That would defeat the purpose of the automatic mode which is to provide a way for the form to automatically adjust to new, changed or deleted fields in the form without manually re-positioning the existing fields to accommodate to the new display requirements.

If you wish to preserve certain areas of the form while automatically arranging others you need to keep the form in manual mode and use visible or logical (invisible) groups to separate those areas. Then you can select the group(s) you wish to arrange and click the 'arrange' button.

Also take into consideration this is only relevant in absolute coordinate platforms like C++ MFC. If your target is Asp.Net MVC any absolute positioning is going to be ignored so the forms can behave in a display responsive manner. So using the existing rules to break lines, join fields, break up fields into logical fields, and moving towards a 100% automatic positioned form should be a goal at all times.