Custom Pane/Custom Interface

[DMc2007]

Hi

I am currently using Microsoft Office Professional 2003 SP3 on Windows XP
SP3, developing an Add-in using Visual Studio 2008. I am using Visual Basic.

Currently I am trying to develop an Add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook
2003.

In Outlook you can change the Navigation Pane Options to bring up the Mail,
Calendar, Contacts, Tasks, Notes, Folder List, Shortcuts and Journal
shortcut strips.

I have found out how to add my own custom bar to this section. However I
want to extend this further.

What I would to do is when I click on my custom shortcut is for a custom
interface to appear on the right handside like what happens with the Mail
shortcut, which brings up the Inbox.

Does anybody have any examples or ideas how I can do this?

Kind Regards

D

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You cannot customize or replace the reading/preview pane as you want. You
would have to create your own window and overlay it on top of the existing
pane if it's visible. If it's not visible then you'd need to send messages
to the other windows to resize to make room for your custom window. Then
you'd need to make your window a child window of the main Outlook window.

It can be done but would require a lot of working with Spy++ to find the
correct windows and lots of Win32 API code to handle the windows,
positioning, setting child windows and handling messages to the other
windows to resize themselves (requires subclassing Windows messages directed
at those other windows).