It's easy to share the same forms among several form groups, but perhaps you wish to design a brand new form group for another purpose, yet start by using an existing form group design as a base. Or maybe you want to play with radically changing a particular form group you use, but want to retain your original design as well. You need to make a completely independent copy of existing forms.


First, make a copy of all the individual main form files that make up your existing form group:

  1. In the Custom Form Studio, click the original form group name to automatically see its main "Forms In Selected Group". Note the form names listed there.
  2. Locate the first form of your group in the All Available Forms column, right-click it and Copy Form to a new name to use in your new separate form group. Repeat for all the other "Forms in Selected Group" until you have a copy for each one. This creates an independent copy of each original file, so that changing the contents of the new file will not affect the original one.


Next create your new form group and drag the copied form names into it:

  1. Right-click within the Form Groups column and select Create New Group.
  2. Type the name for your new form group and click OK.  Your new group name will appear in the Form Groups column.
  3. Now locate each "copied" form in All Available Forms in turn, right-click and Add Form to Group (or drag the copied files into your new group using your mouse).


Replacing Subforms with Independent copies
In case you used any subforms within some of those main forms, you will now want to compile your new form group in order to list each and every main form along with any subforms within them:

  1. Right-click your new group name and Compile Forms
  2. Click Compile
  3. In the compile log area listing the form as they compile, note any subform files included in the listing and the forms in which they are included. It may be helpful to jot this information down, since to make truly independent forms you would need to make and include "copies" of the subform portions also.


Note: You of course do have the option of simply sharing certain forms or subforms used within them with other groups, but be mindful that any changes made to any "shared" files would affect ALL the form groups they might be used in.  Whereas any changes made to independent main form content that falls outside of the shared subforms would of course only affect the group that uses that main form.

Where you wish to make and use independent subforms:

  1. Locate each one of the subform files in turn in the All Available Forms column and right-click and Copy Form to a new filename.
  2. Next you would want to replace the original subforms in the main forms in your new group with your "copied" subform filenames. To do so, edit each main form in the new group, locate the areas within them where the original subforms are used and use the toolbar to Cut them, then Insert > Subform and select your equivalent new copied name instead. That way changing the "copied" subform contents in the future won't affect the original.


Once you have all your copied form files set up as independent forms in your new group, compile your forms, and make sure none of your original forms or subforms are listed in the compile logo, and still need to be replaced with your copies. When done right-click the group and use Modify Ratings, Group Preferences or other setting to adjust the group as desired, and recompile. Also as long as independent forms files are used for the content, changing your now separate form content won't affect your original graphical forms. But it at least your contents starts off from the same original base, ready for all your form tweaking.