SharePoint Infopath form retreive data from Excel spreadsheet

Question

I have an infopath form on my sharepoint server that will be used as an order form. Keep in mind it is a 2007 template.

I have a list of products in a table with text fields where customers can enter in the quantity. I currently have the prices stored in an Excel sheet. I was wondering if there is any way to have infopath pull these prices from excel and do calculations to find the grand total of all quantities of products.

The only way I can see to do it right now is to make a hidden text field which calculates the subtotal, and then the grand total adds these up. However I have hundreds of products and this is very time consuming.

Answer 1

An option would be to store all the Excel data in a SharePoint list. Then you can create a datasource to consume that list data and pull back the item name and it's price.

Then in the InfoPath form, I would create a repeating table, bind a drop down control to the datasource to the product name. I would create a rule that when this drop down field is changed it populates a read only field in the same repeating row that shows the price from the selected item. Then I would have a totals row that calculates all of the cost values for a grand total.