 |
 | Home | Contact Us | FAQ | Search & Site Map | Link to Us |
 | Sign In | Join | Other 45 Sites in Network |
| HomeDiscussionsAccessExcelInfoPathOutlookPowerPointPublisherWordDirectoryUser Groups Related Topics Outlook ExpressInternet ExplorerWindowsMS Server ProductsMore Topics ... |
MS Office Forum / General MS InfoPath Questions / December 2005Infopath and earlier versions of Office
I've got Office 2002 installed on a couple of my computers and am entertaining the thought of getting Office 2003 with Infopath on a new machine I'm going to get in the new year. I've never used Infopath before but I've read a little bit about it and know basically what it does. My question is whether the forms generated will be compatible with the Access 2002 application I've been working on which runs on my two existing machines and will soon also be used on other machines in my office, some of which still run Office 2000. Or am I going to have to upgrade to 2003 all around? That's something I'm not keen to do given that a completely new version of Office is due out next year anyway and if I do upgrade I'd prefer to do it to the next version rather than the version which is about to replace it. Travis Hi Travis, No you don't need the full Office 2003 to run InfoPath. You can buy it alone and it can work side-by-side with any other Office version. Hope that it helps. Regards, Franck Dauché > I've got Office 2002 installed on a couple of my computers and am > entertaining the thought of getting Office 2003 with Infopath on a new [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > > Travis What about the forms? I was under the impression that InfoPath could create distributable forms which could be emailed, put up at inernet or intranet sites etc. I thought I could use a single copy of InfoPath to create a whole bunch of data entry forms which can be emailed to clients, put on web sites and intranets. If everyone, including clients, need to be running InfoPath then the exercise doesn't appear to be all that worthwhile since these days a significant portion of end users only have the basic four Office apps. Travis It depends what you need. If your users are only reading the forms, you can turn xml into HTML to display the form in IE. Users can also buy third party viewer (some of them have partial data entry support). In any case, InfoPath can be bought as a separate product and can be added on top of any Office product that you might have. Regards, Franck Dauché > What about the forms? I was under the impression that InfoPath could > create distributable forms which could be emailed, put up at inernet or [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Travis I intend to use the forms mainly as client questionnaires. A read-only questionnaire isn't particularly useful and I can't expect my clients to rush out and buy InfoPath just to fill in a questionnaire. I was hoping to use InfoPath forms for other staff to enter data as well, but it looks like they will need InfoPath installed. I've obviously had the wrong idea about what InfoPath does. I'm particularly confused by what these "distributable forms" are, since I assumed these could be used for data gathering rather than merely data display. So what is the best way to go about creating emailable questionnaires that can be filled in electronically by clients then emailed back and imported into a database? Should I do everything in Excel and write a VBA routine that imports cells and ranges into Access or should I go out and hire an ASP or PHP programmer? Travis Travis, InfoPath is as you put it a means for displaying data, the means by which it distrubutes a form is by copying a tempalte to the users machine and hence yes it does make the assumption that the user has InfoPath installed on their machine (this may change in the future just have to wait and see what MS has up their sleeve) this being said ther are third party tools out there that will convert an InfoPath form to a HTML form (InfoView is the main one I have come across), but it is worth noting that the more complex the form the less useful these tools become. Your other option of course is to get an asp.net page developed that can capture this data for you. I know this doesn't give you any hard and fast answer to what you should do but does give you some more information Cheers Ben > I intend to use the forms mainly as client questionnaires. A read-only > questionnaire isn't particularly useful and I can't expect my clients [quoted text clipped - 14 lines] > > Travis > I know this doesn't give you any hard and fast answer to what you should do > but does give you some more information Actually your information was very valuable to me Ben because it has cleared up my confusion over the "distributable forms". InfoPath seems to have a number of useful features, but I'm better off putting my efforts into developing my Access applications and eventually I'll put my questionnaires online. Thanks. Travis |
Reply to this Message |
 Sign In
 Join
 My Latest Posts My Monitored Threads My Blog My Photo Gallery My Profile My Homepage Start New Thread Enable EMail Alerts Rate this Thread
|
©2008 Advenet LLC Privacy Policy - Terms of Use
This website includes both content owned or controlled by Advenet as well as content owned or controlled by third parties.