion due to inconsistencies.

Prior to my earlier post, I successfully added Content Controls to one of the files. I used Greg Maxey's Content Control Tools add-in to create the Content Controls and they seem to work as expected in the .docm file in which they were created. Specifically, changing the content in one Content Control causes changes to similarly named Content Controls in the rest of the document.

Content Controls having like purposes (e.g. Name and Date of Birth etc) will be used in many other files; so, i want to simply copy the Content Controls that I develop to the other files as warranted. I'm not worried about these controls being linked from one file to another at this time. I'm just trying to save the trouble of recreating the same Content Controls repeatedly in these other files.

Having successfully created a few Content Controls in the first .docm file using Maxey's add-in, I copied these working Content Controls from the first .docm file to the second .docm file. However, the only thing that got copied from the first .docm file into the second .docm file was the Placeholder Text from the first .docm file. It went into the target .docm file as only plain text (as though I had just typed the characters). It just got the _____________ characters I used as Placeholder Text. If i add content to the Content Control in the source document (e.g. Name Control = "Fred"), when I do the copy "Fred" shows up in the target as plain text; but, it is not a Content Control.

Key observations: When I copy the Content Controls within a .docm document, the copying works. When I copy them from one .docm file to another .docm, only the current value of the Content Control is copied. It does not seem to matter if I copy whole paragraphs or individual content controls. Various permutations of Paste Special does not produce any improvement.

My settings in Word/File/Options/Advanced/Cut, copy, and paste are:

Pasting within the same document: Keep Source Formatting (Default)
Pasting between documents: Keep Source Formatting (Default)
Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict: Keep Source Formatting (Default)
Pasting from other programs: Keep Source Formatting (Default)

I don't think the style definitions conflict because I copied them from one document into Normal.dot using the Manage Styles dialog and then from Normal.dot to each of the new .docm files.

I guess I should not have mentioned the Word 2003 origin of these files. It is likely irrelevant; but, I was trying to be complete. My concern was that some leftover goop in the file was polluting the newly saved .docm file. Sorry for the confusion my apparent OCD has created.

I look forward to round 2.

Appreciatively,

Bruce Volkert
Office 365 (running locally)
Windows 10 Pro (fully updated)