If you would like, you can have sections of your form protected while others remain unprotected. This can be a good idea if you want the user to be able to add to the document, such as a comments section at the end of the form. The entire form must be unprotected for you to be able to make these changes.

The first step to doing this is to move your cursor to where you want the unprotected section to start. Normally, this would be at the end of the document. Once your cursor is in the correct location, click the Insert menu and click Break. Typically, you would select a Continuous section break and click OK.

Now, type the text that you want to appear in this section of the form, for example Comments or Notes.

Now, we’re going to open the Protect Document task pane by clicking the Tools menu and clicking Protect Document.

We’re going to check the box in Step 2 and choose Filling in forms for the editing type. Next, we’ll click on the Select Sections link (this link will only be available when sections are in the document). In the Select Sections dialog box, we’ll uncheck Section 2 so it will be unprotected. Then, we’ll click OK to return to the Protect Document task pane. Now, we can click Yes, Start Enforcing Protection and choose whether or not to set a password.

Now, the Protect Document task pane will tell you what you can and cannot edit when the form is protected.

Here’s what the task pane will say when we are in Section 1, which is protected:

If we move to the Comments section, we’ll see a different message.