Outlook 2000 v 2003 version issue?

[A Don]

Hi there,

My business area have recently accepted a handover to support all Outlook
Forms within our companies Organisational Forms Library. All of these were
built on NT workstations using Outlook 2000 SR-1 (9.0.0.3921). After a bit
of a steep learning curve we have been able to devlop these forms using
vbScript etc. so I have the basic knowledge of the programming behind the
forms, however I wouldn't consider myself to be anywhere near the level of
'programer'!

We basically design forms for the business, email them to the requester and
once they're happy publish to the Forms Library.

We currently seem to have an issue as some of the company have migrated from
NT to XP (Outlook 2003 SP2 11.6568.6568). The users who are running Outlook
2003 are unable to open the form when we email it to them for feedback. They
can open the form fine from the forms library, however just seem to have a
general issue opening the attachments we send....we've tried storing them on
shared drives etc. but the problem still seems to persist.

I'm assuming the obvious answer is due to the different versions of Outlook,
however is there any known workaround/local setting which can be implemented
in order that the 2003 users can open the custom forms? Currently they are
only seeing the TO & Subject fields, with the message body of a regular email.

We are due to be migrated to 2003 next week and I'm concerned that we will
no longer be able to email our forms to our requesters for testing. We also
have a database which contains archived versions of the forms, which we can't
open using Outlook 2003.

Any help/advice would me much appreciated.

thanks folks

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What kind of attachments are you sending? If they are .oft files, the users will need to save them to their hard drives first and then open them with the Tools | Forms | Choose Form command.

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

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

 

[A Don]

Thanks for responding Sue, Yes they are .OFT files, I've just tried opening
one as per your reply, but the 'Browse' function appears to have been
disabled (greyed out) and so will only allow me to open a form from one of my
other Outlook Folders..... any ideas why this could be or is it perhaps a
default implemented by system admin?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

It's a security feature added in Outlook 2003 SP2. You cannot change the behavior. Users will have to follow the procedure I outlined.

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

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

 

[A Don]

I suppose I could get round the .OFT problem by saving them as .msg files for
recipient testing purposes, however I'm not too sure of any implications....
if any??

I will ultimately be responsible for publishing the .OFT file in the Org
Forms Library.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I think you'll run into the same issue with .msg files.

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

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