Rerender not firing if required fields are empty

Question

I have a Checkbox which dynamically rerenders a field (field is not shown if checkbox is false). Here is the code:

<apex:inputField id="IsPaidPd" value="{!Consultant_Request__c.Is_Paid_PD__c}" required="false">
                 <apex:actionSupport event="onchange" rerender="PurchaseOrderNumber_Wrapper" />
            </apex:inputField>  

            <apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
            <apex:outputPanel id="PurchaseOrderNumber_Wrapper">
            <apex:outputLabel value="Purchase Order Number" for="PurchaseOrderNumber" rendered="{!Consultant_Request__c.Is_Paid_PD__c}"/>
                  <apex:inputField id="PurchaseOrderNumber" value="{!Consultant_Request__c.Purchase_Order_Number__c}" required="false" rendered="{!Consultant_Request__c.Is_Paid_PD__c}"/>
            </apex:outputPanel>
            </apex:pageBlockSectionItem>

Which is mostly working fine. However, if any 'required' fields are not filled out when I try to check/uncheck the checkbox 'IsPaidPd', the rerender action is never fired and the subsequent fields are not updated. This is not very intuitive and a user might think something is broken before realizing all those fields must be filled out until this functionality will work correctly. As you can see, I am doing targeted rerendering which hasn't solved anything.

Answer 1

Try wrapping the code you want to isolate inside an <apex:actionRegion/> tag. This will only submit the elements inside that region to the controller and may allow you to bypass the required field. Here's a dev doc: https://www.salesforce.com/us/developer/docs/pages/Content/pages_compref_actionRegion.htm.