Format phone numbers

[Peter]

By doubleclicking on any phonenumber field in a standard contact form there
is a dialog displayed to format the phone number. This is a useful tool, but
this feature does not work after the outlook form is changed. I only changed
the format and colours, not the controls. How can I change this so the
formatting feature for phone numbers is enabled again?

 

[Hollis Paul [MVP - Outlook]]

By doubleclicking on any phonenumber field in a standard contact form there
is a dialog displayed to format the phone number. This is a useful tool, but
this feature does not work after the outlook form is changed. I only changed
the format and colours, not the controls. How can I change this so the
formatting feature for phone numbers is enabled again?

Don't do anything with the general tab of contact form. This is the first
feature to break, but you can also lose email address formatting. If you must
customize the Outlook form, then make all your customizations on a back tab.

For your specific case, stop using your custom form, and change all the contact
MessageName field back to the standard name.

 

[Peter]

Thank you. So what you're saying is that this feature will work on an
unchanged general tab.
So if I disable the general tab from visability, and develop a custom form

 

[Hollis Paul [MVP - Outlook]]

So if I disable the general tab from visability, and develop a custom form
on a backtab, will these features work? Or how can I make this possible?

Those features are part of the private Outlook Application. They only work
in the fields on the general tab, which is basically the private preserve of
the application. If you hide it, you can use a text box on a back tab, but
you have to provide the code to do any formatting that you want to have--and
that can be a lot of tricky code.

Believe me, you are not the first to be frustrated by this. The really
amazing thing, to me, is that you can customize so much about Outlook forms.
This was never possible in the world of aerospace programming when I was in
that industry. Programming has come so far since then.