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Populating dropdown list

Forum Index > Forms: LiveCycle Designer > Populating dropdown list
2009-09-22 11:42:10
cunninj3
Registered: Sep 22 2009
Posts: 3

Hello!

I'm fairly new to using LiveCycle, and I'm designing a form using LiveCycle 8.05 to gather customer feedback. I have most aspects of the form complete, however I'm completely stuck (and frankly crosseyed from staring at the screen for so long) on how to add a list of about 700 products to a dropdown box.

A little background:
I'm using LiveCycle to gather the feedback as opposed to some kind of web service in an effort to eliminate my company's rather substantial IT cost to have some sort of web- hosted solution.
The values in the dropdown list will be unchanging - once I have the list populated, I will not be adding additional values at a later time, nor will the list values change based on other fields in the form.
Once I complete the form design, I'll be placing it in a pdf package with a customer-specific letter, then emailing the package to a customer.

Not sure if any of that is useful information, but I thought I'd add :)

OK, so my issue is - how can I easily get those 700 products into my dropdown list?

I tried exporting an xml file of the products from my Access database, then creating a new data connection in LiveCycle. This works fine, but it also involves going to Forms>Manage Form Data>Import in Acrobat when actually filling out the form - and I don't want a customer to have to do any additional work. I also can't have the xml file containing the products residing on any of our external servers (so as not to involve our IT area and extra cost for us).

Is there a way to actually embed the data in the form itself, or am I resigned to typing 700 values in the List Items box?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks so much!
Joanne :)

My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Windows
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2009-09-22 12:34:06
#1
cunninj3
Registered: Sep 22 2009
Posts: 3
It's amazing - when I finally break down and ask a question, then I can figure it out myself. Not even an hour after I posted this, I had an epiphany. So I'll post my solution here in case anyone else has the same question. Of course, there may be a more elegant solution than the "hack-and-chop" method I came up with, but it's working for me!

So the question was how to get 700 values into a dropdown list in a form that will be emailed to customers without aid of a data source.

I exported the list of my products from my Access database to Excel. Then, I used a formula to enclose the product name in text tags:  "<text>"&A1&"</text>"
Where cell A1 was the product name I wanted in the dropdown box.

Then I copied the cells containing the text tags into the xml source for my form where the list items for the dropdown box would go. Dropdown list populated.

Again, most likely not the most elegant or efficient solution, but it worked for what I needed. Hopefully this can help anyone else who is just looking to copy/paste a long list.

Cheers,
Joanne :)
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