Re: hiding information and requiring information

warrtalon — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:35:21 GMT

Should be able to do all of this fairly easily and in multiple possible ways. Let's see...

You cannot dynamically make fields required in terms of the button that says "Cannot be Blank," but you can do a few other things.

You can either use Data Validation with the statements "If Button 3 is Checked, and Field1 is empty, Display error message." You can do combos like that on each of your "required" fields and only if Button 3 is checked. This puts a red dashed border around those fields and won't allow submission unless they are filled out...or unless the button is changed.
You can do a reverse method that I like, which never results in an actual post-submission error but does a softer method. You can put MANUAL RED ASTERISKS in the LABEL box for your controls (not the red asterisk that shows up in the control itself when selecting Cannot Be Blank) along with a message at the beginning that says "all red * are required fields prior to submissions." Then, put conditional formatting on your field that checks to make sure those "required" fields have data, and if not, DISABLE the button. Also, put a message above the button that only displays when the button is disabled that says "all required fields must be filled before submitting." This makes it where users can never submit unless they've completed the form properly so that they never get the ugly post-submission errors that are non-specific.

Also easy with some simple conditional formatting. Refer to my article - User Roles in Browser-Enabled InfoPath Forms - for an example on hiding fields with conditional formatting. Yours is easier than the User Roles concept, but you may want to consider that as well. You can simply put conditional formatting on those "required fields" that say "If Button 3 is not checked, then hide control." You wouldn't need to include the other buttons, because the fields are not required if those buttons are selected, right? You could just hide the fields unless button 3 is selected, and when it is selected, those fields will be required thanks to step 1. As for other views, it's all the same. You can put all sorts of conditional logic on every control to hide or show it based off other selections in the form.

hiding information and requiring information

Larry W. Virden — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:46:03 GMT

After getting quite a ways along with an InfoPath 2007 form, I am working on some display views for the data.

There are two specific things I'd like to be able to implement.

1. If the user selects radio button choice 3, I would like to make several fields required. If no radio button is pressed, or radio button choice 1 or 2 is pressed, then the fields are not required.

If I write a rule for the submit button, checking the conditions, how can I indicate an error? Since a user can skip around a form at their leisure, there's really not much else I can think of to do here.

2. If the user doesn't select a radio button at all, I would like to not display those required fields and the radio buttons in some of the views that I will be using to send emails, etc. Is there a way that I can go back and add some sort of layout or control around the fields, so that I can then write a display rule to hide the fields?

Thank you so much for your ideas.

Controls

Re: hiding information and requiring information

hiding information and requiring information