InfoPath Dev

Hi all

My InfoPath 2010 Filler form has a series of 4 cascading comboboxes that look up their data from a SharePoint list, which is a Data Connection that I have marked to store in Offline mode and trigger the query for when a certain control is marked.  I should probably mention that the list contains around 850 items - that's why I set up the cascades!  I went into the SharePoint list yesterday and added around 20 new items.  When I came into my InfoPath form and went looking for the items, there were two strange things:

1. Not all of my items came though.  At first there were only 3, then I eventually got that number up to about 6.  Then it went down to 5.
2. In the 2nd of my cascading combos, I noticed that the entry corresponding to the new items I added was appearing twice (and only my new items have this value for combo #2).  So I picked both options, just to see what was there, and noticed two more things:

• My incomplete list of options appeared only under the first entry.
• The second option appeared to have a space at the end that the first option does not have.

In working on the problem, I made some other observations: 

• Because all of the new entries were the same at levels 1 & 2, I started by entering the items manually, then switched to Datasheet View in SharePoint so I could copy the alike values once and use paste to quickly populate the rest of the items in the column.  There was a relatively close correspondence between adding the entries manually and them then appearing in my InfoPath form.

I went into the SharePoint list and looked at the items, but could not find that extra space anywhere.  Not in regular Edit mode and not in Datasheet View.

So I extracted the source files and looked at the XML file for my data connection.  The new entries I added yesterday all have nodes that look something like this:  "

<div>Process</div>



"  I knew that if I cleaned the extra junk out, the next connect out to the Data Connection would just overwrite it.

So I came back and looked at my SharePoint list again and noticed the following:

•  Tiers 2, 3, & 4 are multi-line textboxes whereas Tier 1 is single line.
• Tiers 2, 3, & 4 are rich text whereas Tier 1 is plain text.

I changed the bottom 3 tiers to plain text and accessed my InfoPath form again.  Progress!  Now all the items that hadn't appeared at all before appeared under the Tier 2 with the space at the end.

Back out to SharePoint, and whaddya know but all the new items are showing a bunch of extra carriage returns.  Cleaned the carriage returns out in regular edit item mode and bingo!  My new items now finally all appear in the InfoPath form.

I think the cause of my problem was a combination of my 3 controls being rich text and using Datasheet View to populate the entries. I'll have to try Datasheet View again now that I've set my 3 SP controls to plain text and see if I have the same problem.  If so, I'll know I need to avoid Datasheet View in SharePoint.

Cheers, and happy troubleshooting to us all.

nkstrou

P.S.  I don't need any help, am just posting a "Lesson Learned" in case anyone out there experiences the same problem.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write this up and post it! I really love when people do this to share info with the community.

Thanks...I'll keep this in mind.

 Incidentally, I have been using Chrome 14; but right now I am using IE and there is editing bar for this post.  I guess it's not compatible with Chrome.  I have been wondering why I had to put my own tags in when using Chrome.