Outlook 2003 - form not showing fields

[Ynez]

Good Afternoon,
I am using Outlook 2003 and I have created the form, saved the form. The
form has fields to fill in and a comment box that was the message box. I have
it on my desktop and when I open it, it looks great however when I test it by
filling the required information then send to myself the form and information
is not returned to me. What I get back is only any information that is put
into the comment/message box, none of the other info comes to me.

I had the same form in 2000 and it was stored by me and my colleagues on our
desktops and it all worked fine, is this not true for 2003?

Thanks,

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

No, this is not true for Outlook 2003. To exchange data using message forms, you and your colleagues will each need to publish the form to your Personal Forms library, all giving it the same form name/message class.

 

[Ken H]

Sue - note that Ynez is sending the message to him/herself and still not
seeing the form fields. Shouldn't that take care of the library access issue?

I'm having the same problem and tried a number of fixes. The message is
correct in Sent box, but no form fields when received in Inbox. In my case I
have yet to get a form to work as well.

Thanks - Ken

No, this is not true for Outlook 2003. To exchange data using message forms, you and your colleagues will each need to publish the form to your Personal Forms library, all giving it the same form name/message class.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Not necessarily. The key point is the access to the published form definition. That means:

a) The form must be published to a place where Outlook can locate it.
b) It must not have the "send form definition with item" box checked on the (Properties) page in design mode.
c) The item must be created with the published form, not an .oft file copy.

--
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]

Sue - note that Ynez is sending the message to him/herself and still not
seeing the form fields. Shouldn't that take care of the library access issue?

Forms that are saved as .oft files will not run the code required to save the
data into custom Outlook fields. Consequently, only the entries into the
message field will appear.

You should publish your form to your personal forms library, uncheck the send
form with message box, and check the always send message using rtf box or
drop-down list entry.

 

[Ken H]

Paul and Sue,

Thanks for responding.

I must have missed the part where the message must be moved from the Inbox
to the folder location where the form is published. Doing so allowed the
message to be viewed with the form fields.

The original message was created with a published form and the properties
for sending the definition as you have noted.

Ken

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

If you publish the form to the Personal Forms or Organizational Forms library, it will be usable in any folder.

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

 

[Ynez]

Thanks everyone for these answers, I think that I now have the information I
need to get this forming working.

 

[Ynez]

Hey All,
We tried those three suggestions of publishing the form, unchecking "the
send form definition with item" and keeping it as a published form rather
than an oft. we also tried some other suggestions such as to disable the
"seperate read page" option under the forms tab in design mode. Any other
suggestions?
Thanks For your Help!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What do you actually see on the received item?

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

 

[Ynez]

Hi Sue,
What we were getting was only the information in the message box, one of my
IT guys got into the form and after checking on-line figured out that we need
the items from the compose page on the edit page and that I need to fill in
the properties for each item. So it looks like it is now working.

thanks so much for your time.

 

[hikerguy]

I may not understand the complexities involved in Outlook forms, but just
thinking in simple, logical terms, it shouldn't be that difficult to use
Outlook forms. Microsoft has seemed to have made it so difficult to use that
few would use it.

Working in a company, I would have to contact every person I send the form
to, THEN explain to them that they need to take steps to configure Outlook to
be able to view it. This is completely unrealistic. Most people working in an
office know very little about PCs, and the support groups are too busy to
help people set this up. Microsoft blew it on this one. They need to allow
users to EASILY --- let me repeat that.... EASILY share and send forms. The
forms are a GREAT idea, but they are NOT user-friendly.

No, this is not true for Outlook 2003. To exchange data using message forms, you and your colleagues will each need to publish the form to your Personal Forms library, all giving it the same form name/message class.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Outlook custom forms were designed to be used in an Exchange server environment, published to the Organizational Forms library. In that scenario, no local configuration would be necessary. For interchange of data using form without Exchange, Microsoft's premier forms tool is Infopath.

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