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This article has been viewed 1115 times.

Get InfoPath to Preview VSTO and VSTA Projects

Page 1 of 7

Written by Gregory Scot Collins

Friday, 29 February 2008, 5:08 AM

This article has been tested to work with the following products and versions. No guarantee of compatibility, with or without modification, is offered for products or versions other than those listed.

InfoPath 2007 and 2003 (Microsoft)
Internet Explorer 7 (Microsoft)
Office 2007 and 2003 (Microsoft)
Office InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET 1.0 (Microsoft)
Visual Studio 2005 and 2003 (Microsoft)
Visual Studio Tools for Applications 2005 (Microsoft)
Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 and 2005 SE (Microsoft)
Windows XP and Vista (Microsoft)

The issue

While attempting to preview a Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) or Visual Studio Tools for Applications (VSTA) InfoPath project you might get a rather unhelpful error message telling you that "InfoPath cannot open the selected form," as shown in Screenshot 1. If this can occurs for a brand new, freshly created managed code project, but does not occur with a codeless or script-based form, then you need to read on.

Screenshot 1. An error dialog while trying to preview a VSTO or VSTA InfoPath project.

The lack of preview capabilities while building an InfoPath form template can be extremely aggravating. Preview is essential to the development workflow allowing you to quickly test changes and progress.

There are various reasons you could receive this error message. You will see it if you attempt to preview a form that is already being previewed. I have, on occasion, received this message for a form template that was previewing just fine moments before, and then stopped after some changes I made—an issue for which I still have not found a reason. However, this article is not about those scenarios, but rather the scenario where you can never preview a managed code project, even a brand new, freshly created, blank one.

Domains and security zones

The error stems from security issues due to being part of a workgroup rather than being joined to a domain. Any machine joined to a domain will not experience this issue because it has a detectable intranet while machines that are part of a workgroup don't, and therefore can experience the issue.

InfoPath uses the Windows Internet (WinINet) application programming interface (API) to define many of its security settings and subsequently depends heavily on Internet Explorer settings. When not joined to a domain, an intranet is not detected and the InfoPath form is opened in the more restrictive Internet zone rather than the Intranet zone. Because it is considered a more controlled environment, security settings for the Intranet zone are less restrictive. Forms with managed code (i.e. VSTO and VSTA projects) are, by default, not allowed to open in the Internet zone, effectively disabling your ability to preview your form template.

CONTINUED: Three solutions

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		List of Figures
	Screenshot 1 - An error dialog while trying to preview a VSTO or VSTA InfoPath project.
	Screenshot 2 - Disabling automatic intranet detection in Internet Explorer.
	Screenshot 3 - A site that has been manually added to the Local Intranet zone.
	Screenshot 4 - Establishing a domain impersonation for previewing a form template.
	Listing 1 - The zone attribute flag enumeration.

		Article Tags
	0x143 0x1db 0xdb Diff Domains Easy Transfer Flags Forms IIS InfoPath Internet Internet Explorer Internet Information Services Intranet Local Intranet Managed Code MSDN Network Office Office InfoPath 2003 Toolkit for Visual Studio .NET Preview Registry Repair Script Security Security Zones SQL SQL Server System Restore Team Explorer Templates Trust Visual Studio Visual Studio Tools for Applications Visual Studio Tools for Office VSTA VSTO Windows Windows Update Windows Vista Windows XP WinINet Workgroups ZAFLAGS ZAFLAGS_INCLUDE_INTRANET_SITES Zones

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