Outlook and .NET Controls

[Michael Tissington]

Is there a way that I can create .NET controls and them use them on Outlook
forms?

If so, how?

(if not, this is very disappointing of Microsoft)

 

[Kumaran]

Hello Michael


that would be disappointing indeed if .NET
controls could not be embedded on Outlook Forms.

I've been working on some .NET addins for Outlook
for the last year and Ive never thought abt
including .NET controls.

But theoretically speaking, since Outlook allows
activex controls to be embedded on forms, there must be a
way, atleast in the later versions of outlook to
embedd .NET controls as well.

Im going to try it out and Ill let you know what
I came up with.

Regards
K

 

[Siegfried Weber]

Is there a way that I can create .NET controls and them use them on Outlook
forms?

If so, how?

(if not, this is very disappointing of Microsoft)

It is very unfortunate that Outlook, even in it's latest version 2003, is
still completely (beside of the existing PIA's) COM based. To make it worse
do Outlook forms only support VBScript code behind which basically locks you
into only being able to call ActiveX/COM components from inside Outlook
forms.

The only place where .NET comes in play is either using the aformentioned
PIA or if you build an Outlook COM add-in which intercepts the Outlook
Inspector (aka Outlook form) and Explorer (aka Outlook folder view) windows
to add buttons to them and then execute .NET code. However, this would still
require to build a .NET component which includes a CCW (COM callable
wrapper).

Maybe the next Outlook verion will come up with some changes in this respect
but thats 1-2 years away...

 

[Jay B. Harlow [MVP - Outlook]]

Michael,
I recently came across a post in
microsoft.public.office.developer.com.add_ins that offered a way to create
Outlook Property pages in VB.NET:

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&rnum=4

However I have not tried it as one thing I do not see, is how you add this
property page to the pages collection.

Note the above workaround does not seem to be as straight forward as using
..NET to create controls for Outlook should be.

Hope this helps
Jay