InfoPath Dev

Hi,

I have searched this forum as well as the web to search for answer to this problem.  The problem I am having is when publishing a form to an e-mail recipient they can not add input to the form.  I have achieved this goal in the past, with a different form, but I can no longer enter input into published form either.  Another peculiar thing is that within the e-mail the form looks different than it does when in design mode.  For example, the buttons appear larger and cartoonish.

I am struggling to wrap my head around the fine points of infopath.  My background does involve computers so I am not a newbie in that department.  

Thank you for reading this post.

in the email-submit data connection make sure you are sending the template along, it seems you are not sending the template along the form. you need to check the "Attach the form template to ensure that user can open the form"

I have the check box selected "form data and the form template".  I still see a form that is not enabled 'in a sense'. 

I am using Outlook 2007 as well.

I've gotten this to work before but now all the forms are disabled.

Hi TF1216,

We do this all the time. Here's the general technique:

Make your form restricted security (Tools->Form Options->Security) and send the users the XSN. Recipients will double click the attachment and fill out the form. Add a submit button that sends the form back to you as an attachment.

Also, see Mel's blog on this: http://www.infopathdev.com/blogs/mel_balsamo/archive/2009/05/19/using-e-mail-forms-to-communicate-with-external-users.aspx

Hope this helps,

Thank you Patrick.  I don't want to go that route but it's looking more and more like I am going to have to.  My goal is to not have the user open any attachments.  I would like the form to be filled out within an-mail then submitted back to me.

I read that blog last week.  It's well done.  It does not help my situation though.

You can do that if the form is published to a site that everyone has access to. Just make sure that your users are online. Make sure you specify that the form is attached and that everyone has the same version of Outlook and InfoPath. Your submit should save back to your site and send an email with the form. Ideally, the form should check to see that there is no more recent version on the web site when it opens in Outlook (Outlook launches InfoPath and runs it embedded in the message body).

The problem with sending forms in email is that you can have lots of different versions floating around and get into problems if people open an old email and respond to that. That's why you want to link it to a web site or make it a single fire-and-forget activity by attaching the XSN (which does not embed the XML in the email)

 Thank you, graciously, Patrick.  Your description for the workflow of the document made sense to me.  I can't figure out why I used to be able to publish Infopath documents to e-mails, with input capabilities, and now I am not.  I will set-up sharepoint to see what it does for me.

Keep in mind that currently, you're approach is not "publishing" to email. You're publishing to a website that everyone has access to. Then, you fill out the form and click a button and the form (XML) gets sent to someone in email. The recipient must have access to the website where the form is published and then they will see the XML form in the mail message and be able to edit it in the message.

The "publish" through email option is attaching a restricted security XSN to email and sending.