360work Scribe - Word document checkboxes how to?

[Stephen Hill]

I'm using a .docx document with control elements, populating the fields just fine in bulk, things are working well.

The issue I'm having trouble with is the checkbox control elements, which appear to be RTF control elements with some special checkbox behaviour that appears to possibly be based on active elements from within word. I've experimented a bit, and while I can certainly put my own text in to get it to show boxes or not, doing so eliminates the checkbox action on the control element, it drops to just a plain RTF element.

Is there any known way to 'insert' the checked or notchecked of a checkbox control element without losing this?

Attempting to 'read' a check box from a document keeps providing me with:

code 9744 (unchecked box)

code 9766 (checked box)

Copying and pasting the text into a filemaker calc for using in export appears to work in the calculation (showing the checked and unchecked boxes.)

Using a locked font/size for the checkbox control element ensures they look correct (many fonts lack the checked box.)

But It's just raw text, and a user can no longer use it to check/uncheck.

[Smef]

I've never tried this sort of thing before, so I'm not sure if scribe will work with it. If you upload a document I can take a look, though I can't guarantee I'll have a solution for you.

[Stephen Hill]

I've never tried this sort of thing before, so I'm not sure if scribe will work with it. If you upload a document I can take a look, though I can't guarantee I'll have a solution for you.

It's nothing special that requires a document. Any data placed into a checkbox control element seems to eliminate the 'checkbox' user functionality. For my part I've just resorted to drop-down lists instead, assuming it's something unusual in the way word checkbox elements are implemented. It would just be nice if there was a way to populate the checkbox control elements.

[Stephen Hill]

Ok, I've worked it out to be a more general problem.

I'm using a MS Word document with multiple control elements, including several checkbox controls.

The script is rocessing through the ScribeDocListFields, and only doing a ScribeDocWriteValue for the elements that have matches in the database.

I have confirmed that the following sequence does not result in this error:

1) ScribeDocLoad

2) ScribeDocListFields

3) ScribeDocSaveFile

However, if I do a *single* ScribeDocWriteValue to any element, and then DocSaveFile, every single checkbox control element reverts to a plain RTF element and loses checkbox functionality.

Using the word 2007 content control toolkit before and after, I noticed that all checkboxes are just RTF elements, there is no checkbox element. The action of changing the displayed information appears to be something in the document itself that gets lost when ScribeDocWriteValue does whatever it does. Just loading and saving the file does not eliminate the checkbox functions.

I would really prefer to have the innate functionality not destroyed and not have to implement special workarounds, is there any chance this can be fixed anytime soon?

(The best solution I've encountered is to use a DropDownList of checked and unchecked items, which is a bit problematic due to font issues and interface expectation, but should probably work, or throwing old legacy form entries in which is less acceptable.)

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb157891.aspx#checkbox