How To Create A Fillable Form In Sharepoint

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I am wondering if there are any other applications out there to make fill-able and submittable forms for SharePoint besides InfoPath?

I have several forms created from InfoPath on SharePoint however the formatting looks off when it is submitted via email and I can't get the form to convert to PDF besides printing it to a PDF printer.

Any other application suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

Creating forms is about the most frustrating, finger-biting bit of madness I've ever had the displeasure of attempting in IT!

Using Word, or Excel, or LibreOffice, or any other tool to create a form for converting/importing to PDF is maddening. Using Adobe Acrobat directly kinda feels like cooking a fine meal with your hands tied behind your back!

I can't count how many hours I've spent trying to get everything lined up, tabbed correctly, filtered, formatted, named, proper "security", etc etc. Getting fonts to display right is nearly impossible. Don't even mention Google, unless you just want to ask for three pieces of info. I need forms with something like 80 selections and text boxes on a single 8.5x11 with some logic and it's mad mad mad!

I have yet to find ANY tool whatsoever to create very detailed fillable-forms, yet alone one that also works with Sharepoint.

My heart goes out to you!

13 Replies

Creating forms is about the most frustrating, finger-biting bit of madness I've ever had the displeasure of attempting in IT!

I have yet to find ANY tool whatsoever to create very detailed fillable-forms, yet alone one that also works with Sharepoint.

My heart goes out to you!

Try the Muhimbi PDF converter services for SharePoint for Auto or Workflow based conversion . approx. $1500 USD. We use it with Virto Workflow activities pack ($1300 USD I think). Virto Workflows can grab data from sharepoint items (Parent-Child relationship supported) and from Infopath as well I believe and then dump it into an HTML file which can be converted to a PDF using Muhimbi. Using Virto Workflow again, that PDF can be emailed too.

The actual form here is the HTML file which you can design using SharePoint Designer 2007 or any other HTML editing tool. I don't know if this will help you but we have SP Foundation so cannot use Infopath forms. Still, even If we could, I don't like Infopath forms. In your case, the Muhimbi Product will at least give you auto-PDFs.

MadEagle wrote:

Creating forms is about the most frustrating, finger-biting bit of madness I've ever had the displeasure of attempting in IT!

Using Word, or Excel, or LibreOffice, or any other tool to create a form for converting/importing to PDF is maddening. Using Adobe Acrobat directly kinda feels like cooking a fine meal with your hands tied behind your back!

I can't count how many hours I've spent trying to get everything lined up, tabbed correctly, filtered, formatted, named, proper "security", etc etc. Getting fonts to display right is nearly impossible. Don't even mention Google, unless you just want to ask for three pieces of info. I need forms with something like 80 selections and text boxes on a single 8.5x11 with some logic and it's mad mad mad!

I have yet to find ANY tool whatsoever to create very detailed fillable-forms, yet alone one that also works with Sharepoint.

My heart goes out to you!

In Word, I never use tabs in a form. I set up a table and go from there, formatting and adjusting the size of the cells individually or in groups. I've done some pretty big forms and never have any problems with it displaying properly. I usually use the forms as Word documents, then. If I want a PDF, I create the form in Acrobat, but I find it more difficult.

See I don't mind using InfoPath, once the form is uploaded into SharePoint it looks great. It is whenever the form is emailed out and is in the body of out look it looks horrible. Cells aren't even there, some overlap with others, the format is just crap. If I can fix that I'll be happy.

I decided to experiment with InfoPath, and the first form I did looked great in Outlook. After that, though, things got weird. Especially after I added our logo to the top of the page. Since the first couple of attempts, whenever I created a new form, I began seeing some of the issues you describe, only in my Outlook. The other person I sent them to could see them in Outlook just fine.

So...not sure what's going on, but I see what you mean.

HelloKitty wrote:

I decided to experiment with InfoPath, and the first form I did looked great in Outlook. After that, though, things got weird. Especially after I added our logo to the top of the page. Since the first couple of attempts, whenever I created a new form, I began seeing some of the issues you describe, only in my Outlook. The other person I sent them to could see them in Outlook just fine.

So...not sure what's going on, but I see what you mean.

I'm glad you can see what I mean. It's weird I have 1 form, the very 1st one I did and it shows up fine. But every form after the form is jacked. My company is really wanting to move forward with these online forms so I need to figure out a solution quick.

Don't invest in InfoPath. 2013 is the last version there's going to be.

Nick42

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Aug 9, 2014 at 02:39 UTC

Jpacella wrote:

Don't invest in InfoPath. 2013 is the last version there's going to be.

True, but the tech is being assimilated into other products (SharePoint in particular).

http://blogs.office.com/2014/01/31/update-on-infopath-and-sharepoint-forms/

Yeah that's where I read it was going away. Doesn't say much in terms of what the replacement tech will be.

Nick42

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Aug 9, 2014 at 03:12 UTC

It does, indirectly: " there will not be another version of the InfoPath desktop client or InfoPath Forms Services. We are focusing all of our investments on new intelligent, integrated forms experiences across Office technology."

and then there's this:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/SharePoint-Conference/2014/SPCtv-Insights-into-the-Future-of-Forms

I remember when C9 was like a rogue operation in MS. The good ole days.

So I got it to work, kinda. I had to create a new view, copy and paste the form into that view and change each field to 'Calculated Field'. The only thing I'd like to try and figure out is when emailing the form I'd like the blank text boxes to show in the email. Anyone know of a way to do that?