We would like to create a custom outlook contact form and post to a webpage.
Once data is entered into the form the data is sent to a specified folder in
exchange and a contact is created based on the information entered. Can this
be done?
Sorry, but I don't think you have the correct notion about Outlook Data Items
and Outlook forms. Outlook Data Items are collections of fields and values
that are associated with some of the fields that are held in an object that
part of an Exchange database or a PST or OST file, or an Office Template that
is stored in the file in File System. (We will ignore for not, what kind of
objects hold it in a SharePoint Document Library, or in the Outlook Express
database.)
An Outlook form is a text file that defines the window and the controls that
are used to display the Outlook Data Item on the Windows screen.
The form and data item are joined and married when the Outlook application is
engaged to display the data item to the user on the display screen. That is
the only place in which they live. The ephemera that you see cannot be posted
to anything, much less a web page.
You can include code, in a custom form, which you can use to copy values to
some other data object. And you can include a control in the custom form which
allows you to start the execution of that code. But there is no Post function,
which is really just code that is attached to an existing HTML web page to move
data from it's fields to some other object. The Outlook form is not an HTML
web page, though the Word editor can indeed generate a HTML display within the
Notes field. But if you want to transfer data values from an active Outlook
form on your screen, you have to program it all in VBScript. But the
development environment for Outlook is no web page, and there is no Post
function. No Get function either. But you can transfer data values from
Outlook fields out to other objects, if you know how to connect to the other
objects.
Hollis D. Paul [MVP - Outlook]
(e-mail address removed)
Mukilteo, WA USA
