Microsoft Word form - Preserving "lines" to type on instead of underscoring and underlining

"There are two possible ways to do this:

Use a 1x1 table and remove the borders except the bottom border. This will allow people to type in the empty table without shifting text around. The limitation is that the 1x1 table must be on its own line.
The preferred option is to use the Developer ribbon (enable Word Options - Popular - Enable Developer...). Then under the controls, insert a text box. You can then edit the font of the text box to add and underline. You can find more information about this method on Microsoft's web site here."

"This can be done by setting a reverse L shaped tab with the leader set as an underline.

With the ruler turned on showing the tab marks do the following:

Set the tab (reverse L shaped) at the end of the page where you want
the underline to end.
Double click the tab to open the Tabs dialogue window.
Be sure that you have the correct Tab stop position selected.
Change the alignment to ""Right""
Set the Leader to 4 ___
Click OK

Press the Tab key and you have a line on which you can type!

You want more lines- just enter and tab and you have more lines."

"The best practical method I have found for addressing this requirement is to set up appropriate tab-stops and tab-leaders in addition to a text field.

A simple example:

Start on a fresh line and click in the ruler at the 4cm and 10cm marks to set a tab-stop in each of those positions.
Double click on one of the tab stops to get in to the tab properties for that line.
Highlight the 4cm tab-stop, select the second tab-leader (the dots) and press the 'Set' button.
Highlight the 10cm tab-stop, select the fourth tab-leader (the underscore) and press the 'set' button.
Press OK.

Now your tab-stops and leaders are set up, type ""Name:"" for example and press tab twice. You will end up with a result like this:

Name:.........._____________________

How it looks exactly will depend on the font you are using. Arial will give a solid underscore for the second leader.

Now position your cursor at the start of the underscore leader and insert a text field. Underline it if you like, to make it appear as part of the leader.

Now if you protect the form and enter text in that field it will consume the leader and not mess up the rest of your document."

"I just watched a 3 minute youtube video that solved the problem for me. The video walked me through

adding a ""Developer"" tab to the ribbon
inserting fillable boxes, and then
locking all the text in the document except the fillable boxes.

Note that this video adds the Developer tab in Word 2007.
For Word 2010, watch 1:05 to 1:20 of this 2 minute video"

"I came across this site googling the answer to the problem for a colleague. The tab/underline (thanks LW) thing seemed the easiest to do until we started typing on the lines we created and the underline extended itself. We didn't want to have to go over the lines again and re-edit those inserted underlines.

Here is the easiest solution that worked for us:

Create a table, say a 1X5 so that there are five rows to type on. (You can edit the amount of rows to suit your needs, of course, or the height of the rows to accommodate a certain font)
Then highlight that table which will bring up the table tools tab.
Click the Borders Menu and select left border and right border to remove the left and right boarders and VOILA, we are left with five horizontal lines that we can type on."