Infopath form submitted to a List: How to make a repeating section for only certain columns

Question

I am editing one of my list forms in Infopath and am trying to make one field a repeating section so a user can add multiple items within this form. I have got the repeating section to work, but what I am not sure how to do is have only one field be the repeated (changing) value and the others to be input once and added as-is for every new repeated item.

For example, if I have a list with two fields "Title" and "Item", I would like Title to not be a repeating section, but Item would be. As the user adds new Items in this form, it would not be necessary to input another Title for each repeat since for every Item the same Title would be submitted in the form. So after clicking on the Item repeat, the only additional input field would be Item, and Title would stay at the top.

Thanks for any help on this!

Answer 1

I found the answer. The solution is to use a XML secondary data source in the form. Steps to solve the problem, on a very high level (details will be different for every situation but this is the general workaround):

1. Create an XML file that has the column structure for the column name that you want to be "global", i.e. the same for every repeated item.

2. Create a secondary data source using that XML

3. Create rules on both the main data source field that you need to act as "global" and on the secondary data source column. The main source field will write its value to the secondary source's xml column, and secondary source column will write its value back to the field.

4. Success!

Credit to Hilary Stoupa's suggestion here

Answer 2

As the user adds new Items in this form, it would not be necessary to input another Title for each repeat since for every Item the same Title would be submitted in the form.

No need to repeat the title, as you can define default value for it (also dynamically - with expressions and rules) chnaging it for different users and forms.

So after clicking on the Item repeat, the only additional input field would be Item, and Title would stay at the top

For this you'd better publish/submit to library instead of to sharepoint list and have non-repeating data fields outside of group data fields in Fields pane. Note that controls, on design surface of Infopath Designer, are just visual containers bound to data fields (it is possible to have controls unbound to data fields, and data fields without visual representation and various combinations when controls structure is unrelated to data structure).

.