Attaching Files in InfoPath 2003

Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 Service Pack (SP) 1 introduces a number of new controls, one of which is the File Attachment control. With this control, form users can attach files, which are then encoded and saved with the form data. Users can attach a file from the local file system, a shared location, or the Web.

Consider, for example, that the sales people for a large corporation use a Microsoft Office Excel 2003 spreadsheet to track large amounts of sales data and analyze it by using charts and Microsoft PivotTable dynamic views. The corporate office wants to create an InfoPath form that the sales people can use to report their quarterly earnings. By doing so, the corporation can gather data such as total sales per region.

The corporate office also wants to collect the detailed sales data and charts and store that information with the quarterly report form. The new File Attachment control in InfoPath SP 1 makes this possible. The sales people can click the File Attachment control to attach the spreadsheet to the form, and the spreadsheet is saved with the form data. When the corporate office receives the form, they can double-click the spreadsheet file icon to open the spreadsheet in Excel and view the detailed sales data, charts, and PivotTable dynamic views.