Message class changes to Post

[Oliver Jacobs]

I am creating a custom contact form to publish in public folders for the
entire company to use as a global contacts DB.

When I design a form (using the standard form... i.e. open a normal contact
and choose, Tools/forms/design this form), publish the form giving a new
name and then change the folder properties to use the new form when posting,
new posts do use the new custom form, but they will appear in the contacts
folder (when viewed as a list) as Post items rather than contact items!

This poses a problem as Outlook can't see post items as contacts when trying
to use the new public folder for addresses.

How can I make sure the message class or item type will still be a Contact?

Thanks and regards,

Oliver Jacobs

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What value do you see for the MessageClass property for those items?

 

[Oliver Jacobs]

Sue,

Many thanks for getting back.

Where do I find teh MessageClass property?

Thanks.
Oliver.

What value do you see for the MessageClass property for those items?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You can add the Message Class field to any table view using the same method
as you'd use to add any field to the view -- display the Field Chooser and
drag.

 

[Oliver Jacobs]

I have added the message class field to the table view and the following is
displayed...
IPM.Contact.customfieldsonp2test1
Where customfieldsonp2test1 is the name of the published form.

With more testing IO now realise I have not been adding email addresses into
my test contacts, hence they weren't appearing in the Outlook address list!
I originally thought that the addresses weren't appearing in the OAB because
they were being added as "Post" items!

I think all I need to do now is change the post icon to a contact icon in
the (properties) page of the custom form. Can you tell me where to find teh
contact icon?

Many thanks for your help.

Oliver Jacobs.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

All the icons installed with Outlook are in \Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\FORMS\1033 or the corresponding location in your version of OUtlook.

 

[Oliver Jacobs]

I have changed the icon successfully but still, any contacts with a message
class other than IPM.Contact appear as post.
When I design a form, then give it a name when publishing it the message
class seems to automatically change to IPM.Contact.the form name. Is there a
way to get round this?

Thanks again for your help!
Oliver.


All the icons installed with Outlook are in \Program Files\Microsoft
Office\OFFICE11\FORMS\1033 or the corresponding location in your version of
OUtlook.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Did you republish the form after changing the icon? Did you create any new items with that form?

The whole point of publishing is to make available a custom form that you can use to create items with MessageClass = "IPM.Contact.yourform" so that the contacts will use the layout/code of that published form. I can't imagine what in that you want to get around.

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