Adding Help Messages to Forms

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If you think the users of your form will need help knowing how to enter the information you seek, you can create customized help messages to guide them along the way. To add help messages to your form, follow these steps:

1. Open the form template you want to use.

2. If necessary, click Protect Form on the Forms toolbar to unlock protection.

3. Double-click the form field you want to use. The Form Field Options dialog box for that field type appears (the text, check box, and drop-down form fields all have different Form Field Options dialog boxes).

4. In the displayed dialog box, click Add Help Text. The Form Field Help Text dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 31-15.

   
   Figure 31-15: You can easily add your own help information to a form to show users how to enter information.

5. Choose your option as follows:

   • To display Help text in the status bar, click the Status Bar tab. Click in the text box, and type the text you want to appear in the status bar at the bottom of the Word window. Click OK to return to the form.

   • To show Help in a message box when the user presses F1, click the Help Key (F1) tab. Type the text you want to display in a help window when the user presses F1. Click OK to return to the form.

6. Click Protect Form on the Forms toolbar to enable form protection.

When you click in the form field that has help messages added to it, the messages will appear in the status bar if you chose Status Bar Help. If you created help messages to be displayed in a Help window, click in the field and press F1 to display the help message you entered in its own window, as shown in Figure 31-16.

Figure 31-16: To display help messages you've created for a Help window, click in the protected field and press F1.

Note 

The message you enter for a Help window can contain up to 255 characters. If you create a message for the status bar, make sure the text is under 138 characters.

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