These forums are now Read Only. If you have an Acrobat question, ask questions and get help from one of our experts.

Populating Pulldown List

Forum Index > Forms: LiveCycle Designer > Populating Pulldown List
2010-09-01 12:18:27
TinkernTom
Registered: Sep 1 2010
Posts: 2

I’m very new to using LiveCycle. I'm designing a form using LiveCycle 8.0 to gather member feedback. And although I have most of the form complete, I'm currently at a standstill. I’m trying to add a list of about 200 members to a dropdown menu and it’s not working for me. In a nut shell this is what I’ve done:

First I saved an EXCEL file to an xml file. Then using the “New Data Connection” feature I selected the xml file. And although I didn’t get any errors doing that it doesn’t work, and I get attention icons on all of the Text Boxes and Check Boxes saying that they might not work properly.

Another User who had the same problem, please see her Post titled “Populating Dropdown List” said that she solved it by concatenating the names in a Text Tag, i.e. "(text)"&A1&"(/text)". I tried that as well and got no change. Obviously I’m doing something wrong or leaving something out. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Note: for this to post I had to use parenthesis instead of the less than and greater than symbols.

Top
2010-09-01 12:58:58
#1
gkaiseril
Expert
Registered: Feb 23 2006
Posts: 4308
Have a look at [url=http://forms.stefcameron.com/2009/08/03/connecting-to-a-schema/]Connecting to a Schema[/url] by Stephan Cameron

George Kaiser

Top
2010-09-02 05:43:01
#2
TinkernTom
Registered: Sep 1 2010
Posts: 2
Hi Guys,

Although it’s very nice of you to create these PDF’s for people, or recommend workarounds, it doesn’t solve the underlying problem of the ADOBE software not doing what it says it will do, which is accept an XML file as input.

I think that most of the people who come to these Forums for answers are creating applications that other people will run and maintain. Therefore, it’s critical that they be able to do that in the easiest manner possible and without running into problems every time they use the application. Most of these people are merely employees who know nothing about software development, and many of them don’t know how to do anything on the computer except turn it on and run the program. So, when the data needs to be updated, or the application needs to be populated with new data, the operation comes to a screeching halt.

I can teach most of these people how to enter data into an EXCEL Spreadsheet and output an XML file, but it would be impractical to expect anybody to teach them how to turn that into an XML Schema file and load it into the application. The bottom line is that the LiveCycle software should do what it says it will do, i.e. import an XML file. In your opinion is it possible to make it do that, and if it is, can you tell me how to do that? I’m not looking for a laundry list of workarounds. I need something that’s basically point and click.

I’ve been in the Software business for more than 40 years and I know a lot about the ups and downs of Software Development, Documentation, and Training. My experience has been that there’s generally some insignificant little reason why a procedure doesn’t work, and that the developer fixes that problem ASAP because they want people to buy and use their software. I’m hoping that’s the case here, that there is a way to make it accept XML files as input!

Sincerely,
Tom
Top