Form cannot be displayed

[John]

Hi,

I used outlook 2003 to create a form by going in to tools-Forms-Design a
form, then selecting message in the standard forms library list. I did all
my fields correctly and published the form to my personal folders library
with a descriptive name. Outlook asked me if I want to “save the form
definition with the item†and I selected yes. I closed everything and opened
a new message form in design mode, and clicked on the actions tab and
double-clicked the reply entry and selected choose the form I created from
the dropdown menu. I published this form with another name as the initiating
form. Then I tried to test it by clicking file-new-choose form, and finding
my initiative form. I put my email address to test it. It worked great.
However, this is where things go wrong. Every time I send it to other people
with outlook, they get the message and when they click reply the message
"Form cannot be displayed" appears. What am I doing wrong? I thought by
checking the "save the form definition with the item", would allow me to send
the form to other outlook users without having them publish the form?? That's
what I want. I'm planning to send the form to a large group and wish not to
ask them to publish. Please advice. I need help.



John

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Other people don't have your reply form published in their Personal Forms library.

Maybe you could back up and explain the application that your form is designed to implement. That could provide clues to a solution.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[John]

My form is based on the Message(Tools - Forms - Design a form - Message). I
only added two fields in the form.

1. Yes/No check box
2. Day selection: Monday, Tuesday, ....

Sue, my goal is to do what you've made a note on your site:
With Publishing, I have to ask everyone to publish the form. Please provide
a solutions to this: I just want to send them the form after I publish it to
my own computer. I want them to reply back to my email and fill out the
survey form and send it. There's got to be a way, other than requesting them
to publish.

"There is another option for sending forms via the Internet that does not
require the recipient to have a published copy of your form. On the
(Properties) tab of the form, in design mode, you can check Save form
definition with item. (If you publish a message form, Outlook will pop up a
message suggesting that you set this option.) However, we generally do not
recommend this approach for these reasons:
Setting that option one-offs the form, embedding the form definition in the
item, so that instead of sending a 3kb message, you might be sending a 3kb
message + a 150kb form.
If the item contains code, the recipient may see an ambiguous Enable/Disable
Macros prompt and will need to choose Enable Macros -- not a good choice in
any security-conscious organization.
Alternatively, the code may not run at all. This will be the case if the
recipient has the Outlook Email Security Update, Outlook 2000 SP2, or Outlook
2002. These versions of Outlook do not permit code to run from one-off forms."

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Save the form as an .oft file, preaddressed to yourself and send that ..oft file to the other people to open, fill out and send.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

My form is based on the Message(Tools - Forms - Design a form - Message). I
only added two fields in the form.

1. Yes/No check box
2. Day selection: Monday, Tuesday, ....

Sue, my goal is to do what you've made a note on your site:
With Publishing, I have to ask everyone to publish the form. Please provide
a solutions to this: I just want to send them the form after I publish it to
my own computer. I want them to reply back to my email and fill out the
survey form and send it. There's got to be a way, other than requesting them
to publish.

 

[John]

First, I'd like to say thank you for your time.

1. Can you please explain the steps of how to save a form created based on a
message as .oft? I have created the form already. How do I go about saving
it with that particular extension?

2. Can you please explain the step of how I do the Preaddressed to myself?

I'm really close to solving this matter. Again, my problem is that other
users from other computers state that they get the message "the form cannot
be displayed".

I can tell you that I did everything correct as far as creating the forms.
One main form and another initiating form that the reply properties is linked
to the first form. I just don’t know what step I’m missing. I even check
the box “send form definition with item†for both forms.
I'm looking forward hearing from you. Thank you.


John

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What you're missing is that unless you can get other people to publish your form, they can't send a reply with that form. Therefore, the solution is to forget about a reply form completely.

Turn off Word as your email editor. Create a new item from the custom form. Add your own address to the To box. Choose File | Save As and choose .oft as the format.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[John]

Here's what I did (Please correct me if I'm wrong):

1. I deleted all my old forms, and turned off word editing and selected RTF.
Then went to tools - forms - design a form (in the Standard Forms library) I
selected "message".

2. in the design view of the form message, I typed my address in the To:
area. Then I clicked file save as, selected my desktop as the location and
typed the word "survey" in the filename, and select outlook template (.oft).

Can you please tell me if so far I did all the above steps correctly?

I guess now I need to know how to send the form to other people? That would
be great, If you can explain the step by step of this precudure. Thank you.

John

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Didn't you already have a message form designed with your survey or whatever controls on it. That's the form you need to be using. Why create a new one when you already have one?

Try this:

1) Create a new item using your existing custom form.

2) Put your address in the To box and click Check Names.

3) Use File | Save As to save it as an .oft file.

4) Create a new mail message to the other person.

5) Insert your .oft file as an attachment.

6) Send the message.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[John]

1. What do you mean when you say 1) Create a new item using your existing
custom form. ?

2. Is .oft the same as outlook template? because I don't see .oft.

3. Once I manage to get this form to work, Is there a way on generate the
results into excel? Mainly the responses in the form are Yes/No Check marks,
and selecting the days of the week.

I know I might be sounding like a total stupid person, But I'm just so tired
of making mistakes and want this thing to finally work. Thank you.


John

Didn't you already have a message form designed with your survey or whatever controls on it. That's the form you need to be using. Why create a new one when you already have one?

Try this:

 

[John]

Hi Sue,

I managed to create the form and save as .oft. I did a test by sending it
to myself an attachment. When I try to open the attachment I get this
message:

"09/22/2005 10:24 AM The original attachment contains a virus or meets the
File-Blocking rules. ScanMail took action: survey.oft/Deleted, please see
your Exchange Server administrator for details!"

I need to know, is there a way I can change some of the setting on my
attachment so it wont detect it as a virus? Thanks.

John

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The relevant setting isn't local. It's on the server that is running the ScanMail anti-virus program.

In any case, this may soon be a moot issue since Office 2003 Service Pack 2 makes it impossible to simply open an attached .oft file if it has custom properties in its design. The KB article at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=907985 explains the changes in detail, but the bottom line is that, with SP2, to do the kind of survey you want to do, everyone will need access to the *published* form definition.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[GrandAdmiral]

How does one get access to the form definition?

The relevant setting isn't local. It's on the server that is running the ScanMail anti-virus program.

In any case, this may soon be a moot issue since Office 2003 Service Pack 2 makes it impossible to simply open an attached .oft file if it has custom properties in its design. The KB article at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=907985 explains the changes in detail, but the bottom line is that, with SP2, to do the kind of survey you want to do, everyone will need access to the *published* form definition.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Also, just to let you know the reason why I need it this way:

My company have set up several templates that we want to be able to send
back and forth to each other. We need to be able to track the actions
between the various employees who received a particular template. At
onepoint we had the ability to forward the form (in contrast to replying to
it), but we can't even do this now.

Thanks again.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You will need to publish the form either to the Organizational Forms library in an Exchange environment or to each user's Personal Forms library.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[GrandAdmiral]

Thanks for the quick reply sue. I don't have the ability to publish to the
Org. library. Howw do I publish to each individual's library?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You can send the form as an .oft file to each user with instructions on how to open and publish it. See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/distributeforms.htm for other ideas.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers