InfoPath Dev

I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to populate a repeating table in a Infopath form, bu importing from Excel.

My form holds a bill of materials for the order in question, and the data to be populated already exists in Excel.

Rather than re-key into the Infopath repeating table, I'd like to be able to alow the user to import the Excel data.

Has ayone figured out a way to do this?

PS still using Infopath 2003 here :-(

You can use Excel as an ODBC datasource and get access to informaiton that way as a data source.

You could import your data into SQL Express, have your spreadsheet access and update the data from there and then contect to the table from InfoPath.

If you have SharePoint you can convert into a dynamic list with the SP import wizard and then use that as an InfoPath Data Source.

We have created some command line programs to batch process an xls file and create the xml for a new form.  If you have the tamplate of your form it is making a data map between the data in the spreadsheet and your form schema.

So there are a few ideas i have.

Clay, I freely admit to being InfoPath "challenged" (hey that's why I am here looking for help). In the one hand I have an Infopath form that has 30 or so fields (Last Name, First Name, etc) and in the other hand I have a SharePoint list (or Excel) with similar cells (or entries). I want to use the SharePoint / Excel list to create individual SharePoint forms. In other words instead of filling out 1500 forms manually I want to "effortlessly" populate the data to create the forms for future use. I DO NOT want to leave the SharePoint list as a perpetually connected data source. Am I asking for too much? Thank you, MDSMD

Hi There and welcoem to the forum.

Is this a one-time conversion or are you going to want to have your data in a list and in InfoPath forms at the same time?

We have created some custom scripts which will process an Excel spreadsheet and create a form for each row. If you would like a quote to create such a program let me know.

In my opinion, a better architecture would be to put your contact data in a data base. Then you can have one form that you open that you can use to browse all the information, all within one form.  Otherwise to move between contacts you open a form, close it, find the next one you need (from a list of 1500) and then open that one, so the performance and user experience is not very good.  Check out the Database Accelerator model at http://www.qdabra.com WIth it, you can secure your data if necessary (who can view and who can update) and report on it as well.

If you would like a demo of a similar InfoPath form let me know.