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Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

tburnie — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:59:47 GMT

we only use Browser based forms at our site and we do not have combo boxes available, but you're right, the change height option is unavailable. Just make sure all of your text boxes are correct with the workaround, just 1 with 'AUTO' can cause the issue.

1) Open the InfoPath form in design mode.

2) For each Text Box control placed on the form repeat step 3 to 4.

3) Right click on Text Box and select Size Tab.

4) Set the height to some specific value. Any value(except ‘auto’) which suits your design should work.

5) Save the form and publish it again.

6) Printing issue should not be observed with updated form.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

JRWoehler — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:09:23 GMT

Thanks for the info. This sounds like a great work around. Unfortunately, it didn't work for the combo boxes we have on our form. There is no option to change the height of the control.... is there?

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

tburnie — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:54:38 GMT

After working with MicroSoft for the past several weeks, they have acknowledged this as a problem. I have ben provided with a work around, and the problem will be submitted as a bug. Work around from MicroSoft as follows:

Hello Tom,It was nice talking with you.As discussed, I have summarized below the steps for the printing issue workaround: 1) Open the InfoPath form in design mode.2) For each Text Box control placed on the form repeat step 3 to 4.3) Right click on Text Box and select Size Tab.4) Set the height to some specific value. Any value(except ‘auto’) which suits your design should work.5) Save the form and publish it again.6) Printing issue should not be observed with updated form. I understand it’s a time consuming task to apply above workaround on all the forms and I apologize for the inconvenience caused due to this. I would suggest you to apply this workaround to only those forms which are affected by this issue and in future make it best practice to set the height explicitly. Please let me know if you have any questions and if above workaround fix the issue in your test environment. Thank you for your patience. Thanks,

______________________________________________________________________

Shiv KhareEOS - Visual Studio Office Developer

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

hexium — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:02:28 GMT

Hi Tom

I work at Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa

Yes, in our case, it would be classified as a lower priority (although my users would disagree ;-)

My contact details: Pieter Swart ( swartpj _that character that should not be named_ tut.ac.za )

Clay, we have a rather interesting bunch of users.

I have been working with these people for close to 12 years and have come to realize that they prefer one big button in the middle of the screen - the support button (they believe that everything should be done for them). Through conversations with operational staff from other Tertiary Institutions, I have come to realize that every institution has its own culture surrounding the embrace and utilization of Information Technology. At some of the Institutions, you would indeed find staff willing to play around with scripts, using their grey matter for a bit more than just the fields they specialized in (IT after all is an assistive technology and if used correctly can add immense value and improvement in service delivery).

I assume the utility you are speaking of is the database accelerator suite. I will have a look at it as soon as I am able.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

tburnie — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:33:27 GMT

So, your duplicate print problem sounds like a lower priority that ours. Still, if you hear of a work around or fix, please let me know. Another issue regarding printing: If I have many InfoPath emails in my InBox and I select them all and then right click and select print, only the 1st email will print correctly, the rest are bad.

Also, can you tell me what company you work for, it be helpful if Microsoft knows that it's more than just me. Thanks. Tom Burnie, MIchigan Farm Bureau. email = tburnie @ fbinsmi.com

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

Clay Fox — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 14:56:47 GMT

One of the great things about InfoPath is that it does allow the non-techincal to bridge the gap and create their own forms. Obviously there is some learning but to me if they can master Excel they can make the jump to InfoPath. If you are using soley browser based forms then that is additional complexity but even still should be doable, especially if they are managing or updating existing forms.

The web services setup very easily and do not require code or anything, InfoPath does all of the setup. Have you used the built in Rules and Actions? A lot of developers start out just coding in InfoPath but probably 95% of solutions can be accomplished without any code and just using the capabilities in the UI.

There is a tool on http://www.qdabra.com which allows you to migrate tamplates and their documents from one site to the other. You can break the cab open and edit and repackage but you have to know all the tricks. The little tool there was built to solve the issue.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

hexium — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:06:01 GMT

Hi Clay

Thanks for the reply. Initially I did look into the different ways people have tried to support anonymous posts. I can remember reading about creating web-services and having forms post to them (possibly the same solution as yours with the web-services saving received data to a DB)

Unfortunately I am unable to spend a lot of time on SharePoint as we still do a lot of development in another environment (this will undoubtedly change and my institution is already putting more focus on SP because of its Knowledge Management capabilities). My problem with the InfoPath product is that it should enable non-technical users to publish their own forms and I cannot foresee them creating web-services or placing custom code directly into their forms. That said the product does exhibit a lot of potential.

