Drop-Down List Box Rules, "Unspecified error"

[marly]

I have an InfoPath form that I want to print out. Since InfoPath is
completely useless for printing forms I found a website here:
http://enterprise-solutions.swits.n...form-into-word-2007-document-xslt-c-sharp.htm
that shows me how to convert my InfoPath form to Word 2007 and I am able to
print out a document that looks really nice, in Word 2007 or PDF.

Now the problem:

On the form I have a Drop-Down List Box, with two items in them 1 and 2.
On the Drop-Down List box’s rules, I created a rule to change a text box
contents from 1 to 2. When I set the condition to “When Drop-Down List Box is
equal to 1†change the text box to 1 and “When Drop-Down List Box is equal to
2†change the text box to 2.

Much to my dismay, I found out, when I try selecting the contents of the
Drop-Down List box, I get an error that says, “Some Rules were not applied,
unspecified errorâ€.
I tracked down the error a little bit; I found that, in the instructions to
the website I linked to above, you create a “transform.xsl†from the
“document.xml†in the .docx file. Then you create a Data Connection to
receive data from the “transform.xsl†document.

If I create a new InfoPath project, put in a Drop-Down List Box, create a
rule, to change text box from 1 to 2 depending if the Drop-Down List box is 1
or 2. It works as expected. Then I go to data Connections and load up the
“transform.xsl†and run the form I get the “Some Rules were not applied,
unspecified errorâ€. So I know it relates to the “transform.xsl†file that’s
being created, however, why it can run the rules I have no clue.

If anyone has any suggestions I’d greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
marly

 

[marly]

To sort of answer part of my question. I found out that in the mainfest.xsf
file, sixth line from the top, in the namespace in <xsf:xDocumentClass, there
is a xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" if I take that out,
everything works perfectly fine, however, when I publish or rerun the form it
automatically puts it back into place and I get the error again.

If anyone has any suggestions or clues to point me in the right direction,
I’d greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,
marly

 

[Dana]

Hi Marly,
I have the same problem. Did you find something?

Thanks,
Dana

 

[marly]

Dana,

Sadly, no, I never found a solution to the problem. I had high hopes with
InfoPath 2007. In the end, I gave up on InfoPath.

Right now it's not working and it's very annoying. What I'm going to do is
change it over to ASP.NET and then write it out as a Word 2007 file and a PDF
file giving the user a selection on which format they would want to use. Then
it'll have a button that says, "E-mail via Word 2007 document or PDF
document".

There are some nice controls you can purchase to do the conversion to PDF
and you can do Word 2007 document creation on the fly server side.

I'm guessing that I'll probably use part of the idea to do the Word 2007
document creation, in the sense that I'll use the template, since it's easier
to write it out in word, then open up the .docx file, replace my strings in
there with the real data, then insert the document.xml back into the .docx
file. Once that's created I'll use a control to convert it over to PDF.

There are a number of controls from Infragistics to Telerik that provides
the ability to have spell checking, data validation, etc. all with in the
form. You might pay for them, up to $1,500 depending on what you want, but if
you compare that to the price of purchasing 50 licenses of Office that have
InfoPath with it vs. purchasing Office without InfoPath, the $1,500 is
peanuts compared to that.

The whole InfoPath project was to eliminate the need for the people doing
quotes on paper. I also wanted to have the ability to store it in a database.
I thought that InfoPath would be logical to use in this case. I also thought
that I could use a SharePoint document library and store them XML, since what
was needed would be pretty simple.

While using InfoPath, I ran into a number of problems, the first one was the
data validation, while I was able to get the validation to work how I wanted
(sort of, it still needed room for improvement), the problem came in with the
"Unspecified error" with that as well, so essentially, I have no data
validation.

Second, I wanted to have a nice print out, either in Word 2007 or PDF so
that they could be e-mailed, faxed, or printed out and given to the customer.

Begin Rant:
What I found out, was that printing just doesn't exist with InfoPath, if you
want printing done, forget it, if you don't use the InfoPath to Word example
(i.e. have no printing), you can have some data validation, but it's limited,
and you don't get the type of control you would want.

In about a month or so I will pick this project up again and redo it in
ASP.NET, throw in a few buttons for, "E-mail as Word 2007, PDF, Fax, or
Print" and load all the data directly into a SQL database.

In the end, using InfoPath was taking up way too much time and effort. The
amount of time I was putting into using InfoPath made me think to just use
ASP.NET.

I realize that, "InfoPath is meant to be an electronic form and doesn't need
printing", well, in the real word everyone prints, the "paperless office"
will never exist because everyone insists on printing, they insist on
printing so much that it drives me crazy, I hate printers and printing with a
passion. People will print the stupidest of things and whine and complain
when they can't print it. People will print things that they don't need to.
People will print an e-mail, then give me the printed e-mail in person and
say, "read this when you get a chance" when they very well could have
forwarded me the e-mail.

In short, Printing is a basic fundamental process that will never go away,
even when you make a form electronic. I don’t care how electronic you make
it, somewhere at some point, there will be printing involved.

If you’re at a hospital and they give you a Tablet PC and say, “Fill out
this formâ€, at some point, someone is going to want the print out. – What?
Are you going to give them a tablet PC to take home with them so they have a
copy? Are you going to e-mail them the form? What if they don’t have a
computer and want the document to be kept in their file cabinet?

I can think of hundreds of examples, where an electronic form would be great
to utilize and almost all of them at some point is going to require printing
on the level that MS-Word provides. I should be able to design my InfoPath
form to print like MS-Word does, in the same amount of time it takes me to
create it in MS-Word. I shouldn't have to bother with XML, converting it or
whatever.

In my honest opinion, InfoPath is completely useless until it provides the
functionality to print like MS-Word does and it should take the same amount
of time as it would to design the print out using MS-Word.
End Rant

If you’re interested, I can let you know what I end up doing in ASP.Net for
the electronic form and getting it into Word 2007.

Thanks,

marly