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Publish a form template

After designing a form template, you can make it available for others to use by publishing it to a shared folder on your computer or a network, to a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services form library, or to a Web server.

Note  Regardless of where or how you publish your form, users who want to fill out the form must have Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 installed on their computers.

1. In design mode, click Publish on the File menu.
2. On the first page of the Publishing Wizard, click Next, and then do one of the following:

   Publish to a shared folder

   1. On the second page of the Publishing Wizard, click To a shared folder on this computer or on a network, and then click Next.
   2. In the Form path and file name box, type the location where you want to publish the form. To browse for the location, click Browse.

      Note  In some cases, you can publish your form to a folder by using a file path that is not accessible (for example, \\private\example\form\). You can have users access your form through a public URL that points to that folder (for example, http://www.example.com/form). If this is the case, type the folder location in this step. Later in the wizard, you can enter the URL.

   3. In the Form name box, type a name for the form, and then click Next.

      Note  The form name, which is used to identify the form if you update it or republish it, will be visible to users when they fill out the form.

   4. On the next page of the Publishing Wizard, if necessary, enter an alternate access path (URL) that points to the published location of the form template. The form will still be published to the location that you specified in step 2. However, users will access the form through the URL.

      Note  In most cases, the publish location and the alternate access path will be the same.

   5. Click Finish.
   6. To send users an e-mail message telling them about the form, click Notify Users, and then complete and send the e-mail message.

   Publish to a SharePoint form library

   1. On the second page of the Publishing Wizard, click To a SharePoint form library, and then click Next.
   2. Click Create a new form library (recommended), and then click Next.
   3. In the Enter the location of your SharePoint site box, enter the address of the Windows SharePoint Services site. The address should include the Windows SharePoint Services site location.
   4. In the Name and Description boxes, type a name and description for the form, and then click Next.

      Note  The form name and description, which are used to identify the form if you update it or republish it, appear on the default view of the form library.

   5. To display data from your form in the form library, on the next page of the wizard, click Add, select the field that you want to display in a column, and then type a name for the column in the Column name box.
   6. If you selected a repeating field, you can define how you want to display the field in the form library by clicking a value in the Choose a function to use on repeating data list, and then clicking OK.

      Note  You can choose whether to display the first value in the field, the last value, or a count of all the occurrences of the field, or whether to merge all the values together.

   7. Click Finish.
   8. To send users an e-mail message telling them about the form, click Notify Users, and then complete and send the e-mail message.

   Publish to a Web server

   1. In the second page of the Publishing Wizard, click To a Web server, and then click Next.
   2. In the Web URL and file name box, type the location where you want to publish the form. To browse for the location, click Browse.

      Note  In some cases, you can publish your form to a URL that is not accessible and then have users access your form through a different URL that points to the publish URL. If this is the case, type the publish URL in this step. Later in the wizard, you can enter the URL through which users can access the form.

   3. In the Form name box, type a name for the form, and then click Next.

      Note  The form name, which is used to identify the form if you update it or republish it, will be visible to users when they fill out the form.

   4. In the next page of the Publishing Wizard, if necessary, enter an alternate access path (URL) that points to the published location of the form template. The form will still be published to the location that you specified in step 2. However, users will access the form through the URL that you specify here.

      Note  In most cases, the publish location and the alternate access path will be the same.

   5. Click Finish.
   6. To send users an e-mail message telling them about the form, click Notify Users, and then complete and send the e-mail message.