Opening InfoPath Forms


To open a blank InfoPath form for data entry, select File | Fill Out a Form, which changes the contents of the Task Pane to appear as shown here.

From the Task Pane, you are presented with a list of recently opened InfoPath forms from which you can pick, or you can select from the options immediately below this list to open an installed form or a form from your local drive or SharePoint server.

Tip

To open a blank InfoPath form, you can also select Fill Out a Form in the drop-down menu of the Task Pane or click the Fill Out a Form button on the Standard toolbar.

Opening an Installed Form

To open a form that has been installed on your computer (when InfoPath was installed or that was subsequently installed by an administrator), click the More Forms folder, which opens the dialog box shown in Figure 3-2.

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Figure 3-2: Opening an existing form

Forms installed locally appear in this dialog box either under Custom Installed Forms, which is a listing of all the forms that have been installed on your machine, or Sample Forms, which lists the sample forms that ship with InfoPath 2003.

Note

The examples in this chapter show you how to fill out one of the sample forms that ships with InfoPath. If you want to follow the walk-throughs in the chapter, open the Expense Report (Domestic) sample form.

InfoPath includes a number of sample forms that you can use within your own organization or as a starting point for your own form design. For a complete list of all the sample forms that ship with InfoPath 2003, refer to Appendix A.

Opening a Form Saved Locally

To open a form that has been saved locally or is on a network drive, click the On My Computer icon that appears immediately below the Open a Form heading in the Task Pane. This opens a standard Open dialog box, as shown in Figure 3-3, which allows you to browse for the InfoPath form you would like to open. You can use the drop-down list to select the type of form you want to open.

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Figure 3-3: You can open both InfoPath form templates and forms with data.

Note

To open an InfoPath form template, look for files with an .xsn file extension; to open a form that has data associated with it, look for an .xml file extension.

Opening a Form from SharePoint

Finally, if your organization uses SharePoint Portal Server to manage your InfoPath forms, you can open InfoPath forms directly from your SharePoint server by using the same Open dialog box. Click My Network Places in the lower-left corner and navigate to your SharePoint server location.

If you haven’t configured a connection to your server, you need to use the Add a Network Place Wizard to specify the URL or your server, as well as a name for the connection. After you select your SharePoint server, you see a dialog box similar to the one shown in Figure 3-4 that allows you to navigate through the document libraries on your SharePoint server to locate the form you want to open.

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Figure 3-4: Navigate through your SharePoint server document libraries to find the form you want to use.




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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