InfoPath Dev

Looking for ideas on this one. I have a form that has 8 "potential" sections, each with a field that needs to be mandatory, but only if that section is visible.

For any given submission between 1 and 8 of the fields may be visible, with the remainder hidden. This is the normal use of the form, so obviously just marking the field "mandatory" on all 8 won't work because the form will enforce it even on unused (hidden) sections.

So the idea is that is the section is visible I want to enforce that a field is not blank, while if the section is hidden do nothing.

Andy thoughts?

You just need to use a validation rule. What ever the conditions are under which the section should show would be the condition for the field to be required. See attached sample - save locally, right click and select design, then you can preview, etc. Instead of hiding the sections, I've set the background color so you can easily see when the field in each section is required.

Hmm, seems simple enough, but I am missing something. I added the rule "validation" and the condition was the same as those which make that section visible, but I can still save and close the form with that field blank and I get no error.

Got it! I re-uploaded the form and it fixed that - but then I was getting a validation error even if I filled in the field, but that turned out to be a stupid typo.

At any rate, I had never played with validation rules before, so thank you! It fixed my issue.