InfoPath Dev

Me again. ;-)

I have a status report form in which I created text fields in a repeating table. After using for some time, I now realize RTF fields would be better so users can insert hyperlinks to deliverables, and add other attributes. Is there any way to change that field type without losing the existing data in the forms?

Thanks.

If I understand the question correctly you probably would have go into the manifest and manually modify.

This is an interesting question, and I'm curious to know exactly how this would be done, too. I'll ask some of our Microsoft MVPs if they know of the perfect solution.

I believe it should just accept the old text data. If you have a richtext field with no formatting, you should notice it looks like standard text. But going from richtext to text would be a totally different issue.

I would have to agree with jimcan. Should work fine going from text to rtf. Might have to set your form options to automatically update existing forms under Form Options -> Advanced. Also you might have to change the datatype of the XML datafield...Let me check.

Ok I just did this...
1. Created new form and added repeating table with three text fields
2. I saved the template, ran it, and typed data into a text field and saved as xml file.
3. I then reopened my template in design view and deleted my textbox
4. I then went to the data field it was bound to and reconfigured its data type to RichText and applied.
5. Then in my data sources view i just clicked the filed dropdown and chose RichTextBox and added it to my form.
6. i made sure my form was set to Automatically upgrade existing forms and I saved my template again.
7. I ran my xml file I saved from before and it worked fine.

Hope that answers your questions. let me know if you run into problems.

Thanks for the reply, taenkarth.

How do you accomplish step 4? When I right-click on the data in the Data from the task pane I don't see where I can change the field type to Rich Text. Is it expression box?

Never mind. I got it working. Perfect! Thank you!

Sorry I did not get to you sooner.

Glad to see ya got it working though!