About saving and publishing forms

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003

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About saving and publishing forms

In Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003, there are several ways you can save and publish a form, depending on whether you are filling out a form or designing a form template.

Saving and submitting forms you are filling out

When filling out a form, you can save the form (.xml file) to your computer or to any shared location, such as your company's intranet. Depending on the form's design, you might be able to save the form to a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services form library.

Saving a form to your computer allows you to work at your own pace. For example, if you are filling out a Purchase Order form that is located on your company's network and are unable to complete it before you need to disconnect from the network, you can save it to your hard disk and continue to fill it out while you are offline. After you finish filling out the form, you can save it back to the network or shared location. Saving a form to a shared location provides a simple way for other users to access and view the form.

In some cases, the form's design may prevent you from saving it. In those cases, it might be possible only to submit the form. Depending on the form's design, you might be able to submit the form to a database, Web service, SharePoint site, or as an e-mail message.

Saving and publishing form templates

When designing a form, you are actually creating a form template (.xsn file). You can save the form template to your computer, which enables you to design it at your own pace.

A form template is composed of several individual files, called form files. To view and work with the form template's form files, click Extract Form Files on the File menu. This saves the form files to a folder where you can manually change the individual files.

When you finish designing a form template, you can publish it to a shared folder on your computer or a network, to a form library, or to a Web server (http:// or https://). After you publish the form template, users can fill out forms that are based on it. These forms are then associated with the form template, and any changes to the form template will affect the existing forms. For example, if a field is removed from a form template, existing forms based on that form template will no longer contain that field, even if the field was previously filled in.

Note  Regardless of where and how you publish a form, users must have InfoPath installed on their computers before they can fill out the form.

Unless the form template is digitally signed and operating with a security level of Full Trust, it can be difficult to move the form template after it has been published. In particular, moving a form template can prevent any existing forms that are based on that form template from opening. Therefore, it is recommended that you publish the form template to its final location before you have users fill out forms that are based on it.