Required Categories

[Michael]

My company wants to create a company-wide contact list. I've built this as
a public folder on Exchange 2003 - no problem. However, they want to be
able to modify the categories to make them more pertinent to how the list is
used.

I used Sue Mosher's directions at www.outlookcode.com/d/forms/reqcat.htm to
create the customized category form. Looks beautiful. However, I'm a
little vague on how to publish this form to the public folder containing the
company contacts, and make it the default so the form actually works (forces
the categories to be used). Right now, I've got the .oft file sitting here,
and can't figure out how to "plug it in". Thanks!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You publish a form with the Tools | Forms | Publish Form command. See
http://www.outlookcode.com/d/newdefaultform.htm for information on making it
the folder's default.

 

[Michael]

When I try to publish the form to Public Folders > All Public Folders >
Corporate Contacts, I get the error message, "Unable to successfully publish
the form due to a MAPI error. You don't have appropriate permission to
perform this operation."

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You must have Owner permission on the folder before you can publish a form
to it.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Michael]

OK, that worked, and the form is a hit! Thanks!

The form is invoked whenever a new contact is created in the public folder,
but right now, the "Company Contacts" public folder is being populated via
people dragging and dropping contacts from their own contacts folder into
the public folder. Their contacts have the old list of categories
associated with them. Is there a way to force them to select from the new
form when they drop contacts into the folder?

--Michael

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Three methods:

1) Write and distribut to everyone a little VBA macro that moves items into
the folder and changes the message class to point to the custom form, all
with one command.
2) Install an add-in on each user's machine that does #1.
3) Use an Exchange event sink or script to change the MessageClass of each
new item if it doesn't match your custom form.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers