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

xml nodes appearing in spreadsheet

gwh
Registered: May 19 2008
Posts: 47

Hi all,

If I have a number of .xml files containing the form data from a Livecycle designer form, I've found that I can merge them all into an excel spreadsheet using a command in Acrobat Pro. When I open up the spreadsheet though, I noticed that the data in the first row looks like the following:

form1[0].Table2[1].Row2[0].firstname[0]

I named this field "firstname" in the bindings panel in Livecycle designer so I thought that this would be the content that would appear in that cell within Excel, but it's adding in all those xml nodes which confuses things a lot.

Is there a way to avoid this?

Appreciate any assistance.

My Product Information:
LiveCycle Designer, Macintosh
thomp
Expert
Registered: Feb 15 2006
Posts: 4411
The default grammar for data in an XFA (LiveCycle) form is the hierarchical structure of the form elements. This is what you are seeing.

If you want a different grammar it is simple enough to do. Create a sample XML file and connect the form to it using the "Data View" tab in LiveCycle Designer. Then bind the form fields to the appropriate nodes in the data connection. Now, data imported and exported from the form will use the grammar of the XML used in the connection. The original XML file is not used after this point, it was only used to organize the data model for the form.

Thom Parker
The source for PDF Scripting Info
www.pdfscripting.com
Very Important - How to Debug Your Script

gwh
Registered: May 19 2008
Posts: 47
Thanks for the reply,

Can you tell me what needs to be in the sample xml file that I create?

You were saying to then bind the form fields to the appropriate nodes in the data connection - can you clarify this? Are the nodes the information in the xml file.

Sorry I'm not that skillful at coding - especially xml.