Control How HotDocs Processes a Variable

You can have greater control over how HotDocs processes a variable. For instance, you can control whether a variable appears during the interview, whether the answer is saved, and whether users are warned when they leave the question unanswered. These options are properties of the variable component, and not the variable field.

By clearing Ask automatically, you cause a variable to be asked only when it is in a dialog that is specifically asked. (See How Variables and Dialogs Are Asked for details on how variable and dialogs are asked.)

When users leave questions unanswered during the interview, HotDocs leaves the dialog's icon in the interview outline partially answered and notes the unanswered question in the End of Interview dialog. When you clear Warn when unanswered, HotDocs suppresses these warnings. You might want to assign this option to variables that won’t always be answered in all cases—for example, a variable that asks a middle name or a second address line.

Clearing Save in answer file prevents a variable’s answer from being saved. You might use this feature if the variable is a temporary variable (for example, a variable that has its value SET to a temporary value for use in a script). This will keep HotDocs from marking the variable as answered and prompting the user to save the answer file.

When HotDocs Server assembles a template with the Save in answer file option cleared on some variables, the answers are still submitted to the server for document assembly, after that the host application needs to handle the removal of answers marked as don't save from the answer file.

These options are not available for Computation variables.

To control how HotDocs processes a variable

1. At the HotDocs template, edit a variable. (See Edit a Variable.)
2. Click the Advanced tab. The dialog box changes to show several advanced options.
3. Clear any of the following options, as explained in the following table: