Hiding Section in InfoPath 2003

Question

I am creating an infopath form in 2003 where I only want certain sections/controls to appear based on the users choice. I am aware that there are rules and conditions that will have to be applied to this, however I have already added all of the section/fields that need to appear when a user selects an option from the dropdown. My main question is, how do I hide this info on the form? At the moment when I select 'Preview Form' ALL of the sections appear and no option has been chosen yet. How do I hide these until a user makes a selection. I hope answering this question, will help me with the rest of the form.

Thank You~

Answer 1

You are allowed to specify multiple conditions in the conditional formatting options for a section. The easiest way for the section to be hidden on load is to set the conditional formatting for the section to your normal rules OR is blank.

So for example - you have a dropdown that has members Select, Show, Hide. Your conditional formatting on the section should be hide whenever Hide is chosen OR hide whenever Select is chosen (note that the default value of Select for a dropdown is "is blank").

Answer 2

Let's assume you have 1 drop down list and 2 section. Initially the 2 sections should be hidden, when the user selects a value from the drop down list you will show one of these 2 sections based on the ddl selected value.
Add a field to your schema called firstTime with default value 0.
Section 1 will be hidden if firstTime = 0 or ddlChoice = 2
Section 2 will be hidden if firstTime = 0 or ddlChoice = 1
When the ddl index changes set firstTime to 1. This way the first part of the condition won't have any effect and you will only depend on the value of the drop down list to show / hide the sections.