I have a word document that is protected and is set on "No changes (Read only)" and so this causes the cursor to be in the top left of the document when I open the file. Is there a way to make it so that the cursor's focus is on a specific date picker in the document? I locked the structure of this document except for the date pickers, content control text boxes (plain text), etc... I had to do this because of content control checkboxes weren't very smooth when tabbing through the fillable areas of the document. I also tried legacy checkboxes with not much luck either so this No Changes (Read Only) has been working fine. Now I just want the cursor to be on a date picker in the top center of the document because that is the first fillable area that the user will start typing in data. Please help. Thanks in advanace.

That behaviour is by design. indeed, all Word documents open that way. The only available workaround would be to use a macro to select another range upon the document being opened.

Please note that formfields and content controls should not be used in the same document. They weren't designed to be used that way and trying to do so is a known source of problems - especially when checkboxes are involved.

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

Thanks. Not sure what formfields are but I think all the controls I have in my document were selected from what shows on the ribbon at the top of the window and those items all seem to say content controls when I hover my mouse cursor over them. I read that legacy controls were inside the toolbox icon and I haven't used any of those. So pretty sure all of the text boxes and date pickers are from the content control section.

Would you be able to give me the VBA to select the date picker content control? I tried this on the open event of the document and it doesn't seem to work. Btw, I named the date picker title and tag "test":

ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlByTag (test)

Also tried:

ActiveDocument.SelectContentControlByTitle (test)

Not sure what I am doing wrong.

If the file protection type is 'Filling in forms' then the first content control in the document will be automatically selected when you open the document.

If the file protection is 'No changes (Read only)' then there seems to be no point in selecting anything. Reading doesn't need a selection.

If you do still want to select something specific as the file is opened then you are relying on the whim's of the system/user in enabling macros. If you wanted to go down this path you can put a macro like this into your ThisDocument module

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thank you so much. I can't believe you need to add Dim statements just for something so simple. I worked with excel spreadsheets and usually its a lot more simple when it comes to selecting a cell.

In most cases yes, No Change (Read Only) wouldn't have a point to selecting anything but I had to go this route because of how the checkboxes work with tabbing. I am using the content control checkboxes and they do not work well when your document is locked and you want to tab through all the fillable areas of the document. So I selected No Change and made exceptions instead but then of course the document opens in read-only mode and has the cursor at the top left which makes sense but not for my situation.

Thank you so much for the help. Really appreciate it.

I posted that comment because you said:
Those would have to be either formfields or ActiveX controls.

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

You don't:

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

As Paul has shown, the macro can be a single line of code. I included the extra lines to try to avoid possible errors should the object not exist or perhaps not be selectable.

Coding in Excel can also be written in few lines if you are happy to deal with errors when something unforeseen causes a problem.

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Thanks for the help people. You guys have taught me a lot and thanks for showing me different ways to approach my issue with the document.

This seems to be what I was looking for but @Guessed had a good point of trying to prevent unforeseen errors from occurring. Thank you for the help.