Draw: Don't remove text FIELD if text removed?

[rik-shaw]

I have set up some Draw template files for users to create basic alphabet books. I have set up several text fields for them with “default text” that they need to replace with their language’s text. If a user, however, hilights the default text and removes it, and then clicks outside the text field BEFORE inserting their language’s text, the entire text field is deleted!

Is there a way to preserve text fields even if the text is deleted?

The best solution would be to have Master Pages that have editable text fields (where only the text is editable). However, this doesn’t seem possible: How to add extra editable text areas to Master Slide

[Regina]

You can format the text field to have background or to have a surrounding line. Then it stays, when its text is deleted. Or you do not use Draw but Impress and use a presentation object. That kind of objects show a dummy text when empty.

[rik-shaw]

Regina, thanks for the suggestion. In fact I would be very happy if a border could show on the text fields (but NOT print: sort of like table cells when the border is set to not print). I posted this as another question: Draw: Show "non-printing" borders of images or text boxes? This would greatly help the formatting. But in this case it is not desirable to have borders around the text fields when printing. So I will need to evaluate Impress.