When using a new product a day never goes by when you don’t learn something new and today was no exception.  I’ve been working on 3 new forms and today I was making tweaks to a couple of the forms and after publishing one of them I ran into the below errors when trying to submit a new form to a form library.  The error messages that I was receiving  were really vague to for the actual problem.

InfoPath cannot submit the form.
An error occurred while the form was being submitted.
The form cannot be submitted to the following location: form library url
The site may be offline, read-only, or otherwise unavailable.
The thread is already in background processing mode. 

Naturally after getting the error the troubleshooting hat went on and I started searching the internet for a solution but unfortunately couldn’t find one.  Then reviewed the changes that were made before it broke and couldn’t find anything wrong.  Started to look at the error messages again and when I scrolled over to the right to view full URL a light bulb turned on because I noticed something that a previous client had a problem with.  My filename ended with a . (period) and that’s a big no no with InfoPath forms.  The naming convention for the filename is “event name - company name” and for this instance the company name ended with a period.  Once I removed the period from the end of company name everything worked like a charm.

For my client we had to use a rule to search the filename for illegal characters before the form was submitted and replacing them with a _ (underscore) or just removing it all together.  The approach was used because we couldn’t rely on the users to remember not to add illegal characters to the end of the filename.

Until next time.

Cheers,
Michael

When using InfoPath 2010 I’ve always found myself coming back to the “File” tab to do something and each time I come back I’m finding new things to talk about.  In my last post I mentioned the “Design Checker” section being tinted in red when the form had a error.

Today when editing an existing form to fix a layout issue I noticed that the “Publish your form” and “Design Checker” sections were tinted in a yellowish color advising me that my current changes weren’t published and form status was “Not checked”. 

When creating a new form the “Submit Options” was a yellowish color because a submit option hadn’t been specified yet.  I’m finding out that InfoPath 2010 is a lot more informative when something is wrong or not everything has been wired correctly.

There is just so many cool simple little features in InfoPath 2010 that has made my life easier and make me want to share it with others.  This year is now starting to shape up to be a good one.  Now all I need to do is find some InfoPath 2010 projects besides my own to push my knowledge of InfoPath 2010 and SharePoint 2010.

Cheers,
Michael

The InfoPath Design Checker isn’t new but it’s now located in a different area and I discovered some unexpected functionality.  Let’s first talk about the new location and then will get to the unexpected functionality.

When building one of my new InfoPath forms for SharePoint Saturday I accidently created it as a browser based form and when publishing it the typical error box appeared asking if I wanted to Review Errors or Publish Anyway.  This box only appears if the Designer Checker has already been told to verify the form on the server before publishing.

If this setting hasn’t been set then the form will publish and you’ll receive a warning box staying the form publishing status and error message.  By clicking the OK button the Designer Checker task pane will open and the Verify on Server check box will automatically get checked. In my opinion this warning should have appeared before the form was published so the error could be resolved before publishing the form.

Clicking the Review Errors button the Design Checker task pane appears and allows for view of the errors, Refresh button (check for errors again), Verify on server check box and Change Settings link.  If you’ve never used InfoPath 2010 or 2007 the error message in task pane is clickable and a more detailed error message is given.  For this instance the error tells me it’s not convertible because I’m running a older version of Form Services and that’s not a 100% correct either because I’m using InfoPath with BPOS.

If you ever want to run the Design Checker before publishing it can be done from the File page by clicking the Design Checker button.  If the form has an existing error then the Design Checker will be highlighted in red.  When going to this page for something else the red highlight was immediately noticeable and it was a great nonintrusive way to show the form still had a error.

To fix this particular error the form type had to be changed and the dropdown box to do this is located on the Compatibility screen on the Form Options pop-up.   The Form Options pop-up is accessible by clicking the Form Options button from the File page or Change settings link from the Design Checker task pane.  The Change settings link takes you directly to the screen.  By changing the value to InfoPath Filler Form or InfoPath 2007 Filler Form and clicking the OK button the error goes away immediately.

Ok now for the unexpected functionality.  If you click on the red x to close the dialog box it doesn’t cancel publishing of the form but instead publishes it.  To be honest this functionality really surprised me because I was expecting it to cancel the publishing and show me the error message in the Designer Checker task pane.  This is definitely one of those situations that gets written in OneNote as unexpected behavior for InfoPath.

Cheers,
Michael

One of the best times and sometimes frustrating times is when a new version of a product is released and you get to learning all the new features of it or learn where all the old options have been moved to.  When I started using InfoPath 2010 I had to figure out where the option “Create labels for controls automatically” check box was located so I could turn it off.  Luckily this was a easy one and it took me only about 5 minutes to figure out.  Below are instructions on how to turn it off/on.

• From your InfoPath design view click File

• From the File page click “Options” in left vertical menu

• From the InfoPath Options dialog click the “More Options” button

• From the Options dialog click the “Design” tab and uncheck the “Create labels for controls automatically”

• Click OK twice to accept the change.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Michael