w:formProt (Only Allow Editing of Form Fields)

Restricts editing in a section to form field content controls only, preventing changes to the surrounding text when document protection is active.

Parent elements

w:sectPr

Description

w:formProt is a toggle element on a section that, when combined with document protection (w:documentProtection in settings.xml), restricts editing in that section to form fields and content controls only. The non-form-field content becomes read-only for the user.

It is defined in ECMA-376 Part 1 §17.6.6.

w:formProt has effect only when the document is protected (w:documentProtection with w:edit="formFields"). Without document protection it has no practical impact.

Attributes

Attribute	Type	Possible Values	Description
`w:val`	`ST_OnOff`	`true`, `false`, `1`, `0`, `on`, `off`	Enables or disables form-only protection for the section. Omitting `w:val` is equivalent to `true`.

Examples

<!-- Section locked to form-field editing only -->
<w:sectPr>
  <w:formProt/>
  <w:pgSz w:w="12240" w:h="15840"/>
</w:sectPr>

<!-- settings.xml — enables document protection -->
<w:settings>
  <w:documentProtection w:edit="formFields" w:enforcement="1"/>
</w:settings>

using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

// In the section properties
var sectPr = new SectionProperties(
    new FormProtection()
);

// In settings.xml
var settings = new Settings(
    new DocumentProtection
    {
        Edit = DocumentProtectionValues.FormFields,
        Enforcement = true
    }
);

Notes

w:formProt operates at the section level; different sections in the same document can have different protection settings.
A section without w:formProt (or with w:formProt w:val="false") that coexists with a protected section will still be editable even when document protection is on.
Setting w:formProt on the final w:sectPr (in w:body) protects the entire document body.