When we looked at the Form Field Properties window, we skipped over the Add Help Text button. Let’s take a look at that button now.

To the right, you can see the dialog that will appear when you click this button.

The two tabs in this window reflect the two kinds of help that you can add to a form field. If you enter help text in the Status Bar tab, that text will appear in the status bar at the bottom of the Word screen when the user clicks on the field. If you add help text in the Help Key (F1) tab, that text will appear in a dialog box when the field is selected and when the user presses F1.

Both tabs have the same three options for help text:

-          None

-          AutoText Entry: Pick an AutoText entry from the drop-down menu.

-          Type your own: Type your own help text. (This field is limited to 130 characters when in the Status bar tab.)

Then, click OK to return to the Form Field Properties window. You can add help text to any form field you would like, and you can use a combination of the two types throughout your form.

Let’s look at samples of the two help types.

You can see in the bottom left hand corner that text has appeared in the status bar. We also pressed F1 to see the help screen associated with this field.

Note that like other fields, help is only active when viewing the protected document, not when you are editing it.