Hello forum,

I have been tasked with updating a template document to work as an embedded word document in excel. I am extremely new to vba.

Currently, the user can edit the template, in excel, except for a few text form fields that have been left protected, to avoid issues with users accidentally deleting text form fields (the macro uses these as a bookmark to know where to insert text). I can successfully replace all the form fields using a macro (fills in the template), but when the embedded document is saved, the result comes out protected with all the syntax highlighting and text form fields. I was hoping for the final product to NOT have this highlighting, allowing the user to further edit the output report in word without having to deal with any confusing text fields or highlighting.

My question:
Is there some way to save an embedded, protected word document as plaintext in a .doc format? I am currently trying to use a second embedded document and unsuccessfully attempting to simply copy the text from the original and do a paste special with text only to the second and save the second. I have not been successful in finding a clean way to copy all the text in the embedded document and have run out of ideas. Any thoughts?