Microsoft Infopath Tutorial and Online Training Course

Introduction to InfoPath

What is InfoPath?

InfoPath, one of the newest additions to the Microsoft Office suite, is a simple but effective application designed to allow non-developers to create XML forms for use in a shared workspace. Virtually anyone can design a form template, even one that’s connected to a database, an XML Schema or a Web service provided by IT personnel, and then publish it to users across the workplace—either to a shared network drive, a SharePoint Portal, or a Web service. Users, provided they have InfoPath installed on their computers, can then fill out and save, submit, or print the form. Any user can collect and merge the data from multiple forms into one, making it easy to review and analyze data from a variety of sources.

Microsoft InfoPath Tutorial: Section 1 Overview

In this section, you will learn about:

• Exploring the InfoPath application interface
• Customizing toolbars

Exploring the Infopath Application Interface

InfoPath boasts a relatively simple interface, which makes it extremely easy to use. As with all Microsoft applications, there’s a standard menu bar and toolbars along the top of the window, a main area for working with forms, and a task pane on the right side of the window:

There are only two toolbars that you’ll frequently use: the Standard toolbar and the Formatting toolbar. The Standard toolbar contains shortcuts to commands for working with your form files, including New, Open, Save, and Print, as well as Cut, Copy, and Paste. The Preview Form button lets you preview and test your form in a new window.

The Formatting toolbar contains shortcuts to commands for formatting the elements of your form, with menus and buttons for changing the font, size, attributes, and alignment, as well as inserting bulleted and numbered lists.

All of these commands are available in the InfoPath menu bar.

The majority of commands you’ll use, especially when designing form templates, are available from various task panes. To show the task pane, open the View menu and select Task Pane.

All the available task panes are listed in a menu that you can access from the task pane’s title bar:

Use this menu to quickly switch from one task pane to another. Each task pane displays information and options. In addition, the Fill Out a Form and Design a Form task panes provide starting points for each of these tasks in InfoPath. The Design Tasks task pane guides you through the process of designing a form template from scratch.

Customizing Toolbars

You can customize the InfoPath toolbars to display the commands you frequently use and hide those you don’t use:

1. Display the toolbar you want to customize by opening the View menu and selecting it from the Toolbars submenu.
2. Open the Tools menu and select Customize.
3. In the Customize dialog, make sure the Commands tab is selected:

1. Select the category that contains the command you want to add.
2. From the Commands list, click and drag a command onto the toolbar where you want the command to appear:

When you release the mouse button, the command is inserted into the toolbar:

1. When you’ve finished adding commands, click Close to close the Customize dialog.

Microsoft InfoPath Tutorial: Section 1 Review

In this section, you learned about:

• Exploring the InfoPath application interface
• Customizing toolbars