Is Infopath the right tool for this?

[Arthur Pappas]

Hi Everyone,

I want to create a "registration" form for an upcoming event. The form will
contain text boxes, drop down lists, etc, that applicants would be asked to
fill in (name, address, phone #, etc). I am thinking that I'd upload this
form (to my MS Skydrive, for example) & registrants could download it, fill
it out, then email the completed form back to me.

Is this what Infopath is for, or should I be looking at something else? I do
not use MS Outlook (only have Hotmail email address) or have a "Sharepoint
Server" (or what ever they are called), & will be doing this from my home
computer.

I have downloaded the trial version of Infopath 2007 & began building my
form but a colleague of mine told me "it ain't that simple getting the forms
to people cuz you need a Sharepoint something or other, etc, etc." Is this
correct?

I also downloaded the trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro but after a few
minutes with it I shudder at the thought of using it to build a form.

Any suggestions or thoughts are welcomed

 

[na]

Hi Everyone,

I want to create a "registration" form for an upcoming event. The form will
contain text boxes, drop down lists, etc, that applicants would be asked to
fill in (name, address, phone #, etc). I am thinking that I'd upload this
form (to my MS Skydrive, for example) & registrants could download it, fill
it out, then email the completed form back to me.

Is this what Infopath is for, or should I be looking at something else? Ido
not use MS Outlook (only have Hotmail email address) or have a "Sharepoint
Server" (or what ever they are called), & will be doing this from my home
computer.

I have downloaded the trial version of Infopath 2007 & began building my
form but a colleague of mine told me "it ain't that simple getting the forms
to people cuz you need a Sharepoint something or other, etc, etc." Is this
correct?

I also downloaded the trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro but after a few
minutes with it I shudder at the thought of using it to build a form.

Any suggestions or thoughts are welcomed

Why not just create a Word Doc that the person can fill out and email
back to you? You can set Word Docs up for filling out forms (users
can enter text without the format of the document becoming altered)
Use the developer tools for this.

 

[Arthur Pappas]

NA,

Thank you for offering to help. I have the form 75% completed in Infopath.
I'm just not sure about the distribution process, i.e., how I give people
access to the form & how they get it back to me. This is where I was told I
need sharepoint or something or other & decided to post here for some advice.

 

[Anthony E. Greene]

Hi Everyone,

I want to create a "registration" form for an upcoming event. The form will
contain text boxes, drop down lists, etc, that applicants would be asked to
fill in (name, address, phone #, etc). I am thinking that I'd upload this
form (to my MS Skydrive, for example) & registrants could download it, fill
it out, then email the completed form back to me.

Is this what Infopath is for, or should I be looking at something else? Ido
not use MS Outlook (only have Hotmail email address) or have a "Sharepoint
Server" (or what ever they are called), & will be doing this from my home
computer.

I have downloaded the trial version of Infopath 2007 & began building my
form but a colleague of mine told me "it ain't that simple getting the forms
to people cuz you need a Sharepoint something or other, etc, etc." Is this
correct?

I also downloaded the trial version of Adobe Acrobat Pro but after a few
minutes with it I shudder at the thought of using it to build a form.

Any suggestions or thoughts are welcomed

You *can* use InfoPath for this, but it would require the users to
also have InfoPath. An alternative is to post an HTML form on web
server and send them the link. Typically web-based forms use a script
for processing, but you can setup the form to generate an email
instead. See <http://webdesign.about.com/od/forms/a/
aa072699mailto.htm>.

A minor drawback to using a mailto form is that the user needs to have
a default email client setup on their machine (a webmail account won't
work). More importantly, the received email message will require some
parsing to get the data into a database.

Another option is to use a Google Spreadsheet with an associated form.
You'd create the spreadsheet with a column for each field of data that
you want to collect, then choose to create a form. The form editing
interface allows you to designate each field as a 1-line text box,
paragraph text, pick list, checkbox, or radio button. You can send the
form to users and their replies would populate the spreadsheet. You
can download the spreadsheet for use in Excel or for import into a
database. See <http://docs.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?
hl=en&topic=15166> for more info.

 

[Anthony E. Greene]

NA,

Thank you for offering to help. I have the form 75% completed in Infopath..
I'm just not sure about the distribution process, i.e., how I give people
access to the form & how they get it back to me. This is where I was toldI
need sharepoint or something or other & decided to post here for some advice.

You have two choices:
1. Publish/post the XSN file to a web server and send users a link.
2. Email the XSN file directly to the users.