InfoPath Dev

We use InfoPath 2007 and Outlook 2007 in our company.  Recently we recreated all of our Cold Fusion webforms in the InfoPath tool.  98% of our forms submit via email...without ever publishing to a SharePoint library.  I have a situation that I'm trying to get an answer for...

If I use the attachment control in InfoPath on my form and in the Main Submit which sends via Email I choose the option for 'Send only the active view of the form and no attachment', the attachments that the user added to the form do not come thru in the email.  There is basically a placeholder on the email itself with the filename and size...no capability of opening the attached file(s).  If I go into the Main Submit and change the option to 'Send the form data as an attachment', then I get the attachments in the email...but the form itself also sends as an attachment.

There are two problems with this that I'm getting complaints about:  1) If the form sends as an attachment, when the user opens the email to try to print it, they lose the email header information.  The solution that I've found to that is having them print directly from their inbox rather than opening the email and trying to print.  2) If the form sends as an attachment, when the user tries to 'Reply' or 'Forward'  the email, they are only allowed to type text into the Introductions section that opens in the top section of the email rather than being able to type their notes in the body of the email.

Does anyone know of a way to get the best of both worlds...sending only the active view of the form but yet being able to open the attachments that the submitter added to the form?

kagoodm,

What you experiencing is the expected behavior.

Your first setup creates an HTML representation of the form view, and attachments are not supported (thus they are not sent). Users can do whatever they want in the body of the email, as the form is just HTML.

Your second setup sends the entire form XML as an attachment, and when the user opens it, they get everything: all attachments, images, views, etc. The form is also displayed in the email, but it is not editable there because the actual form is attached. Because of this restriction the users must tpe into the intro box.

There's not direct way to do what you want. You could write some code and convert the form attachments from Bas64 to actual attachments and the extra work needed to attach them to an email generated in code, but this will still not give you what you need. If it works, you could possible have 2 email submit adapters, one with the first setup and one with the second, then send 2 emails, but that could also get annoying.

You could also try Qdabra qRules which allows you to set you attachments to upload to SharePoint and be replaced with a link to the uploaded file. Then the users can click on the links to open the attachments from SharePoint.

Greg,

Do you have instructions on how to use "Qdabra qRules which allows you to set you attachments to upload to SharePoint and be replaced with a link to the uploaded file" as you mentioned above?

Hi:

In your qRules user guide, check out SaveToSharePoint - that command allows you to upload attachments to document libraries. There is also a DeleteFromSharePoint command you can use to delete attachments.

There are also options with SubmitToSharePointList that allow you to attach files to list items - feel free to start a new topic with your exact question, and we'll be happy to help you - post it in the qRules forum here.