Custom View for Message class

[Tom at GSD]

Hello,

I have developed a custom MAPI provider which incorporates a custom message
class. I am trying to create a custom view for the message class and I am
wondering if there are any examples out there or any documentation that I can
refer to. In addition I am curious if we can also have a custom preview
window to display the message. Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks,
Tom -

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You can certainly create a custom view either using View.XML or the new View
stuff in Outlook 2007 or you can be hard-core and create the hidden message
for a view and set it up that way. There are some view coding samples using
the Outlook object model at www.outlookcode.com.

Mostly what I do is set up a custom view in the UI and then deconstruct it
to get basic XML for that view, then I modify that as needed. Some
limitations apply using custom views since the XML doesn't handle any
autoformatting. That's exposed in Outlook 2007, prior to that the setting of
any autoformatting is not documented.

A custom preview pane isn't supported (except for form regions for Outlook
2007) so that's undocumented and a complete hack. What you'd need to do is
to create your custom preview window as a Windows dialog and find and
overlay the existing preview pane using Win32 API calls. Messy and
undocumented as I said, but it has been done. One of the earliest examples
of that was the old Chilton preview pane for Outlook 97.

 

[Tom at GSD]

Hi Ken,

Thanks for your help. Is assume that there is similar stuff available for
Outlook 2003? I was reading some documentation on IMAPIViewContext and
thought that interface might be the way to go. It has taken about two months
to construct the provider and it has integrated with Outlook 2003 very
nicely, but now I have create some propriety views to support the new message
class. We have to support both Outllok 2003 and 2007 and I was hoping to use
the same architecture.

Thanks again for your input.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

You can do a lot with Outlook 2003 but if you look at the new view stuff for
Outlook 2007 there's a lot more available, like the autoformatting. I
usually either fork my code and use the Outlook 2007 stuff if available or
fall back to just using the XML if only Outlook 2003 or earlier is there.

Spend a little time with a MAPI viewer like OutlookSpy looking at the hidden
messages in folders where custom views have been applied. Like I said I
start out with a view designed using the UI and then go the hidden messages
to start playing. You'd be looking at items with a MessageClass of
IPM.Microsoft.FormDesign.NamedView where PR_SUBJECT is the name of the named
view. The view XML is in a PT_BINARY property.

Then the other repositories for custom views are under IMsgStore\Root
Container\IPM_VIEWS and IPM_COMMON_VIEWS in the hidden items.

 

[Tom at GSD]

Thanks Ken. I think I may fork my code for Outlook 2007.