InfoPath Dev

I am in the middle of an Infopath project right now, which requires consistent printing output of the data that is gathered. The problem I am running into is that by default, Infopath does not give any regard to where it puts page breaks, but rather it just puts the page break in, even if it is the middle of a control. This goes for a regular view or a print view - it's not the view that's the problem, it's how infopath "decides" to put the page breaks. I have on my form several text boxes which can expand vertically, depending on how much data is input into the field. This kind of behavior makes it difficult to pinpoint exactly where a page break should go. So the solution of "just put a page break in the form" just doesn't cut it here - believe me I wish it was that easy. Where the page break should go varies with every single form that's generated, which is why I need Infopath to use some kind of logic to figure out where the page break should go.

I know of a couple of workarounds for this, that I have seen in the forums, although neither of them really address my problem directly.

Inserting a section containing a page break that the end user shows or hides by way of a checkbox won't really work because, you have to put the page break in a static spot. If I knew where it needed to be, I'd just put it there to begin with.

Another solution was posted in one of the how-to's by Matt Faust (sp?), where he described how to break tables across pages and not split rows across pages, by way of counting number of lines and characters to determine where it should go. I think it's probably possible to somehow use this to tackle the problem, although since I am unexperienced in Infopath development, I have no idea how to do this. And my time frame to get this done is kind of tight.

After coming up empty with anything obvious, I opened a case with Microsoft to ask about this problem - and as I figured, their answer was just "It uses the IE print engine so it can't be done", which I find hard to believe (that it can't be done that is). I learned more from the forums than from this guy - and he charged me $245!!!

So as a last ditch effort, I am coming to this forum and hopefully one of the real Infopath gurus will be able to help me out.

I simply want to be able to print my print views, and have Infopath not massacre a control that falls where the page breaks. Can't it somehow be told to force such a control to the next page of print. This could potentially be a deal killer out of a lot of work on this form for me. It would be an awesome win if I could get this working right, and get it printed correctly.

Would the Word Print Views be a viable solution here? Does Word Print view handle things such as repeating tables?

One last question - does anyone know if Microsoft is addressing the printing issues with Infopath in the 2007 product? Are they creating a more robust printing engine? Infopath would be almost the perfect tool if they would address this.

Thanks,
Ryan

Hi Ryan,

Great post!

Believe me, I know and feel your pain most deeply. We have had printing problems galore on multiple projects and in general, there is no easy way out of this problem. The support guy was right, but I would not have paid him $245. You can get the answer here for $0.

Word Print is a viable option, but it's a lot of work and it, too, has limitations. We have done Word Print before with mixed success. The problem is in the conversion from InfoPath to Word and it takes time to setup your Word view, but that's probably the path you should go down. It'll take a good week to figure it out. We should post a HowTo on the gotchas...

Office 2007! Yes, there will be some improvements to print, but alas it'll still use IE. There are rumors that in some distant future the rendering engine will be different, but for the next 2-3 years, it's IE or Word Print. There is much better integration with Word in Office 2007 and there are bugfixes and added features in InfoPath itself that allow data elements in headers and footers and other things. I am looking forward to Office 2007, and my guess is that it will make a big splash at TechEd in June.

Hope that helps!

Patrick,
Thanks for you reply and your honesty. Do you have any information with regard to Word Print Views that you could share with me - ie the gotchas, etc? From what I understand, you basically lay out the XML tags in a word document where you want them to print and then create an XLST via the Wizard. Can it handle repeating data? And the obvious question - since it is Word, it will behave itself on page breaks right? I am going to be shipping this form out to a lot of users, so does this mean I have to send the word doc to all of them, or is the XLST that's generated sufficient?

Thanks much in advance!