How to Create a Fillable Form with Dropdown Lists in Microsoft Word

hi there jamie here today at teachers tech hope  you're having a great day today i want   to show you how you can make a fillable form in  microsoft word so what i mean by this you can go   ahead and create a form that for example looks  like this where you can be entering text and   places you can be having drop downs you can be  having check boxes you can even have a place to   upload an image to you can even do a calendar  for an order date or whatever you need to   order it from and so there's all these different  options in creating these forms and what i like   is afterwards when you're done it you can lock  it down so if you're sending this out to people   they can't type anywhere else and they can't  move anything to change it up and then they   can go ahead and send it back to you or  print it off so today on teachers tech   i want to show you how you can create  these fillable forms in microsoft word so i'm going to start from scratch  and building this form with a blank   document here the first thing that we're  going to need to do is actually customize

our ribbon in microsoft word and to do this all  i'm going to do is go up and right click right   up here so when i right click you can see i get  a couple options a few options i'm going to go to   customize the ribbon because the tools that we're  going to use for today aren't set up by default on   microsoft word so what we need to do is go down  on this side right here with main tabs and look   for a developer and just go ahead and click it  and hit ok so what it did when i clicked that   it gave me a new tab up top with developer and  then we can see the ribbon inside developer and   these are what we're going to be using right here  these controls to create uh the form that i showed   you in the intro so to start this tutorial here  today i'm on a blank page and i'm going to go

ahead and add a header this is going to be a  t-shirt order form so i'm going to add that to   my header go just double click  in my header up here you can see it says header   now i'm just going to write t-shirt and you  can go ahead and if you want to make it for   something else go ahead and make it for something  else i'm just going to put a t-shirt order form   here and i'm going to make this larger i'm just  going to highlight this and increase the font   size i'm not going to worry too much how things  look for this example and then i'm going to insert   a picture i'm going to save from online and  it will be just a t-shirt and i'll just type   this in and we'll take a look you can see it's  creative commons here and i'll grab a t-shirt   from here we will go with this one you can  choose a different one and shrink this down   so it kind of fits a little bit better and  i'll just make this kind of fit here and i'm   just going to go ahead and center this it's just  going to make it look a little neater but again   you can change this any way you want i'm going to  just double click back down below the header and   when i'm inserting the different controls that i  showed you from the developer tab i like to insert   things into a table you don't have to insert them  into a table i just like creating a form in a

table i just find it keeps everything look neater  and a way i can kind of plan my page so i'm going   to go up to insert and i'm going to go to table  and i'm just going to kind of pick i'm going to   pick by four and i'm just gonna put a four by  four table i can delete rows or merge or split   cells if i need to going on but i'm gonna start  with this right here uh so now i can go back   to my developer table and i can start to create  what i want in it by adding the controls so i'm

just going to go ahead and add teacher name to  here so in my example it's just a teacher ordering   t-shirts for their class so i'm going to go ahead  and just type teacher here like so and if i wanted   actually i'm going to add teacher name and if i  wanted this bolded i could go ahead i could go and   make sure you enter the home and then center it or  if you want it i'm going to right align mine here   and the first thing that i want to do is enter one  of those developer controls right in this spot so   what is it going to be well it's going to be the  one of these ones to enter text i could actually   use either them this one is more just simplistic  here this option you can do a little bit more   with the text or change things in it but i'm just  going to go ahead and enter this and you can see   it says tap here to enter your text i'm going to  stretch this table out here just to give it   a little bit more room in case they have a longer  name and you can adjust that the way you want the   other thing that i can do now is put the grade  here so it's going to be a teacher then i want

them to give me their grade so what is it  going to be again i'm going to go and i'm just   going to bold all these and i'm going to go it  back to home and align to the right and i'm going   to drop to do a drop down box here so if i go up  to developer and i'm going to go ahead and put in   a drop down box there's two different lists for  drop down that you can do this first one allows   you to the person to actually add their own to it  and this one they can't add their own so maybe in   this case i'll do this one to begin with and if  they were not part of a grade they could specify   and they could just write in their own answer so  if i go and choose this it says choose an item   now if we go up to properties here you can see  we have some different options i'm not changing   this information up here the one thing i can show  you is that if you do this to start end tag hit   okay it kind of shows that this is one of the  controls in here but uh you don't need to have   that on so i'm just going to go back to properties  and turn it back to here and i could do the same   thing over on the text one that i put too but  what i want to do is actually add my grade level   so what i'm going to do is down here i'm just  going to go add and i for my example i'm going to   add six grades so i'm going to put grade one and  i'm going to go all the way through to grade six so now i've entered in all six here i'm going  to hit ok and you can see we have a drop down   so at this point someone could go ahead write  their name in and then they could go here   and pick their grade so you could either  force it over or if they wanted to   uh write their own uh if they just click into here  like so i they could write maybe it's kindergarten   like so it's uh that has the option where you  can write something in not like the other one   and i'll give a demo of the other one some other  things i just wanted to point out if you didn't   want to see the table lines remember with any of  these here if i was going back to home we do have   a table here and we could say no border everything  is still there the different cells are there but   if you didn't want to see them at the end remember  you can hide the lines i'm just going to keep the   lines here and you can adjust that at the end so  we have our first row in here with a couple and   you can adjust the size here if you wanted  to give more room to any of these like this   let's go on to the next one add another drop down  with school name now i'm just going to go ahead   and enter school name i'm just going to paste  that in i'm just keeping my line to the right   and bold on here and i'm going to go back to  developer and this time i'm going to add this   list here for the drop down so when i select this  and i'm going to go back up to my properties i do   want to point out design mode if i click on design  mode it shows me where the different controls   are in it by showing it on each side i'm going  to turn off design mode if i go to properties   i'm going to just enter quickly three schools into  here and i'm not going to change anything else so i got my three different schools in  i'm just going to go ahead and hit ok   so at this point you could choose one of these  but now if i try to type in that spot it's not   gonna let me so that was different the difference  between this list drop down and this one here i'm   going to go ahead and actually just merge these  cells because they don't need two separate ones   i'm just going to hit merge like this so on my  next row what i'm going to put is the t-shirt   size and quantity so i'm just going to go ahead  and put that right over here and i'm going to   split these two cells here i'm going to actually  do a little bit more here i'm going to merge these   ones and i'm going to go ahead and split these a  little differently i'm going to just split them   like this so i can add a title over top  of them to just make the directions look   a little bit more simple when people are filling  this out so i just want two rows and one columns   and i'm going to type in size for this  one quantity

