MS Word Mac unable to use form in document

Question

I have a Word document given to me by a client. It is an employment application with form fields that the client wants to be downloadable from her web site. I'm opening it in Word 2008 for Mac (12.2.4). When I try to fill out the form, Word will not allow me to fill out the fields, it just treats them as objects that can be replaced or moved. It also will not allow me to turn off Track Changes, and it will not allow me to change the locked status of the form (the buttons are grayed out). Any idea what's going on here?

Solution

Tools -> Protect Document, select Forms, hit OK. This turns the document from form edit mode (where the fields can only be moved or replaced as you described) to the mode where you can actually fill in the form.