Selective protection of a Word document

I have recently discovered one useful thing with Microsoft Word when working with templates that are populated automatically from an external process or program.

That thing is called selective protection of a Word document. Unlike the Adobe PDF format, which is today's de-facto document exchange standard in which you are able to see (i.e. to read the text) but not to change it, the Word gives you the option to mark sections of the text that are not editable and those that are. To put it the other way, you are able to let the future users (or readers) of your document add some extra text to it, before they print it out or forward it to somebody else.

How to protect your Word document? Here's a simple article

This shows particularly useful when creating automatically generated contracts for example where some information is not known or available at the document's creation time. By allowing only portions of a text (say couple of bookmarks) to be editable, you are gaining both at once - the protection of your document and its completeness.