Do you want people to be able to quickly fill in a form on your site, over and over again? One option for this has always been datasheet view, but sometimes you have a more complex form. In this post, I’ll show how you can create a button that will save the current record and immediately go to a new blank form.
In this example, I’ll just use a simple announcements list.
- Go to your announcements list. On the List tab, click the button Customize Form.
- Put your cursor at the bottom of the form where you want to put your buttons. From the list of Controls in the ribbon, add two buttons to the form.
- On the Data tab, click the Submit Options button. Click the Advanced button.
- Next to After submit, choose Open a new form. Click OK.
- Double-click to select the first button, and in the ribbon, click Manage Rules.
- In the Rules pane on the right, click the New button and choose Action.
- In the Details for box, type Submit. Click the Add button and choose Submit Data. Select your data connection to submit to. This example is a SharePoint list, so it automatically has the one called “Main Data Connection”. Click OK.
- Click Add again, and choose Close the form. Click OK.
- In the Properties tab of the ribbon, label this button as SAVE.
- Double-click to select the second button still labeled “Button”. Find the Action drop-down box in the ribbon. Change the action to Submit.
- Change the button label to say Save & New.
- Publish the form and close InfoPath.
Done! Now, if you want to make it look pretty and professional, use picture buttons instead of those old gray ones. I like to use PowerPoint to create buttons and make them PNG files.
ONE NEGATIVE to this solution:
If you’re using a SharePoint list form customized with InfoPath, you’ll still have the save button in the ribbon. That Save button will do the “save and new” functionality, and there is not a way to change this without messing up this solution. One option you have is to remove the ribbon altogether. Click File and click the Form Options button. On the Web Browser tab, uncheck the box next to Show InfoPath commands in Ribbon or toolbar. Unfortunately, when you do this, there won’t be an edit button there on the form either, and the only way people can get to the edit screen will be to use the drop-down box on that item when in the list view, or use the ribbon when in list view.