Digital signature breaks form

[DonH]

Here is the entire scenario.

I am at a business where I have no control over Exchange. The people who
ARE in charge will not let me publish a form to the Organizational forms
Library folder so I have to use a public folder.

My first problem is that when I create my send form and then go to link it
to the REPLY form, I can't see the public folder to select the form. I can
only see the Personal, Organizational, and Standard in the drop down and it
won't let me browse.

Okay, so I figured out that I could do it all on 1 form. I put my info on
the first page and the reply form on the 2nd page. Now I send it out and the
recipient has to open the email, fill in the form, click on REPLY, click on
OK for saving the original, and then clicking send. The form comes back as
an attachment.

It doesn't work if the person selects "REPLY TO ALL".

Finally, if the person signs the email with a digital signature, it uses
Plain Text formatting which breaks the form since forms require RTF.

So

1 - How come I can't see all the public folders when trying to link to a form?
2 - How do I handle the digital signature problem?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

1) Think about it: How would Outlook know to look in a particular public folder among potentially thousands to locate a published form. Message forms need to be published either in the Organizational Forms library or in each user's Personal Forms library.

2) Custom forms are not designed to work with digital signatures. A possible solution might be to use CommandBars techniques to check whether the digital signature button is in the state that shows a signature is present, but I've never actually tried that. And it's a moot point if you can't run code on your form because of #1.

A possible solution to #1 is to design your custom form so that the user just has to fill out the information and click Send. Save it as an .oft file and send it to the recipient as an attachment in a mail message. The user will open the attachment, fill in the form, then click Send.

 

[DonH]

1 - I should be able to browse to the public folder. According to the
documentation you can do that. That way the first form knows where to look
for the reply form. Oh well. That is a minor point.

2 - Where do I find these workarounds for the Digital Signature?

If I send it as an attachment .OFT file, will the dig sig still break it?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

1) That's not the issue. A reply form cannot be in a public folder. It must be in either of the two libraries I cited. Otherwise, Outlook can't find it.

2a) See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/tips/commandbarfun.htm for basics and examples of working with toolbars and menus. But again, this option is not available to you, since you cannot publish to the Organizational Forms library.

2b) Repeating: Custom forms are not designed to work with digital signatures, period.

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

 

[DonH]

1 - The issue for #1 is the DOCUMENTATION for custom forms says the linked
reply form needs to be in the Org, private, or a PUBLIC folder. So the
documentation is wrong. No big deal. Not the first time.

2(a) - To use VBA I have the form has to be in the Org folder? What about
as a .OFT attachment?

2(b) - That is insanity. Typical Microsuck tho.

So the real answer to all of this is to tell people to reply to the form by
FIRST turning off their security features. This fits in perfectly with MS
lack of commitment to security.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

1) The reference to public folders in the statement you are citing refers to form usage for items saved in folders. It does not apply to setting forms for actions on the (Actions) tab of a custom form.

2a) Who said anything about VBA? Form code is VBScript. To run code, a form must be published in a location from which Outlook can retrieve the form definition and not have any design features that would cause it to one-off. (This is a security issue, by the way, not a whim on the part of the designers.) For a message form, this means that the form must be published to the Organizational Forms or Personal Forms library. An .oft template file is an unpublished form and, therefore, cannot run code.

2b) Don't shoot the messenger.

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

 

[DonH]

I realize you are only the messanger, but that doesn't change how badly
designed this is by microsoft.

1 - Yes, public folders. IF I can save/publish to a public folder, then I
should be able to link to that form. That is what the documentation leads me
to believe I should be able to do. The basic statement is that it has to be
somewhere that the recipient has access to, and that is a public folder. Now
why MS decided on the one hand to allow publishing to a public folder and
then on the other hand to restrict useage of that form is just anybody's
guess.

2(a) - The documentation says VBA, but then VBA is just VBS for Applications
so whatevers. Interesting that I can send forms made in Word around with VB
but not Outlook Forms.

Overall, the problem is this, MS is filled with bad programmers. This is
proven by the number of patches we have to put on everything they put out.
Their planning is bad, their programming is bad. This is a perfect example.
In a security sensitive environment we should be able to use custom forms
WITH encryption and digital sigs. But MS missed that part of it. All
features need to work together, not against each other.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

1) No guess is needed at all. The reason is quite logical. The only information in an item that tells you what form to use is the message class. This makes it possible for Outlook to efficiently load the form from whatever location it might be available -- local cache, current folder's forms library, Personal Forms library, Organizational Forms. But it would be a major performance hit to allow Outlook to search across all folders in all stores to locate a form published to a folder that is not the current folder.

2) No, VBA and VBScript are two different languages. They have a generally similar syntax, but some distinct differences. You generally can write VBScript and run it in the VBA environment, but not vice versa.

Outlook is not a document-centric program like Word. Its custom forms are not analogous to Word documents.

I guess you've never met any Microsoft programmers or closely watched Microsoft work through a product development cycle.

If you want to suggest that forms support digital signatures, go to http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...spx?dg=microsoft.public.outlook.program_forms and enter a suggestion that other people can vote on. I can tell you, though, that digital signature support is not, in my experience, a frequently requested enhancement.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[DonH]

1 - I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying. When I construct
forms that are linked ie form A is sent to recipient and they click on REPLY
and form B comes up. When I build these, I can specify under Actions which
form to use. Right there I should be able to point to the exact location.
No searching by Outlook required. If the recipient can't access that folder
for some reason, then an error is generated. Simple. It isn't like Outlook
is searching for something. A lot of software supports this feature
including WORD. Simple link function.

2 - No, VBA and VBScript are NOT 2 different languages. They are variations
on a theme. They are both Visual Basic based languages. Cobol and Visual
Basic are 2 different languages.

I've met lots of programmers since I've been one for over 30 years. Some
are actually MS programmers. I can tell by the RESULTS the quality of work
they do. I break software as part of my job and a lot of young programmers
get very frustrated as they see their work get shredded in just minutes. I'm
also good friends with some high ups in MS. I know what goes on and I know
it isn't totally the programmers' fault.

I would say that if not many people are requesting custom forms be
functional with Digital Sigs and encryption it is because they are like most
of the people I know, they give up and find a work around. By the time MS
comes out with the functionality requested, it is far too late. This just
seems like a no brainer to me. Custom forms should be compatible with
security otherwise they are a joke.

Anyway, the basic answer is : It don't work. No amount of quibbling over
details with you will change that. I appreciate your time. It saved me more
hours of trying to make it work. Now I can turn to other solutions and stop
wasting my time.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

No, I understand completely. What you're missing is that Outlook, when the user replies, would itself have to search for that form. That's the way the forms feature works. The KB article at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;290806 has a detailed description of the forms location process.

Dialect, language, whatever: The point is that VB and VBScript are neither identical nor necessarily interchangeable.