whether to use subform or table

[Former Community Member]

I'm making great progress with my form. I have two versions: 1) a table is used for repeating data items, and 2) a subform is used.

For the table, on the single row, the "repeat subform for each data item" box is checked. When in preview it will list as many rows as I allow in the max field for the row. I have 80 rows in the preview XML file. The most that should fit inside the table as drawn is 28, bit if I set the max value greater, rows will continue past the bottom of the drawn table to the bottom of the page. I haven't gotten to the point of using a data source yet.

For the subform the  "repeat subform for each data item" box is not enabled. In preview I get one row. If I did set up a data source the repeat box might become enabled. I have one subform set as positioned, then another subform inside that set to flowed top to bottom, and in the inner sub form I have the data fields.

I want to test the form with multiple pages in preview mode because I must do different calculations on each page. That's why I put so many rows in the XML preview file. With the table I get multiple rows, but I couldn't figure out how to go to another page.

I need 28 repeating data items per page and need to have multiple pages. Comments would be appreciated. Thanks

[Former Community Member]

Sorry, the outer subform is set to positioned and the inner subform is flowed western text. There are 13 data fields.

[Jono_Moore · Accepted solution]

There's several ways of going about this but a lot of it depends on how the data is wanted to flow. Does the footer totalling info need to be at the bottom of every page or just at the end of the table? Same with the fields at the top of the page - do they need to be on every page or just at the beginning?

The attached might give you something to go on.

I've set up 3 content areas on the master page - ContentArea1 for holding the header fields, ContentArea2 for holding the repeating table and ContentArea3 for holding the footer fields. For the header and footer areas move all the fields from the master page to these subforms and set them up as proper fields instead of floating fields.

For subforms: subHeader is set to positioned in ContentArea1, subTable is set to flowed in ContentArea2 and subFooter set to positioned ContentArea3. I wasn't quite sure of the settings for getting the flow to the correct content area but it's working properly at the moment so the table continues to flow into ContentArea2 when it breaks to a new page.

I've set the table for 50 items so it flows a few pages so you can see what's happening. I've also set up the table with proper fields instead of floating fields.

If you don't need the static header and footer areas on every page you could have one main flowed subform that holds everything, with the same subform setup inside that main subform, the footer subform would then get pushed along after the table:

subMain (flowed)

     -- subHeader (positioned)

     -- subTable (flowed)

     -- subFooter (positioned)

My other thought is that if it was me I would recreate the form in LC instead of trying to use the old art in the background.

Hope this helps!

[Former Community Member]

Thanks Jono for helping me with my problem. You gave me something that worked. I was able to refer to it until I got mine working, and learn in the process. Much appreciated.