Vision
Using one form library to support multiple InfoPath templates
January 2006
A SharePoint form library is an excellent place to store InfoPath forms. Out of the box SharePoint form libraries are somewhat limited, form libraries will not allow you to publish more than one template per form library.
Organizations sometimes want to publish more than one template per form library. When, for example, a new and updated version of an existing InfoPath form template is available, but you still want to support the old template in order to support the ‘old’ InfoPath forms that are still in the form library. You could use another form library for the new template but this might be confusing for your users. This article will show you a way how to publish more than one template in a form library. In order to make this work the templates will have to have different names.
First of all you need to create an InfoPath form. You could do this by designing one yourself or by using one of the sample forms that comes with InfoPath. We will use one of the sample forms called ‘meeting agenda’.
We will publish this InfoPath form to a new form library. Next choose ‘fill out this form’. To do this you have to go to your newly created form library and click on the ‘fill out this form’ link. Save the form in your InfoPath form library and give it a descriptive name. We’ve called our form ‘meeting agenda infopath’.!
Now we’re going to design another InfoPath form. Again we will use one of the sample forms that comes with InfoPath, this time we will take the Project Plan form.
When clicking the save button in InfoPath we choose to save this template locally, in our case c:\temp\template1.xsn.
Copy this new template into the SharePoint form library. To do this we have to go back to the SharePoint form library and select the ‘Explorer View’, located on the left side. Copy the template you’ve saved locally in the Forms folder. Note: make sure that the templates have different names
Next we want to make the new template the default one when filling out a form. To do this follow the next steps:
- Click ‘Modify settings and columns’
- Click ‘Change general settings’
- Change the name of the form template to the name of the new form template.
It’s now possible to open the forms made with the old template and create (and open) new ones with the new template!
Comments?
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