InfoPath Dev

Hi,

I am a self taught newbie and need some help. I am trying to design an order form for a party hire company.

the form will contain customer details as well as ALL the products we have available. To put all this on one form will create a Massive form.

What i am trying to do is create a seperate form for each item, so that on the customer details form, a check box is selected for each item, taking you to that page. eg, if Plates is selected, a new form containing all the plate data opens, then if Cutlery is selected, another form opens with all these details.

I then need to somehow link each new form to the original customer form. Then when it is printed or emailed, I need the customer form to only include items that have been selected.

It needs to work like this -

Order form comes through with all customer details and listed below are all the choices made on the subsequent forms. By doing this I hope to eliminate the possibility that a checked box on the item forms is not overlooked when looking at multiple pages (which is currently what happens)

I am happy to show the form as it is set out now - 1 long form - if this helps.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I love using infopath and would love to make it work.

Caprielle

Hi Caprille and welcome to the InfoPath Dev forums.

Before you go down the route of creating a unique form you should look at a couple of things:

1. Have you tried using multiple "views" in the same form to accomplish this?  Your problem is a common one and using Multiple views in the same form can solve the problem (see this article for a good introduction)

2. You can create hidden sections in your form and only show those at the right time (using conditional formatting on the section or control in InfoPath). Take a look at this blog post by Mel on my team for an example.  It uses this free XTP from our website although you can do this on your own easily too.

In general though best practice is to use one form with multiple views.

Hope that helps!

Ted

Thanks Ted

That worked great. I now have many views for the form.

What i need to do now though is somehow work out how to create a print version that that only collects data that has been selected. I dont need it to print out all the views if only 2 pages have data added to them. Eg Customer details form with Balloon form if that is all the customer is ordering- print copy disregards all forms that have not had data added to them.

 Also, my boss wants each for to have a sequencial number system for each order. I know you can do this if the form is based on a data program (Access), but i have set mine up direct from Infopath. Can this still be done or do I need to transfer the form accross to a data program, and if so how do I do that?

 You help has been fantastic

Caprielle

Hi Caprille,

You might want to create a print view for each view you have unless you need to have a single print view for all the views.  Also, on the print view you can use conditional formatting to "hide the control" if the field is blank.  You can also do this for whole sections.  So if you made a single print view that had sections for each "view" in your form you could potentially hide fields and entire sections if the underlying data is blank.  There are some layout considerations when you do this but it can be done.

As to your question about sequential numbering, are you using SharePoint?  Or do you just have a network location where you publish your forms?

Ted