Fill Out an InfoPath Form Library From a Link On Another Page

This has bothered me for a while, but never bothered me enough to make me figure out how to do it. Until now.

The problem

You've created a Form Library in your Windows SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal server site/area and you want to provide users a link to fill out the form without bringing them to the form library or providing that obnoxious list web part toolbar.

Potential Solutions

One solution has been to deploy the InfoPath form via MSI.  I don't link this option because versioning the form isn't as slick.

Another solution has been to reverse engineer the JScript code that SharePoint uses behind the scenes in the A HREF=Javascript: call for the "Fill Out This Form" toolbar element.  The downside to this is that it causes an Internet Explorer security prompt, and unless you have the code snippet you can waste a lot of time reverse engineering ows.js and its siblings.  I spent some time doing this, and you could write a web part to get around the security prompt, but if you are looking for a no prompt no code solution, here it is:  strip down the data view web part.

Solution

Use FrontPage 2003 to edit the page on which you want your hyperlink to appear.  Add the form library web part to the page.  Right click on it and convert it to an XSL data view.  Delete everything but the "Fill Out This Form" toolbar element (including the classes because they will cause the style sheets to apply the toolbar style to the element).  Then change the wording of the hyperlink to suit your needs.  This approach is useful because I don't have to copy script references or look up guids.

1 Comment

  • Lori, the difference is that the approach in this blog immediately launches the InfoPath form in Fill Out. A link to the XSN brings up the Open/Save/Cancel dialogue.
    That is fine, but can confuse users, or lead them to save the XSN on their machine.
    It's just a cleaner user experience.

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