Chapter 9: Validate Form Data

How to…

Overview

• Eliminate blank fields

• Create validation rules

• Use validation operators

• Create alerts inline and with dialog boxes

If you have ever worked on a database-reporting or data-warehousing project, you know how important data quality is to turning raw data into decision-making information. While there are a number of good data-cleansing applications available on the market, it is much easier to catch any data entry errors at the beginning. InfoPath has a robust toolset for ensuring the quality of the data that has been entered via an InfoPath form.

Validation within InfoPath can be used to ensure that users enter the correct values on a form and that these values adhere to the business rules in place within your organization. This chapter surveys the validation features within InfoPath and shows how they can be used to ensure that the data entered into your forms is correct. The chapter starts with an overview of how validation works and then moves on to describe how to create your own validation rules by using the tools provided within InfoPath.