InfoPath Dev

Is there a way in InfoPath to make the check-box control stand out better? I've toyed with outlining on the select, but this would entail a ton of code (unless I'm overlooking something). I have a section of one of my forms that contains approximately 175 checkboxes on one page - I'm looking for a way to make the selected answer(s) stand out a little better.

Hi,

One way to tackle this is to turn the caption of each checkbox into a textbox (another node in the schema with the caption as a default value). This way, you can have conditional formatting to turn the text bold when the checkbox is checked. Works great, I have used that trick on a few occasions. The good news is that it also gives you control over the caption by code behind...

Hope that it helps.

Regards,

Franck Dauché

Franck,
Have you used any 3rd party check-boxes? I did what you suggested (highlighting the selected captions based on a check-box selection) and although this works very well, I'm afraid the shear amount of check boxes (and subsquent text boxes to bold) will add a ton of baggage to an already bulky form. Any guidance you could give would be greatly appreciated.

With 175 checkboxes it sounds like your form is going to be bulky regardless. What do you mean by "3rd party checkboxes" ?

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Matt Faus

Hi Trent,
I didn't see any control out there that would do the job, but you could build your own ActiveX control in VB6 or .Net...
Now, for the bulky part. How many controls (total) do you have per View? how many Views?

Regards,

Franck Dauché

I agree that there are very few pleasing 'aftermarket' active x check boxes. I'll work with my programmers to see what they can come up with. My form is 9 pages printed with an average of 150 controls per page. Thus far I've stuck with one view (the users like being able to scroll through the form) but I'm guessing that Franck is suggesting that utilizing more views (and buttons to switch) may increase the performance of the document. We plan on taking the .xml from this specifications sheet to ultimately fill a variant in SAP.

Hi Trent,

Indeed, perfomance will benefit from splitting the View. In my experience, users don't like Tab-like setup in InfoPath until they realize:
1. How much scrolling they really have to do (especially if you have optional sections, repeating sections, etc.)
2. How slow the form can get.

So, you are shy of 1500 controls on your main View. In that case, ActiveX controls wouldn't be an option for you (too many on 1 form).
I would still go with my original suggestion as it is conditional formatting, not rules. Therefore, there is not such a big performance hit. It is long an time-consuming to implement, but it will work with no bad surprises around the corner.

Regards,

Franck Dauché

Thank you Franck - I will pursue that avenue.