Working with the Form Designer


The InfoPath Form Designer is the tool you use to create and modify InfoPath forms. Recall from the example in Chapter 3 that you can open the designer itself simply by creating a new form.

If you have ever worked with another web development or word processing application, the concepts behind the Form Designer will be easy to pick up. Each InfoPath form is created as a “flowing” document, such that the contents of the form are not placed precisely on the page but are placed in relation to other objects on the form. For example, if you wanted to put the title of your form on the second line from the top, you could simply press the ENTER key to insert a new line, similar to how you would in a word processor.

Likewise, once you had entered your form title on the second line of the page, you could click in the first line of the document and add additional space at the top by pressing ENTER. The form title and everything below it would be moved in relation to the extra blank lines you have created.

Tip

There is a way to add more structure to your form design, through the use of layout tables, which are discussed in the next chapter.

Just like a word processor or WYSIWYG web development tool, you can type directly onto your InfoPath form and you use all the standard Windows shortcuts (Cut, Copy, Paste, and so on) on the text and other objects within your form design.

To format text or other objects that appear on your form, you can use the Formatting toolbar that appears at the top of the designer or you can highlight a selection of text or an object and then right-click the text or object directly to access the property pages and options relating to it.

To access the tools that you will need to create your form, click the Design Tasks button on the toolbar, which opens the Design Tasks view in the Task Pane to the right of the InfoPath workspace.

Tip

The Design Tasks button is like the Preview Form button—it only appears when you are in design mode working with a form design.

This Task Pane view contains links to most of the areas of the designer you will need to access while designing your forms.

Over the next few chapters, you are going to be working with the Form Designer itself and the various objects, controls, and techniques that you will need to use to create your own feature-rich forms, so this section is not complete by far. Sometimes the best way to learn how to do something is hands-on. To that end, you will continue working with the InfoPath Form Designer in the next section, which looks at the controls that are used to enter data on the forms you create.




How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003
How to Do Everything with Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 (How to Do Everything)
ISBN: 0072231270
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 142

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