for this one right here so i have those  and i'm just going to highlight it a little   bit different color so it stands out here  so i'll just give it a kind of a light gray   like so and just do bold all right so underneath  these this is going to be a place where we're   going to do our check boxes so i'm going to  add check boxes down below and we're going to   just start with our we'll put our sizes so i'm  going to just go three to six it's going to be   the first size i'm going to hit enter and i'm  just going to enter in a few different sizes so i have five different sizes and i want to  be able to have a check box next to next the   ones that they choose so if they were picking  one here i'm going to go back to developer   and this is the check box here so i could go  ahead and click then i just can move down and   select different ones too i do want to point out  you can copy paste these so if i just go ctrl c   and move down and control v i can also do that  to each of these to put them in front of them   so the other thing i want people to put in is the  spot where they can put quantity and in this case   all i'm going to do is do the exact same one that  i've begun with and now i'm just going to go ahead   and do a quick copy here with ctrl c and if i  go after this i'm just going to hit enter and   do this a few different times here just by hitting  enter i know i need five times and i want them to   line up with across from them oops like so so  we have our five favorite ones now someone would   come through they'd enter uh they could enter  multiple ones they could check off and i want   to point out if we go to properties for the check  box here take a look we do have our symbol that   shows here and unchecked symbols you can change  these if you wanted a different symbol in here   then they in this case they could go through  then enter in a number over here to put quantity   uh in all right so we got our first few uh set  up here let's move to our next line i'm just   gonna go ahead and add three more rows here  and i'm just going to do this by hitting a   tab of these so three more like this if i can i  could delete them or add them later if i wanted to   in this one this is going to be the payment  method here and i'm just going to go and merge   these ones together just like this and then i'm  going to write put our payment method down here   i'm just going to paste it over like this and  then i'm just going to again line it to my   right and i'm going to do another drop down box  that i'm going to just fill in very quickly here so i just did a quick payment methods here you  can see cash card to paypal you could add more   things like check or whatever you uh want to  here now at this point i want to do something   different and i want the people to be able to  upload a logo for their t-shirt so again   i'm just i only need the two different columns  so i'm going to go and merge these here so i'm

going to type in upload logo like this and  i'll just go through and do my bold and align here   make sure i have the line in the right spot and at this point i'm going to go back to  developer and this time i'm going to choose the   image right here so i'll go and click image  and it puts this in so what allows me to do now   if a person gets this form they click on  it and this pops open they could go you   can see the different options if they go from  a file and i have just an image here insert   they could upload that image to it so  again if they were sending it back to me   on this finished form and after they saved  it this would be in it or else they could   print it off and this would show too so let's  move on to our next one and that's going to be

the order date so i'm going to type in order  date here and i'll just bold it and align it here   and order date you can see is just going to be  with the developer we have a little calendar   right here and if you go to properties you  can see some options on how you want it to   read so you can go through and pick uh which one  and just pick what works best for you hit okay   so now when they do the drop down the calendar  comes up and they can pick a date like this the   last thing i'm going to do for this order form  is just put a place for some additional notes   and that's just going to be this control right up  here so let's say we have all our things that we   want to put into our order form we want to be able  to lock this down so people can't maybe change the   text that we have written in here or they can't  mess with any of the things that we have and what   we're going to do is go to this restrict editing  right here so if you choose this now take a look

over on the site it says editing restrictions  so click this and drop down and it's going to be   filling in forms is what we want to choose once we  do this we can put a passcode by saying yes start   enforcing protection so i select this and we make  up a password on this one and i'll make this very   simple hit okay now if you notice if i go back  over to this and i try to click into different   spots i can't do anything i can fill out the form  it lets me put in different things in different   areas but it doesn't allow me to change anything  else in here so even the header if i try to change   nothing i can't make any changes at all if i  want to take that off i could just hit restrict   editing and you can see at the very bottom it says  stop protection right here so i can go click it i   would put in my passcode and hit okay i'm gonna  make sure you have it correct here i think that   should do it one two three is what i had for that  one and then at this point i can go and make some   changes so like i said if you don't want uh the  lines from your table you can go ahead and go   back to home and then do the drop down and you can  see different options as i hover over different   ones and if i say no border then it will look like  this so it's your choice what you want to do to it   so i hope you like this little tutorial on how to  create a form in microsoft word once you add that   developer tab it's pretty simple to go through  and then quickly add and you can really lock down   uh you know making it easier for people to go  through and select uh just the options that   you give them in a place that you don't want  them to be writing outside of so uh thanks   for watching this week on teachers tech i'll see  you next time with more tech tips and tutorials