InfoPath Dev

I have a scenario I would like to be able to design using InfoPath. One area of my data deals with a defined number of events with matrix like data. Ideally I would have two levels of users using the form. The administrator would define how many of the events should occur for this instance of use, and also define a specific set of rows that would be common for all events. So when the administrator defines the number of events as 6, I want 6 columns to display in the end user view, the next time maybe 4, etc.

Item Description Event1 Event2 Event3 Event4 Event5 Event6
Material Cost
Labor Cost
ETC

The end user would then complete the amounts in the grid. The makeup of this will change for virually every use of the form, so going back to the designer is not an option. Any suggestions on an approach to this for a newcomer to InfoPath.

Displaying a variable number of columns is tricky because of screen resolution and display widths. Just imagine if you had 20 events. Can you display these as rows in a repeating table underneath the Item and Description row?

In general, what you want to do is define the cells and then set conditional visibility depending on how many events are declared. If your events have different labels, you'll need to use an expression box and maybe an attribute on the event to display it's name. But, this is all very doable. Good luck.

You can do a search on Google Groups... there was a discussion a long while back in which someone showed how to have a table repeat horizontally instead of vertically... but it sounds like you will want to repeat in both directions... I'm not sure what this will take.

Greg Collins [InfoPath MVP]