InfoPath Dev

While filling out a form, when you click inside a section it will highlight the whole section and move your view to the top of the section.
When you miss a checkbox and click just next to it the whole section changes color and your view moves.
It's very annoying and is the biggest complaint I am getting from my users.

The only solution I can come up with is to split my sections into groups of smaller ones so it won't move too far away. But this doesn't really fix the problem, just makes it slightly less annoying. And adds a lot of complexety and work in development.

Is there any way to turn this "feature" off, or is there a simple workaround?

Thanks,
-Dan

Hi Dan,
Yes, this is one of the worst features of InfoPath. I believe we have a HowTo on this. I asked Greg to write one some time ago about this nastiness. I will send him e-mail.

djay,

This occurs because you have some repeating sections/tables or optional sections in your view. Those controls have context menus which appear when you right click or via the little widget icon that appears when you hover over or click the section.

In order to prevent the commands for these controls from bubbling up to the sections they are contained in, you must place them immediately inside a "containing" section.

So for example, if you have a schema like:

Root
--Group1
----Group2 (repeating)

If you have a section bound to Root which contains all your view content, and inside of it you have a repeating table bound to Group2, then the context commands for Group2 will "Bubble Up" to Root because Root is the containing section for Group2.

If, however, you place Group2 inside a section bound to Group1, then the commands will bubble up to Group1 and stop there. The Root section will no longer turn blue when clicked on.

This must be done consistently for each repeating section/table and optional table.

Thanks Greg, that fixed it.

If you get a chance I would appreciate an answer to my other question:
http://www.infopathdev.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2333

Glad to help.

Looks like you've already solved your other issue. Responded with some additional info.

How do you get around the highlighting when the form is one large repeating section with the data fields all connected to a database? I cannot see how to break it into sub groups. When I try and bind it to something that isnt the root level, it says it has to be bound to a group that repeats...

The highlighting is really annoying!

Greg Collins:

If, however, you place Group2 inside a section bound to Group1, then the commands will bubble up to Group1 and stop there. The Root section will no longer turn blue when clicked on.

This must be done consistently for each repeating section/table and optional table.

Hi Greg,

I tried and tried, but was not able to remove the section border on hover. I have a table that is hidden until an option is selected. This table is inside a non-repeating section that has conditional formatting to show/hide the table depending on the option value. Inside the table there is a bulleted list control (repeating) and a repeating section containing a drop-down list. The schema looks like this:

row_group (non-repeating section)
-- bulleted_list_group
---- bulleted_list (repeating)
-- droplist_group
---- droplists (repeating section)
------ droplist

I'm assuming 'row_group' is equivalent to your Group 1, but I don' t know how to stop bubbling at 'row_group' instead of root. Currently whenever I hover over the unhid table, the entire section gets highlighted even though it's non-repeating. I'm using InfoPath 2003 -- is this a 2007 only feature?

Thanks,
Tom