In regard to the above referenced bug, this behavior is by design and also occurs in InfoPath 2003. The reason this is “by design” is that in most cases you want to the user to make an explicit choice from the list – hence the blank line forces a selection (you could always add custom data validation to insure this field is not blank before the form is submitted, saved, etc.)
Now, you can change this behavior in a couple of ways:
-
Add a “default value” to the node the list is bound to. Keep in mind, this will not remove the blank line but will simply cause a value to be displayed in the box when opened:
- Open your form template in Design View
- Display the Data Source task pane
- Right-click on the node the list box is bound to and choose Properties
- In the Default Value field, enter a value that corresponds to one of the values returned from the data source
-
Hand modify the XSL to either remove the blank line or add text to that entry so instead of being a blank line it would show something like “Select from this list…”
- Open the XSN in Design View
- From the File menu choose Save as source files and save these to a new folder
- Open the view that contains the control displaying the blank line - search for an entry that looks similar to this:
<select class="xdComboBox xdBehavior_Select" title="" style="WIDTH: 245px" size="1" xd:CtrlId="CTRL1" xdctname="dropdown" value="" xd:boundProp="value" xd:binding="my:field1" tabIndex="0">
<option/> - To completely remove the blank line, simply remove the "<option/>" tag noted above:
<select class="xdComboBox xdBehavior_Select" title="" style="WIDTH: 245px" size="1" xd:CtrlId="CTRL1" xd: xctname="dropdown" value="" xd:boundProp="value" xd:binding="my:field1" tabIndex="0"> - To add some text to the blank line, modify the option tag:
<select class="xdComboBox xdBehavior_Select" title="" style="WIDTH: 245px" size="1" xd:CtrlId="CTRL1" xd: xctname="dropdown" value="" xd:boundProp="value" xd:binding="my:field1" tabIndex="0">
<option>Select from this list...</option> - Save and close the XSL
- Right-click on Manifest.xsf and choose Design
- From the File menu choose Save As and resave this as your XSN
NOTE: By hand modifying the XSL, if any design changes are subsequently made to the view in the InfoPath editor (i.e. in Design View), then the hand modifications will be lost.
Scott L. Heim, MCSD, MCSD.NET | Office InfoPath Beta | 980.776.9745 (work) |
sheim@microsoft.com | M-F, 9:00 AM - 6:00 PM ET
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