Form or Add-In?

[Andre]

Hello,

I am trying to achieve something in Outlook however I need yo know if it can
be done by creating a new form.

Basicaly I want to Create a new entity in outlook called "Companies". Just
like contacts I want to be able to create new companies with their relevant
information like name, address, average revenue, etc. also this company can
be assigned some "Contacts", "Notes" and "Tasks".

Can this be done by creating a form or will this require an add-in?

In any case i am a .NET programmer and if you can direct me to a sample that
can get me started that would be great.

Thank you,
Best regards,
Andre

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Your choice of approach depends to a large degree on the audience and what you want them to see: Who will be using this new entity (which sounds like a ContactItem with a few custom properties added)? How do you want to display information to them? In what version(s) of Outlook?

Unless it's for your personal use, you're likely to be looking at an add-in.

 

[Andre]

Ok first thank you for your reply.
I am trying to make this for myself and my colleagues. Each one will be
using it separately on their outlook 2007. Basically I should be able to
separate between contacts and companies. Each company entry will have
multiple contacts assigned to it. We should be able to see the list of
companies in any form as long as we can differentiate between contacts and
companies. When they open a "company" entry, the form should have all the
info for this company as well as the contacts assigned to this company.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Regards,
Andre

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I would recommend building this as an add-in using the new form regions feature introduced in Outlook 2007. For samples and templates, you can start with:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb226713.aspx
http://www.slovaktech.com/outlook_2007_templates.htm


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

 

[Hollis Paul]

Ok first thank you for your reply.
I am trying to make this for myself and my colleagues. Each one will be
using it separately on their outlook 2007. Basically I should be able to
separate between contacts and companies. Each company entry will have
multiple contacts assigned to it. We should be able to see the list of
companies in any form as long as we can differentiate between contacts and
companies. When they open a "company" entry, the form should have all the
info for this company as well as the contacts assigned to this company.

You aren't the first to want this. Take a look at this page:


Select a Specific Contact from all Contacts (for a specific company).

the custom form allows the selection of a specific contact from all the items
for a company in the contact folder. also attached is a text file that
describes how it might be set up in a folder, and then presents a brief
functional description of the various subroutines.

http://www.outlookexchange.com/articles/home/outlookcodeexample.asp#33

I posted this in September of 97, probably for the Outlook of Office 95. You
will probably need to find the corresponding objects in Outlook 2007 Object
model, and use the new names.