News
InfoPath 2013 Standalone Product Released by Microsoft
Microsoft released InfoPath 2013 this month as a standalone application.
InfoPath 2013 is Web forms creation tool that's typically used with SharePoint. It can be downloaded at this page for free, although it requires having an Office 365 ProPlus subscription. Traditionally, Microsoft had sold InfoPath as part of its Office suites, starting with Office 2003.
The download for the standalone version of InfoPath 2013 was spotted by SharePoint MVP Vlad Catrinescu, in a blog post.
Microsoft has previously indicated that it plans to deprecate InfoPath, with InfoPath 2013 being the last of the line. Future "Office forms" technology is being built by Microsoft in its stead, although there's no indication from the company when it'll be available. InfoPath 2013 will reach its "extended support" end date in April 2023, after which it'll be an unsupported product, with no security patch support coming from Microsoft.
For now, InfoPath 2013 is Microsoft's principal Web forms-generating tool for its upcoming SharePoint Server 2016 product, which is planned for release in Q2 2016.
Various Microsoft partners also sell forms creation tools that can be used instead of InfoPath. Alternatively, organizations can wait for Microsoft's InfoPath substitute to appear, but they have nearly eight years of product life left with InfoPath 2013, which will support SharePoint Server 2016 throughout that eight-year period.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.