Setting the Attributes of a Form

You set the attributes of a custom form with form pages in design mode on the Properties and Actions pages. On the Properties page, the information such as Description, Category, and Form Number helps users find and identify your form in the Choose Form dialog box.

When customizing a form with form regions, you set the attributes for a form region inside the form region manifest file. The values specified on the properties and actions pages in the forms designer are not saved with a form region and are not used when a form region is loaded. For more information, see How to: Create a Form Region.

One important attribute of your form to consider is whether to send the form definition with the form. The form definition includes all the fields and the code you add to the form. As a general rule, you should publish the form definition to a forms library instead of choosing to send the form definition with the item. If you cannot publish your form to a forms library, then you can select the Send form definition with item check box (on the Properties page) so that other users can see the form pages when they receive items composed with the form.

Forms that you intend to use only once and not publish are referred to as one-off forms. Because of security concerns with one-off forms, users might not see the form correctly when opening items sent with one-off forms. In this case, choosing to send the form definition for one-off forms provides the necessary information for users to view the form correctly.

If you plan to publish your form to a forms library to which other users have access, such as an Organizational Forms Library or a public folder library, you do not need to send the form definition; it is stored in the library. The form definition can add considerable size to items saved using your form.

If you want to change how users reply to your form, click the Actions page. The Actions page lists the default Reply forms that are available. You can also add your own custom Reply forms. For example, forms based on a new e-mail message have built-in Reply, Reply to All, Forward, and Reply to Folder forms. When users receive your form, the form contains buttons and menu commands so that users can respond to the form. You can disable some or all of these default forms and set attributes for how these Reply forms appear.