Designed form disappeared!

[Lady Dungeness]

I want to design a new Contacts form. I opened a blank Contacts, saved it
to desktop as DesignMe.oft, and went to work. I got the phone number fields
the way I wanted, and saved as *.oft, overwriting DesignMe.oft. I closed.

When I went to open DesignMe.oft -- my designed form was nowhere to be
found! Where in the system should I be looking for it? I want to test it a
little and design it some more.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Beginning with Outlook 2003 SP2, users can work with most .oft form templates files only by opening the template from the Tools | Forms | Choose Form dialog, browsing for User Templates in File System. If you're planning to use it to create items, you'll want to publish it to your contacts folder.

 

[Lady Dungeness]

Is there any way I can get it back? It's sitting there on my desktop.

Lady D


Beginning with Outlook 2003 SP2, users can work with most .oft form
templates files only by opening the template from the Tools | Forms | Choose
Form dialog, browsing for User Templates in File System. If you're planning
to use it to create items, you'll want to publish it to your contacts
folder.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Did you try what I suggested -- Tools | Forms | Choose Form? (Or Design Form if you want to go straight to design mode)

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Lady Dungeness]

OK. I had to tweak the instructions a little ... Outlook 2002 would not let
me browse; it limited me to pre-selected locations. So I copied the *.oft
file from the desktop to one of the locations that had a directory path.
From there, I could select it. Thanks for the pointers.

Lady D


Did you try what I suggested -- Tools | Forms | Choose Form? (Or Design Form
if you want to go straight to design mode)

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Lady Dungeness]

Oops -- replied too quickly. But when I opened the *.oft file through the
Choose Form dialog, it brought up the standard contact form -- not the one I
designed and saved to *.oft. Oh well.

Lady D

Did you try what I suggested -- Tools | Forms | Choose Form? (Or Design Form
if you want to go straight to design mode)

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I can't explain why that would happen. In any case, next time, you can use the Publish Form command to publish the form to your contacts folder.

 

[Lady Dungeness]

OK. So "publish" is kind of like "save as template" in outlook-speak?

Lady Dungeness



I can't explain why that would happen. In any case, next time, you can use
the Publish Form command to publish the form to your contacts folder.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Not really; they are two completely different approaches. Save as template is what you've already tried and generally is useful only for making a backup copy of a form. Publishing a form is more secure, so you don't get so many complaints or unexpected behaviors. If you publish to a folder, the form also becomes available on the Actions menu and can be made the default form for the folder.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Lady Dungeness]

Thank you. I like the part about being available from the Menu. Very
handy.

Lady D

Not really; they are two completely different approaches. Save as template
is what you've already tried and generally is useful only for making a
backup copy of a form. Publishing a form is more secure, so you don't get so
many complaints or unexpected behaviors. If you publish to a folder, the
form also becomes available on the Actions menu and can be made the default
form for the folder.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54