Office 2007 Bible

Understanding InfoPath

InfoPath relies on Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a way to gather and transfer lists of information. You create a form template in InfoPath that defines and labels the various fields of information to gather. That form template file, which has an .xsn filename extension, is a type of container or cabinet file that holds other files such as an XML Schema (.xsd) and XSL Transformation (.xslt) file. Those other files within the template container give the form its functionality.

Each form template is connected to a main data source. For a form template created from a blank state, the data source is the XML definitions with the template itself, created by adding fields to the template. Each time an end user opens and fills out the form, he or she creates a new instance of the form. After filling in the form fields, the user can then save the new instance of the form as a separate XML file in the same folder as the template or another designated folder, from which the manager of the form can export the data from all the forms into a single Excel database. Or, if the form was sent by e-mail, the user can e-mail the results back to the form’s distributor, who can consolidate the data in an InfoPath folder in Outlook.

If you take the reverse approach and set up a form with a data connection to an existing database, Web service, XML Schema, or other database connection, you add existing fields from that data source to the connected database. In this way, the ...