Another critical problem I have found (but forgot to mention):

I am told by collogues that InfoPath sometimes complain that the document you are trying to open is no longer in the directory it was created in, and then refuses to open that document. This happens when they have to work on InfoPath forms that other users created. InfoPath also does a similar thing when the domain of a SharePoint server changes (you can also not submit the forms in the latter or open them using InfoPath)

I have tried to unzip one of these files to correct the data by hand (it is only XML after-all) but when I zipped it again, InfoPath just rejected the document claiming that it was corrupt. I then tried to just unzip and zip again without making any changes as I couldn’t understand why it would complain – same results. Do you know how I can safely attempt such an operation? (I thought that a possible cause might be the type of compression used by WinZip/7Zip but so far all my attempts with different settings and algorithms have failed)

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

Clay Fox — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:10:45 GMT

Hey Hexium.

Thanks for the post and information. I am just starting to delve into browser based forms.

As far as the validation popups, can that be controlled in the control properties and postback settings? Obviously the standard validation could be turned off and you could perform your own validation checks.

As far as anonymous submits, we have been able to sidestep this by submitting forms to SQL rather then SharePoint directly and then they can be seen in SharePoint via a webpart as usual.

Send me an email if you would like to discuss.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

hexium — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:39:06 GMT

There are three major ones.

The first problem:

InfoPath tries to assist the user when completing forms by popping up little boxes containing messages on the requirements for each field (controls like text boxes etc.).

Unfortunately the browser will more often than not place these boxes over the fields the user is trying to fill in (this is due to the way the MS scripts reacts to the onMouse events). Because a field needs to receive focus before you can fill it in, you either have to tab to the particular field, or you have to click on it. If the popup is in the way however (when using the mouse), the field cannot receive focus and therefore you cannot fill it in. This forces the user to move the mouse around in an attempt to get a clear shot at the field (the popup tries to follow the mouse pointer and sometimes ends up sitting right in front of the field you want to fill in).

Maybe I just haven't played enough with InfoPath, but this is what happens by default when you add rules to the controls. If MS had given more attention to the way they handle events, this could have been avoided. In the meantime I have to space the controls apart to such an extent that the popups won't affect the users.

The second problem:

You cannot use spaces in a multi-line textbox. The form crashes out and you get a really funky error message in your application log: "Exception Message: Reference to undeclared entity 'nbsp'"

How could they have missed this? Their workaround of course can be found here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931426

They suggest that you replace all these multi-line text boxes with Rich text boxes. So now a visitor can type in his Postal address in multiple fonds and colors (maybe this can be switched of to some extend but I don't see this as an acceptable solution and the problem should not have existed in the first place).

The third problem:

You can not submit a browser form as an anonymous user if it is configured to save the results into a list. (You can, but you will have to jump through several fiery hoops, and then fly around the moon twice)

As far as I know, MOSS has replaced their CMS product and in that regard they are touting it as one of the best solutions for an Internet facing website (they actually used the words "the best" when they sold it to us) but it cannot even handle this simple task unless you downgrade the form to "email only" (I heard that this hasn't been fixed in SP1)

The "MS Gold partner" that is providing all the development and support for our SPS sites are currently testing SP1 so I don't know if it will resolve problems 1 and 2 (or even the printing problem) but we are hopeful.

Problem 3 is a major concern of ours as we were counting on this type of functionality. The Gold partner told us for more than a year that you could not submit InfoPath browser forms unless you were authenticated. It was only after I started working with the system that I realized we could at least do email submissions.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

tburnie — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:21:03 GMT

I'm submitting a ticket to Microsoft today regarding this issue, and a few minor ones. What other problems are you having ? The 2-page issue is really our only big problem. We were kind of forced into a hurried implementation due to the fact that the old Outlook Forms can no longer be printed once you go to Outlook 2007.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

hexium — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:33:05 GMT

We have the same double printing problem at my institution (In our case, the email client is Outlook 2003). I also have several other complaints regarding bugs in the browser forms. This implementation does not seem to have gone through a lot of user-testing (in fact, it seems to not have gone through user-testing at all).

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

tburnie — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:09:41 GMT

no attachment....I wish it was that easy. We know it's something with Outlook 2007 rendering and have opened a ticket with Microsoft. I was just hoping to find a resolution sooner.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

Clay Fox — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:45:16 GMT

So there is no attachment?

I was thinking it may be printing both.

This may be an issue in how Outlook 2007 prints web content, since you say 2003, is not a problem.

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

tburnie — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:33:25 GMT

The view is in the body of the email

Re: InfoPath with Outlook 2007 printing problem duplicate page

Clay Fox — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 16:27:28 GMT

Is the view in the body of the email?

Or is it just an attachment?