I need to know if MS-Word forms are being phased out. I noticed a few
documents referencing 'converting your existing MS-Word forms to Infopath'.
Even though the options are available as legacy, in Word 2007, is any
information or documentation available about the future plans of MS-Word
forms?
Caveat: What follows is just my observations and opinions. I'm not a
Microsoft employee and I don't have any nonpublic knowledge of what
the Word developers are planning.
Point 1: Word will probably continue to support protected forms well
into the future. There's simply too large an existing base of such
forms in too many large corporate customers, and leaving them unable
to function would mean the loss of a large percentage of those
adoptions.
Point 2: Microsoft is definitely pushing all Office programs in the
direction of integrating with databases and other parts of Office.
InfoPath is only part (but a large part) of that. They're hoping that
most or all new forms development will use the newer tools because
they're better in many ways, and that legacy forms will eventually die
out because they're harder to use.
Point 3: You can use the new Content Controls to replace legacy form
fields without using InfoPath, SharePoint, or any external programs.
Even in standalone forms, Content Controls make better-looking
documents and remove a lot of the hassle that goes with protected
forms. (As a simple example, spell-checking works in Content Controls
without any macros or other mucking about.) If you do use those
programs and the data-binding capabilities of Content Controls,
though, data collection and reuse will be easier.
For a series of blog articles by the Word developers that discuss
Content Controls, go to
http://blogs.msdn.com/microsoft_office_word/archive/tags/content+controls/default.aspx.
--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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