The downside to forms created with Designer is that XFA is a
proprietary Adobe format. My company has
since chosen Bluebeam Revue as its PDF solution and the application is
incompatible with XFA forms. To further
exacerbate the problem, Adobe and Bluebeam do not “play well together” when
both applications are installed on the same computer.
Within the past year, the company selected an application
for its enterprise financial and project management solution based on MS
Dynamic GP. The software vendor only
provides three forms Out Of the Box (OOB) in its Project Management Portal
(PMP) that sits on SharePoint. Their
advice was to use InfoPath (we are limited on resources for building InfoPath
forms), purchase K2 (a third-party workflow solution requiring infrastructure
and capital expense) or, use MS Excel and Word for creating our forms.
Considering the constraints above, the decision was made to
convert our XFA PDF forms to MS Word (2010) and, to update any older Word forms
not utilizing content controls in the form fields. The old Word forms were created using
“fields” that are nothing more than an underlined space or, infrequently,
tables. As a result, as the user types
the fields shift, the text is not underlined because the lines move all around
the page, and the forms are generally difficult, and time consuming to fill out. Many users justifiably complain. They find it easier to simply print the form
and fill it out by hand, defeating the purpose of an electronic form. The Excel forms continue to be used as-is.
As work began it seemed as though the MS Word content
controls would be an adequate, if not elegant, solution for building our forms. Users can open the form in Word, save it with
a new name, and fill it out using the Tab bar, mouse, or arrow keys to navigate. As more versatility, complexity, and the need
to perform calculations became necessary, it was evident that MS Word is not
the ideal tool for creating user fillable forms.
Word has three types of content controls, each with their
own set of pros and cons. There are the
default controls, most of which have less or none of the capabilities of
earlier controls. There are Legacy
controls, which have their own set of limitations. And there are the Active X controls that are
“classier looking”, but take up more real estate and make it a “macro-enabled”
form; something that is generally not desired and is fairly incompatible with
SharePoint 2010 for our use. For
example, the default content control deficiency includes an “all-or-nothing”
formatting; if you italicize one word in a sentence the whole sentence becomes
italicized. One type of control’s
properties allow you to restrict the number of characters while another does
not. Naming or tagging a default control
takes up real estate. It also prints the
“Click here to insert text.” message if the field was left “blank” intentionally. You have to delete the text and insert a
space as a work around.
Tables can be added to the forms very easily. The table’s boarders can be hidden, making it
look professional, easy to view, navigate, and fill out. Content controls can be placed in the table,
but have the same shortcomings as above.
Simple formulas can be added to tables but, they are
severely restricted to the simplest of equations. ((=SUM above), below, left, or right of the
result field) To perform a more complex calculation
using a formula, without using code, the user must click in the field where the
result is to be shown and then hit the F9 key to “update” the field. This is not a user friendly way to do
things. An Excel spreadsheet can be
embedded into the Word form but it cannot be sized to limit the number of rows
and columns. The spreadsheet can be
linked to an external source for its data, but that is not practical for our
forms.
My company does not have a “Word MVP” on staff to create and
maintain these forms. Beyond the very basic, information on creating
forms, how the controls work, what the property settings do, how everything
acts based on changes, what the constraints are, etc., are extremely hard to
find or non-existent in the public domain.*
Detailed information cannot be found in books, in tutorials, nor on
Microsoft’s sites. (At least not that
myself or anyone else can find.) It took
many, many, hours of scouring the Internet to find help. It’s as if this is “secret information” that Microsoft
wants to keep for itself and their MVPs.
And, once found, there is still a lot of trial and error required to
create a truly usable, professional form.
Even then, concessions will have to be made, finally settling on
something that’s “as good as it gets”, leaving you wondering, “Is the juice
worth the squeeze?”
*Dyan D. Chapman, Gregory Mason and Graham Mayer are very
good resources. If it relates to
SharePoint, Joel Oleson, Andrew McConnell and Dux Raymond are excellent
resources. Dux is a Project Management “heavyweight”.
