Problems Changing Default Meeting Request

[Dan Isaacs]

Goal:

Change default Meeting Request form to have "Private" checked by default.
Clients are all latest SP of Outlook 2000, running Exchange 2000.

Process:

Per instructions @ Slipstick, download and install FormAdmin.exe
(FormSwap.exe and a Read Me). Also read the 1.2 million times Sue has
addressed this problem over the years.

Step 1: Open a Meeting Request
2. Check the "Private" box
3. Tools>Forms>Publish Form
4. Publish form to Personal Forms Library as
IPM.Appointment.Private.Meeting
5. Open FormSwap.
6. Target: Select Meeting Request (IPM.Schedule.Meeting.Request) from
the drop down.
7. Compose: For Composing use: IPM.Appointment.Private.Meeting
8. Send Item As(Optional) is blank
9. Read: For Reading Use: IPM.Schedule.Meeting.Request (have tried with
IPM.Appointment.Private.Meeting here, too)
10. Save.

Now, this works. It replaces the form. But there are two problems:
1. The Private box is not checked (which is sorta the point of what I'm
trying to do
2. When meeting is sent, an error about the meeting organizer appears:

"You May want to let the meeting organizer know you changed the meeting
"test". If the meeting organizer sends an update for this meeting, your
changes will be lost. Is this OK?"

Now, if you look at the Attendees tab, it shows me as the meeting
Organzer. So I'm confused about this. I think I've done things as
instructed by the ReadMe, by Slipstick, and by the directions Sue and
others have given in the newsgroups. But the check mark does not show
up, and any custom forms give me the error indicating it doesn't think
I'm the oraganizer. What am I missing?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

I would stay away from customized meeting requests. They behave weirdly
(partly documented in the MSKB). And I doubt if forms substitution would
work well with them because of the quirks. A better solution might be a COM
addin that adds a "Create Private Meeting" button to run a procedure that
creates a new meeting request, makes it private, then displays it to the
user. Or, one that monitors the NewInspector event and, when a new
appointment is created, automatically makes it private.