Automating InfoPath

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Service Pack 1 offers expanded application automation in the form of methods of the Application object and the XDocuments collection.

The Application object contains the following methods used for automation:

Method	Description
CacheSolution	Examines the form template in the cache and, if necessary, updates it from the published location of the form template.
Quit	Quits the Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 application.
RegisterSolution	Installs the specified Microsoft Office InfoPath form template.
UnregisterSolution	Uninstalls the specified Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 form template.

The XDocuments collection contains the following methods that can be used for external automation:

Method	Description
Close	Closes the specified Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 form.
New	Creates a new Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 form based on the specified form.
NewFromSolution	Creates a new Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 form based on the specified form template.
NewFromSolutionWithData	Creates a new Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 form using the specified XML data and form template.
Open	Opens the specified Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 form.

Note If the Disable Service Pack features option on the Advanced tab of the Options dialog box in InfoPath is selected, using the methods of the Application and XDocuments objects will result in an error when the Component Object Model (COM) server times out.

For backward compatibility, the automation of InfoPath is accomplished by using the ExternalApplication object from a programming language or environment that supports the Component Object Model (COM).

The ExternalApplication object provides the following methods that form developers can use to automate InfoPath.

Name	Description
CacheSolution method	Places the specified form template in a cache
Close method	Closes the specified form
New method	Creates a new form based on the specified form
NewFromSolution method	Creates a new form based on the specified form template
Open method	Opens the specified form
Quit method	Quits the InfoPath application
RegisterSolution method	Installs the specified form template
UnregisterSolution method	Uninstalls the specified form template

To use the ExternalApplication object, you must first create a reference to the ProgID of the InfoPath object model along with the name of the ExternalApplication object. The following example demonstrates the creation of a reference to the ExternalApplication object using the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programming language:

Dim objIP As Object

Set objIP = CreateObject("InfoPath.ExternalApplication")

After you have created a reference to the ExternalApplication object, you can use the methods that it provides to interact with InfoPath. For more information about how the methods of the ExternalApplication object are used, click the methods in the preceding table.