InfoPath Rules disappearing in 2010

Question

I am using InfoPath 2010 for 2007 Web Forms. Within the last few days some strange things have been happening,

• Rules have been disappearing - some of my rules that were entered do not show up anymore
• Some fields that are populated (through rules) using external data from SharePoint lists are not showing up on the form. If I save the form then reopen it, the data is there.
• In one form, I build a variable FormFileName, then use that in my submit options as the filename. The form will not submit the first time, then submit the second time without a problem. After numerous troubleshooting updates, these rules too disappeared.

These are all problems that have surfaced after working correctly for weeks. The form was updated in other areas when this started happening.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi lisa987,

You state that this all started a few days ago when the form was "updated in other areas" - is there more than one person making changes to the template?  The behavior you describe "typically" points to a template that is being modified by more than 1 person. 

Do you happen to have a copy of the template prior to the changes made that started the rules "falling off" of the template as well as a copy of a form created prior to those changes?  Do you also have a copy of the template after the changes were made and a corresponding form created from the post-changes template?  If you do would you be able to send them to me so I can take a look?  You can send them as a zip file with the thread title as the subject to asuoja at microsoft dot com.

What I can do is take a look at them to see if there is anything out of the ordinary.

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Regards, Aaron Suoja - Microsoft Online Community Support

Answer 2

Aaron's questions are sound.  This is not normal and seems indicative of unknown input by other people.  I have been working with InfoPath 2010 for a year now - with both 2007 and 2010 forms on both SharePoint 2007 and 2010 - and none of this has ever happened.

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SharePoint Architect || Microsoft MVP || My Blog

Answer 3

Hi lisa987,

Were you able to make any headway into why you were seeing these rules disappear?  Did you want me to still take a look at your templates?

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Regards, Aaron Suoja - Microsoft Online Community Support

Answer 4

Greetings all,

I have just encountered a similar phenomenon.  I had a button on my InfoPath form that I wanted to hide if data was unavailable for display, so I entered a conditional formatting to Hide the button.  It worked, the button was hidden, but I wanted to tweak the rules a bit and when I went back in to edit the rules I had JUST ENTERED 2 minutes before, they disappeared.  The Rules were nowhere to be found and I am now going to have to delete the button, add the default values back and not go with conditional formatting as I NEED to be able to change rules if necessary without deleting controls and readding them. 

I am using InfoPath 2010, SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise, Internet Explorer 8.0 and these all worked perfectly before I added rules to hide the buttons under certain conditions with rules.  I had to delete the buttons and re-add them without rules to get them working again. 

Any clues as to why the rules would disappear when the button rules Hide the control and why I cannot see the rules anymore?  Where did those rules go?

Wanted to let Lisa know she is not alone on this!

Any help would be greatly appreciated! 

Answer 5

Hello there,

 

I am having a similar issue in Infopath 2010. Here is the situation.

 I had a form with submit buttons. I wanted the users to switch views based on certain condition on one of the fields (statusfield), next time they see the form. So I kept rules on form load saying if value is so and so in the status field switch the view. To create the view controls however I copied and pasted everything from the first view. Now when I add new buttons, new rules everything keeps on disappearing. It is there , I can save it, as soon as I switch back view and come back the rules are gone . At one point even the buttons that I have added are gone. Now that I have deleted everything in my new view and started from scratch still its not working !!! Halloween is just over, I dont think its some kind of crazy Y2Halloween going on like Y2K seriously.

Please help ! I am already away from the deadline of my project !

Answer 6

did anyone find an answer to the issue of disappearing rules?

We are having the same issue. It is on 1 view and the rules are actions to switch to other views. It works on all the other views

I have deleted and recreated them but I can't get them to save.

Originally they were working

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VTJeanne

Answer 7

With regards to Submit buttons:

Make sure the Action property of the button is set to "Rules and Custom Code" and not "Submit" if you are using rules with your Submit buttons.

I had the same problem and it took a lot of hair pulling to finally figure out that was the problem. Hope this helps.