Indeed, one could use an ordinary content control as a placeholder for the text and set it's properties to 'cannot be deleted' and 'cannot be edited'. Without some form of protection, though, it's easily circumvented.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

the idea is to not modify the document too much to track the QC process. This data does not have to be visible to those working on it, but should be easy to check/output if required. The problem is that with the section idea I thought of at first, if I don't protected, someone could accidentally change some of the info. If I protect it (form protection) then you cannot do comments, even if the other sections have the form protection turned off. The section idea was nice, since I put a stamp at the beginning to mark it, and therefore could track, output, and later delete it from the document without messing with the other text.

I would prefer to stay away from a separate file storing this info, or at least till they work out a more automated way to handle the files. I can see someone taking the file home to work on (off the network) then having a new QC tracking file created and lost.

I might work out the custom property method. Each entry would be at most 50 chars (most likely less). If I can count the number of chars in the property, then when 200+ create a new one with incrementing names. Not idea, but I can make it work.