Protecting Document Areas from Global Replacements

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated June 25, 2022)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365

Fred often needs to use Find and Replace in editing his documents. However, there are certain areas of the documents in which he wants nothing changed. Short of changing those areas to images (which Fred is loath to do), he wonders if there is a way to lock or protect those areas so he can still use global replacing in the rest of the document.

The only way to do this is to place the information you don't want changed into its own section, and then protect that section. Specifically, place a continuous section break just before what you want to protect and then place one just after the information. Then, apply the protection as described in this tip:

https://tips.net/T7071

If your document includes multiple blocks of text that need to be protected, you'll need to mark each of those blocks with section breaks and apply the protection to each of them.

Once successfully completed, you can use Replace All in your document, and the info in protected sections will not be disturbed.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10271) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. Learn more about Allen...

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What is four minus 4?

2022-06-25 06:57:11

Timothy Rylatt

"The only way to do this is to place the information you don't want changed into its own section, and then protect that section."

This is incorrect. The text can be placed inside a Rich Text Content Control with its properties set to disable editing and deletion.

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