Custom Forms Can't Be Opened

[Lydia Hurn]

I have a number of custom forms set up in different public folders
within my public folder tree. This morning, none of my users can open
any custom form. The messages vary, but are all of the "Outlook cannot
open this form. A default form will be used" variety. I can still see
the data in a table view in the public folder from old posted forms,
and can create new views to see additional fields from old forms.
However, I cannot open any of those items, or start a new item.

If I go to Exchange System Manager, drill down to the public folder
tree, right-click and choose View System Folders, then click on the
EFORMS REGISTRY, I can see our organizational forms container, but it
is empty.

I have tried clearing the form cache and that did not help. I did
notice that while Managing Custom Forms, I can still see a list of all
the forms in the Organizational Forms Library.

This problem is happening regardless of OS or Outlook client
version.

I am running Exchange 2000 SP3 on a Windows 2K server with SP4.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What steps did you follow to clear the forms cache? In what version and build of Outlook?

 

[Lydia Hurn]

Tools-->Options-->Other-->Advanced Options-->Custom Forms-->Manage
Forms-->Clear Cache

Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2003

I have used the clearing of form cache before to troubelshoot
individual form issues, but this time it happened to all my forms at
once and to every user. Also, none of the forms' designs were edited
prior to the problem occurring.

Thanks!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Try deleting the entire contents of the Forms folder where the Frmcache.dat file is located. Also, make sure you have applied Office 2003 Service Pack 1 to the OL2003 machine.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Lydia Hurn]

We did that after clearing the form cache, to no avail. Service pack
had been applied.

Turns out this was not a local machine problem -- our forms were gone
off the server. We went to another user's computer, and used the KB
article on recovering forms from the form cache to get them back.

Thanks!

 

[petard]

Hi Lydia,
We have a somehow same problem on our customs contact or calendar forms:
frequently, some users obtain a "custom form unavailable..." or "no
availibility information for this form..". Even Outlook off-line mode doesn't
fix the problem.
We clear the cache on the user's pc, it's ok for a few days, and the problem
occurs again from time to time.
What do you mean by "gone off the server" ? Because in exchange eforms
registry/organisational library (the folder where we publish our custom
forms) no form appear, despite they are all visible from the Form manager
menu in outlook.
Thanks for your help,
Emmanuel