Email Inbox using Custom Contact Form vs. Default Email Form

[Bridget]

We had created a custom contact form a few months ago in Outlook 2003.
Yesterday, one of our users' Email Inbox messages were all converted to the
custom contact form and no longer use the Default Email form (which is the
form we need to use). When a new message comes into the Inbox, it is a
normal Email message at first, but then converts to the custom Contact form,
with the email message appearing within the Notes section.
The user is unable to Reply to or forward email messages, making business
very difficult.
We understand that the message class may somehow be incorrect on the Inbox,
but are unable to find a solution to fix it. The message class is still
listed as IPM.Post.

Please help us correct this issue. Any help is much appreciated!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Sounds like someone monkeyed with the Windows registry. Look in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Custom Forms to see if a substitute for the IPM.Post or IPM.Note (which is the message class for messages, not IPM.Post) form has been deleted and remove it as necessary.

 

[Bridget]

Sue- I am unsure how to look in the Windows registry for this item. Please
send some additional instruction if possible.

All of our email messages/folders are set to IPM.Post on each computer and
until now have not had a problem, and its trange that it is happening in only
one folder-- the Inbox folder on one computer, whereas the other folders
still work properly. I am confused on this.

Is there a way to change the message class to the proper setting for that
particular folder?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Bridget]

I was able to get through HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook... but
I do not have a Custom Forms option at that point.
I do have Forms\ChooseForm or DesignForm, or Message, etc. But no
option for Custom Forms.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

All of our email messages/folders are set to IPM.Post on each computer and

until now have not had a problem

Setting IPM.Post as the default for a folder has no effect on messages moved to that folder. What is the actual Message Class value for the items that are having the problem? You can add the Message Class property to the columns in any table view.

What do you mean by this? Is "the default email form" a custom form that you're using?

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

 

[Bridget]

Sue,
The 'default email form' is not a custom form. I just meant the basic form
that comes with Outlook, in its original form.

Setting IPM.Post as the default for a folder has no effect on messages moved to >that folder.

No messages have been 'moved' to this folder. They Already existed in this
folder. It is in the Inbox, with numerous old email messages, that have been
in the same place, never moved. Somehow all of these existing emails
converted into a Custom Contact Form. The NEW email messages arriving TODAY,
at first are normal email messages, but then convert themselves into the
Custom Contact Form at some later time, maybe 10 minutes. The icon in front
of the message becomes a Contact icon and no longer a Mail icon.

What is the actual Message Class value for the items that are having >the problem?

The actual message class showing for all of these items is IPM.Post.

You can add the Message Class property to the columns in any table view.

How do I do this??

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I'm afraid none of this makes any sense to me. An incoming message would have a message class of IPM.Note, not IPM.Post. And an IPM.Post item should show the default post form, not a custom contact form.

If you're seeing items change after some period of minutes, that sounds like there is a background process running somewhere to make that change. If this is an Inbox in an Exchange box, it could be a process on the server. Other possibilities would be VBA code running in Outlook or some external process.

To add any field to a table view, right-click on the table's columns, choose Field Chooser, and drag fields to the table column headings. Or, just go through the Customize View dialog.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Bridget]

THank you for clarifying that. I was giving you the message class of what
was listed under Properties of the Folder, when posting to the folder, it is
listed as IPM.Post. Upon including the Message Class into Table View, the
message class actually shows as IPM.Contact.
We do not have Exchange, but rather SQL server.
How can we find where the problem lies? Are we able to change exisitng
items back to the correct message class? How?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The symptoms suggest that someone or something is running code to change the message class of the items from IPM.Note to IPM.Contact. You first need to find out what that is. I've already given you a couple of ideas.

SQL Server is not a mail server and normally wouldn't be involved with Outlook data at all.

To change the existing items, you need to run code to change the value of the MessageClass property on each item. See http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=39

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

 

[Bridget]

Sue,
I opened up Message under the folder that we were having problems with under
Design a Form. I entered this code into the Script Editor:

Sub Item_Open
NewMC = "IPM.Note"
Set CurFolder = Application.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder
Set AllItems = CurFolder.Items
NumItems = CurFolder.Items.Count
For I = 1 to NumItems
Set CurItem = AllItems.Item(I)
If CurItem.MessageClass <> NewMC Then
CurItem.MessageClass = NewMC
CurItem.Save
End If
Next
End Sub

I closed out of Deisgn mode, WITHOUT Publishing and Without saving changes.
Immediately, the Message Class for the affected items changed to IPM.Note
from IPM.Contact. I was unsure HOW it changed though, as I did not publish
the code with the existing form, but rather closed out of it before
publishing. It appears that things are working just fine now.
What caused the change here?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Did you run the form from design mode?

BTW, you could run that same code from an Outlook VBA macro. See http://outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=49 if you're new to VBA.

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

 

[Bridget]

Yes, I did Run the Form while in Design mode, then closed out of both
screens, without doing anything further. But we have tried this on another
computer with the same problem, and it did not work for existing items. So,
those existing items still remain in Contact form, while the incoming
messages are now in the correct form.

I will look into the VBA macro to see if that helps.
Thank you.