Sonny Software

Is there any possibility to "lock" temporary bookends citations in a Word document by editing through other authors? E.g. that any text including curly braces is locked from editing... I often have the problem that I send a draft of a manuscript to collegues, who then edit it, and in the end "unconsciously" edit also one or the other temporary citation by mistake... Therefore, I am wondering, if anyone has an idea how to prevent this "technically"... maybe it's not possible...?!

Word for Windows allows one to selectively lock text like this, but that is of course no help here.

If you do not mind sharing the document with citations formatted, you can turn the "Field shading" options to Always (Word Preferences > View) that will at least make the citations stand out a bit and perhaps prevent overzealous editing by colleagues.