Multi-selection List box in Infopath and SharePoint 2010?

Question

I have designed an InfoPath 2010 Form which has Multi-selection List box(Datatype=Text[string]) with 5Choices and I have set a choice as default. Multi-selection List box field is promoted through Property promotion to appear on SharePoint 2010.

If I select a choice, it appears perfectly on SharePoint.

However, If I select more than a choice, it showing only the value of the first choice.

I would expect to show all the values, separated by comma.

Am I missing something?

Answer 1

I've had a similar problem; SharePoint/InfoPath doesn’t seem to deal with multiple-selection list boxes very well (unless I'm also missing something). The workaround I used w/o code was to create a new hidden field with the default value set to:

eval(eval(MultiSelectField[. != ""], 'concat(., ", ")'), "..")

where MultiSelectField is your field

Tick "refresh value when formula is recalculated" this produces a field with all the values selected in it separated by comma's that can be then displayed in SharePoint instead of the multi-select field.

This does have the problem of treating "option1", "option2" and "option1, option2" as 3 different unique strings for the purpose of sorting and filtering as "option1, option2" is now a string rather than two strings displayed as a comma separated value. I'm still looking or a nice fix to that.

Good Luck!

Edit: Just remembered that you also have to add a rule to your multiple selection box that triggers when the field changes. This rule should set the value of your hidden field to the eval function above. You need this rule and the default value to be there or when the user ticks and unticks options the box will not update correctly.

Answer 2

In Infopath, when you have a multiselect list box, the "First" function is selected by default, and I think this is why you are only seeing the first value. You need to set it to "merge" under Form Option, Property Promotion, select your multiselect field then Function, Merge.

Answer 3

a multi-select list box stores the items that were selected as several fields under one group node; and not as one field. What this means is:

• If you use Rules to set the value of a multi-select list box, you can only set the value of, and thus select, one item at a time; not several.
• If you want to select several items in a multi-select list box all at once, you must use code to add several repeating nodes with the values that should be selected; you cannot use Rules to get this done.

For coding here is good example, which will guide you.

http://www.bizsupportonline.net/infopath2007/programmatically-select-all-items-multi-select-list-box.htm