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Exploring the Infopath Application Interface

InfoPath boasts a relatively simple interface, which makes it extremely easy to use. As with all Microsoft applications, there’s a standard menu bar and toolbars along the top of the window, a main area for working with forms, and a task pane on the right side of the window:

There are only two toolbars that you’ll frequently use: the Standard toolbar and the Formatting toolbar. The Standard toolbar contains shortcuts to commands for working with your form files, including New, Open, Save, and Print, as well as Cut, Copy, and Paste. The Preview Form button lets you preview and test your form in a new window.

The Formatting toolbar contains shortcuts to commands for formatting the elements of your form, with menus and buttons for changing the font, size, attributes, and alignment, as well as inserting bulleted and numbered lists.

All of these commands are available in the InfoPath menu bar.

The majority of commands you’ll use, especially when designing form templates, are available from various task panes. To show the task pane, open the View menu and select Task Pane.

All the available task panes are listed in a menu that you can access from the task pane’s title bar:

Use this menu to quickly switch from one task pane to another. Each task pane displays information and options. In addition, the Fill Out a Form and Design a Form task panes provide starting points for each of these tasks in InfoPath. The Design Tasks task pane guides you through the process of designing a form template from scratch.