Change attributes of heading styles?

[Sherlock]

I am currently on InfoPath 2003, but moving shortly to 2007. I have searched
InfoPath Help and MS Online sites. I can find nothing about how to redefine
the attributes of the Heading styles in an InfoPath form template. I want to
change the font from Verdana to Arial on all of them. I also want to assign
font sizes, leading and trailing space, etc.; so that when I apply a heading
style to text on my form, it uses MY attributes and not the default ones. How
do I do it?

I am extremely well versed in using templates and styles in MS Word, but
this seems a bit of a different animal. I would like to understand the
differences and what is possible in InfoPath. What do I need to search by or
where do I need to look to learn more about defining attributes in an
InfoPath template?

Thanks!

 

[Greg Collins [InfoPath MVP]]

There is no way to change the "styles" in InfoPath. You can change the default fonts for various controls in the View Properties dialog box. However, if you want to change the headers you can either select each header and make the changes in the desinger, or you can extract your form files and modify the .xsl file to adjust the header styles.

 

[Sherlock]

Thanks, Greg.

I've now moved to 2007. You didn't specify a version, so I'm assuming your
response is true for both versions.

I also gather from your response that unless a developer wants to spend lots
and lots of time tweaking each and every label, it's best just to go with the
default. Is that true??

Is there a functional reason why it's so hard to apply a "style"?

Thanks.

 

[Greg Collins [InfoPath MVP]]

Style was never really developed in the InfoPath product. Color Schemes (note that this is not style) is about all you get.

Yes, my response was for IP2007 and earlier versions.

Unless there's some "need" to have the different styles, it might not be worth the effort.

However, read this article to see if it helps:

Add a Custom Style Sheet to a View
http://www.infopathdev.com/howto/tutorials/default.aspx?i=a396459320204261ad2379381824683d

Good luck!

 

[Sherlock]

Thank you, Greg. I agree that that seems like a lot of effort unless there's
a strong need.

FWIW, people like me, who are coming to InfoPath with a strong background in
Word, are going to REALLY miss styles. My company uses company-wide templates
with custom toolbars (which I built) to apply a variety of styles with one
click on the appropriate button. Paragraph styles require only that the
insertion point be somewhere in the paragraph, so they're much faster than
the Format Painter, which requires that you select the text.

The inability even just to redefine the Heading styles in InfoPath amazes
me! That alone would allow enough functionality to get by, since it is
possible to set each type of control or all controls to a standard set of
attributes, and labels and headings are the primary areas that need adjusting.

FYI, I searched on everything I could think of and could find nothing in
Microsoft's InfoPath pages about this issue. Perhaps those of us who
extensively use and understand styles and templates in Word are rarer than I
thought, but a few words of explanation about what can and can't be done
stylewise in InfoPath would certainly have been helpful.

I don't know if you have occasion to pass suggestions along to Microsoft,
but if you do, I'd suggest more information on the subject now and definable
Headings in an update.

My goal is to make form development as fast as possible, while still working
within my company's style standards. I would greatly appreciate any other
suggestions you might have.

Thanks for letting me bend your ear, and thanks too for helping me with my
questions.

 

[Greg Collins [InfoPath MVP]]

Hi. Your likely not alone on the subject. I've heard this discussion come up before.

Be aware that many Microsoft employees (including those with influence) do watch (and often participate) in this newsgroup. They are interested in the troubles we all have, and how they can improve the product. That doesn't mean that any one or more complaints or suggestions will be implemented in the next release, however, I know that they do take note of these things.

I occasionally have opportunities to provide lists of feature requests to the MS InfoPath team and can certainly offer this as a suggestion the next time I have the opportunity.

In the mean time, a custom style sheet might be your best bet. Unfortunately (in your case) InfoPath was never intended to have all the functionality of Word--it was meant to be a forms editor. Not that designers don't want such abilities, but when your under the gun to get a product out in a very short period of time, as was the case when were were preparing InfoPath v1, we have to make harsh decisions about what features to include and what to cut in order to make the deadline. As to whether this was a possible feature for v1, I cannot say, as I wasn't part of the group deciding features, but I know that I had several suggestions that never made it in.

They did however get one of my suggestions into InfoPath 2007, which is the ability to right-click on a node in the data source pane, and choose to copy the full XPath to that node. I got tired of having to always figure those out manually!

Good luck!