Service Pack 3 has broken my forms...

[JonnyB]

I’m running Office 2003, and service pack 3 has just been installed ad it has
stopped my forms from opening.

We have ‘individual’ outlook form templates that we use for billing. These
are kept on the local desktop and usually accessed by 2 x clicking.
Now, when the form is 2 x clicked the error "the custom form could not be
opened. outlook will use an outlook form instead" is displayed and then a
standard blank email is opened.

The forms can be opened via the file-> New-> Choose form route.

I have tried deleting the forms cache (FRMCACHE.DAT plus the other files
listed in KB836558). I have also tried various registry changes mentioned in
the KB for similar problems – but nothing seems to work. (the registry always
has the changes undone before I continue!)

Any thoughts/suggestions as to what is blocking this would be greatly
received!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What version did you have previously? This sounds like the change that was actually made in SP2, so that users can work with most .oft form templates files only by opening the template from the Tools | Forms | Choose Form dialog, browsing for User Templates in File System. This means that if the .oft file is sent as a message attachment, the user must save it to the local hard drive first.

The article at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=907985 explains this change in more detail, suggests best practices, and provides registry keys that can return Outlook 2003 to the older, less secure behavior. I haven't done any experiments to determine if the registry settings work in SP3.

 

[JonnyB]

Hi Sue

I was previously running SP2, and I did have a similar problem with a couple
of installations – but these were easily resolved.

I will have a look at the link you’ve posted and let you know how I get on

Thanks for your help!

Jon

 

[JonnyB]

Success!

I added the following 2 entries to the registry and the form opens OK:

AllowTNEFtoCreateProps
(HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail]
"AllowTNEFtoCreateProps"=dword:00000000): If the value is 0, TNEF/MIME cannot
create new non-Outlook custom properties. This value is the default value. If
the value is 1, TNEF/MIME can create new non-Outlook custom properties.

AllowMSGFilestoCreateProps: If the value is 0, .msg files and .oft files
cannot create new non-Outlook custom properties. This value is the default
value. If the value is 1, .msg files and .oft files can create new
non-Outlook custom properties.

Thanks for your help Sue!