Accessing InfoPath forms from Outlook

We have made significant investment in Office 2007 to better integrate InfoPath with Outlook. To that effect we have made it really ease to use InfoPath forms from within Outlook. When you email InfoPath forms from InfoPath 2007(using File/Send To Mail Recipient or Email submit adapter), you will now have an enriched experience when viewing these InfoPath e-mail forms. In this post, I highlight just one of the several features that we have added to Outlook 2007.

 

Let us say, while you are working on your emails, you remember that you need to fill out a (InfoPath) form. You don't need to switch from Outlook any more. You can access the InfoPath dashboard from within Outlook by clicking on the "Choose InfoPath Form" option under "New" menu as shown below.

 

 

This will bring up a condensed version of the regular InfoPath "Fill out a form" dialog. Most of the editor functionality is available in this condensed version. If you need to switch to InfoPath design mode (or use any additional functionality not exposed in this condensed version) then you can click on "Open InfoPath" button at the bottom left of this dashboard to launch InfoPath application:

 

 

To learn more about InfoPath Outlook Integration I encourage you to visit Tudor's blog titled "Using InfoPath e-mail forms" at http://blogs.msdn.com/tudort/archive/2006/02/22/536800.aspx 

 

Hope you found this article useful and are interested in exploring the numerous features that Tudor talks about in his blog.

 

Thanks!

Anand

Lead Software Design Engineer