Open items in folder with custom form

[John B]

I built a custom form and published it to a form library. I can create new
postings with the custom form. However when i open an item I posted the
default 'post' form is used.

How do I get the custom form to be used when I open an existing item in the
folder?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

To change existing items created before you have the form so that they display using a published custom form, you need to change the value of the MessageClass property on each item so that it points to the published form's class, e.g. IPM.Post.MyForm. The page at http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=39 has links to scripts and tools to do this.

 

[John B]

Hi Sue,
This stuff is new to me. I've done a lot of Excel VBA stuff in the past but
I'm really struggling with these Outlook forms so I bought your book, but I
still have this problem.

I publish a form with user defined fields added to the message tab. I post
an item using the form Action/my form. I open the the item and the two fields
I added to the message tab do not show. I select developer/design this form
and I see the fields with the values on the (all fields) tab.
The data is there. I created the post with my form. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for you help.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What type of form? A message form? A post form? To what library did you publish it? On the (Properties) page, did you leave the "Send form definition with item" box unchecked? In design mode, do you see separate Edit Compose Page and Edit Read Page buttons? If so, did you click Edit Read Page and create a read layout to match the compose layout?
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[John B]

Sue, I think I have it working. I didn't notice there are separate edit
compose and edit read. When I updated the edit read with the fields they
displayed as I want.
Here are answers to your questions and a few questions about your questions
(just incase I'm missing something).

Overview of what I'm trying to do: Use Outlook link to a Sharepoint
discussion board. When people post (through email) to the discussion board we
need to make sure they enter certain pieces of information (like software
version and such); thus the form.

Form type: Post
Published to: Personal Form library
Send form definition: unchecked - Question this seems like a way to
distribute the form. What is the recommended approach to distribute the form
to the posters; we use Exchange? (I've not finished chapter 21 yet)
Separate edit & read? Yes I see them and this seemed to fix the problem I
was only designing the compose form.
And finally yes I now created both a read and compose form.

Thanks for your help. I'm sure I'll have some more questions in the future.
John

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I don't think a custom post form is going to work for this purpose, for a couple of reasons:

-- A post form can't be sent by email. It can only be posted to a folder.
-- AFAIK, Sharepoint doesn't know anything about reading custom Outlook properties.

Or have I misunderstood completely how you're using the form? It would be possible to make it work if the post form is just for entering data and it generates a new email message that does not use a custom form and contains all of the necesary information in the message body.

Send form definition: unchecked - Question this seems like a way to
distribute the form. What is the recommended approach to distribute the form
to the posters; we use Exchange?

No, it's a useless setting that does absolutely nothing good in current Outlook versions. See http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=27 for information on distributing forms.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54