R
Rachel Garrett
As early as this morning, I was calling InfoPath my favorite Microsoft
product. That was before I found out that it disables submission of
information back to the database if anything you're reading from it is
too long:
"Submit status: Not allowed - One or more of the columns in the data
source has a long data type (text, ntext, hyperlink or image). Long
data types are not supported."
The "workaround" I see listed, when I Google this text, is that I
should write a web service. I don't have time to learn how before this
work project is due on Friday, and it doesn't seem to me like that
could be the most efficient way to do it. Here are my thoughts:
1) I could convert all the tables in the Access database to XML, and
write my forms again from scratch using the XML documents as the data
source(s). I haven't yet figured out how to submit changes to an XML
data source, just by filling out an InfoPath form. The "submit" button
properties don't seem to allow this.
2) I could forget InfoPath and write a form in Access instead.
3) I could keep the Access data >> InfoPath forms that exist, and
figure out a way to append the data collected in InfoPath into an
Excel spreadsheet, which I then could append to the existing tables in
Access.
I feel like I must be doing something wrong, because letting users
interact with data (i.e. read and change it) is exactly what InfoPath
is supposed to do, but I can't seem to make it work for something that
is actually pretty basic -- letting users search for information in a
database and make changes to a couple date fields and a comments
field.
Thanks,
Rachel Garrett
product. That was before I found out that it disables submission of
information back to the database if anything you're reading from it is
too long:
"Submit status: Not allowed - One or more of the columns in the data
source has a long data type (text, ntext, hyperlink or image). Long
data types are not supported."
The "workaround" I see listed, when I Google this text, is that I
should write a web service. I don't have time to learn how before this
work project is due on Friday, and it doesn't seem to me like that
could be the most efficient way to do it. Here are my thoughts:
1) I could convert all the tables in the Access database to XML, and
write my forms again from scratch using the XML documents as the data
source(s). I haven't yet figured out how to submit changes to an XML
data source, just by filling out an InfoPath form. The "submit" button
properties don't seem to allow this.
2) I could forget InfoPath and write a form in Access instead.
3) I could keep the Access data >> InfoPath forms that exist, and
figure out a way to append the data collected in InfoPath into an
Excel spreadsheet, which I then could append to the existing tables in
Access.
I feel like I must be doing something wrong, because letting users
interact with data (i.e. read and change it) is exactly what InfoPath
is supposed to do, but I can't seem to make it work for something that
is actually pretty basic -- letting users search for information in a
database and make changes to a couple date fields and a comments
field.
Thanks,
Rachel Garrett