Resources for learning InfoPath

Are you interested in improving your skills in designing form templates or expanding your general knowledge of Microsoft Office InfoPath? This article lists Help files, Web sites, and other resources that can help you accomplish these goals.

In this article

Resources for everyone

Resources for developers

Resources for IT professionals

Resources for everyone

One of the best ways to learn about InfoPath is to open the program and try using the various features. However, if you want to learn about InfoPath in a more focused way, or if you just need a little help getting started, you can refer to the following materials.

Resource	Description
Help	A complete Help system that includes conceptual and reference information, as well as step-by-step procedures. Open InfoPath Help On the Help menu, click Microsoft Office InfoPath Help, or press F1.
Sample form templates in the product	InfoPath includes five predesigned business form templates, including an expense report, status report, and asset tracking form template. These sample form templates are a great way to learn by example and get ideas for your own form templates. For instance, you can open the expense report sample form template in design mode to better understand how a repeating table works. Open a sample form template in design mode On the File menu, click Design a Form Template. In the Design a Form Template dialog box, under Open a form template, click Customize a Sample. In the Getting Started dialog box, double-click the sample form template that you want to open.
Sample form templates on Office Online	You can download and open additional InfoPath sample form templates from Microsoft Office Online. Download additional sample form templates On the File menu, click Design a Form Template. In the Design a Form Template dialog box, under Open a form template, click Forms on Office Online.

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Resources for developers

InfoPath offers advanced resources for those who are familiar with scripting languages, Extensible Markup Language (XML), and other development tools and technologies.

Resource	Description
Developer reference	A complete Help file that contains example code, conceptual topics, and a reference to the object model Open the developer reference Do one of the following: If you are in InfoPath Help, click the down arrow next to the Search button, and then select Developer Reference. Type your search terms, and then click Search. If you are in the Microsoft Script Editor (MSE), click Microsoft Script Editor on the Help menu, or press F1. If you are in Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications, click Contents on the Help menu, or press F1.
Visual Studio Tools for Office	Information about using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System to develop solutions with InfoPath and other Microsoft Office programs.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2005	Information about using Visual Studio 2005.
Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition	A free add-on to Visual Studio 2005 that you download and use to build applications targeting the 2007 Microsoft Office System. This add-on contains the following tools for InfoPath developers: HTML to XHTML Conversion Tool Processing Instruction Update Tool InfoPath to Word Wizard Form Registration Tool For more information about these tools, see Guide to InfoPath 2007 Developer Documentation.
Guide to InfoPath 2007 Developer Documentation	A summary of the object models and development options available in InfoPath 2007.
InfoPath team Web log (blog)	Frequently updated blog entries that are written by members of the InfoPath product team and that include ways to add advanced functionality to form templates and answers to questions from other developers.
Microsoft Office Developer Center	Information about using Microsoft Office programs as a development platform.
Microsoft XML Developer Center	Information about using and developing applications that use XML for data interchange and storage.
Microsoft Web Services Developer Center	Information about developing and using XML Web services.
Microsoft .NET Framework	Information about using the .NET Framework.

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Resources for IT professionals

The following list includes resources for planning and deploying InfoPath 2007 in an enterprise organization.

Resource	Description
TechNet: Configure InfoPath Forms Services (Office SharePoint Server)	Articles on configuring InfoPath Forms Services.
TechNet: Office Forms Server 2007	Documentation for Microsoft Office Forms Server 2007.
Microsoft SQL Server	Information about deploying and using SQL Server.
Microsoft BizTalk Server	Information about deploying and using BizTalk Server.

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