any way to extract all shortcuts from the Outlook Bar?

[David Curwin]

My organization (about 3000 users) is migrating from Outlook 2000 to
Outlook 2003. Many of our users work a lot with the Outlook Bar
(shortcuts to subfolders, other people's calendars, public folders,
etc.). I know that the Outlook Bar is out in Outlook 2003, and we have
to teach the users to start using shortcuts instead. That may not be
easy, but I understand the need.

What I am frustrated about is that Microsoft has given no solution for
migrating the Outlook Bar or the *.fav file to a format that can be
imported into Outlook 2003. After speaking to representatives from MS,
I figure the job is up to me. The one thing I do know is that both for
time and accuracy's sake, I can't allow my technicians to go and
basically handwrite the shortcuts (which are often 10 or more per
profile) for around 3000 users.

I'm not too familiar with VBA for Outlook (but I am with VBA for Word,
and VBScript), but I did see that there is a collection object called
OutlookBarShortcuts. Is there any way I could programatically iterate
through all the shortcuts in all the groups in the Outlook Bar,
extract them to the location they point to, export this somehow to a
file, and then import it again to shortcuts in 2003?

Even if you can just tell me how to iterate and extract the shortcuts,
it would be great - I can at least save half the work.

Thanks,

David Curwin
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP]]

Yes, you can loop through the OutlookBarGroups and OutlookBarShortcuts collections and put information about shortcuts in a text file or something like that. However, I'm pretty sure that you don't really need to do that -- Outlook 2003 should automatically use your existing Outlook 2000 groups in its Shortcuts view.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.slipstick.com/books/jumpstart.htm