Field Level Editing

We have discovered an annoying trait that affects usability.

In the Potentials/Opportunities Tab when you select a Potential/Opportunity you canchoose between editing individual fields or opening the entire document for editing. The problem is that for some reason you cannot edit all of the fields individually. There does not seem to be any logic behind why you cannot directly edit some fields. We experience this problem with Standard and Custom Fields, and different field types (Check boes, text boxes, pick lists).

The most aggravating filed is the STAGE field. We have 11 stages in our process, so we update this field frequently. It would be really helpful to be able to edit that field directly from the Potentials/Opportunities record without having to open the entire record for editing and then have to click back through more screens to get to the List views again.

Is there some setting we can adjust ourselves to enable this functionality on individual fields? Is it related to Field Level security?