Activities tab unable to access custom form of subfolders

[Andi]

Somewhere along the line the new version of Outlook or Exchange Server
has taken away the ability to access sub folder custom forms via the
Activities tab. Our solution has a main contact public folder, then
several subfolders containing related items for the contacts (Service
Reports, Projects, etc), and many of these subfolders also use custom
forms. I used to be able to customize the Activities tab to display
custom field information of the form for the corresponding subfolder.
Now when I am on the Activities tab and open the Field Chooser there is
no longer an option to access other custom forms via Forms... as I used
to. Fortunately, when we upgraded and migrated all existing settings
and customizations to the Activities tab stayed in tact, but if I want
to add a new field to the view or if we add a new subfolder and custom
form I no longer have that option. I have not seen this mentioned
anywhere else in these groups so I'm assuming not many people used this
feature maybe?? This was a wonderful feature and I am surprised it's
not availalbe anymore. Currently use Outlook 2003, Exchange 2003 in a
terminal server environment.

Andrea

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

It's a long-time Exchange limitation. You can search only one public folder at a time.

 

[Andrea Kall]

Hi Sue,
Thanks for responding. I know about the seeing only one sub folder at a
time and each individual subfolder is accessible from the dropdown,
however in the past I have been able to customize the Activities tab for
each of the separate subfolders by accessing the subfolders custom form
and dragging the needed custom fields to the field header area of the
Activities tab. For example, I have the Central Contacts public folder
and a sub folder called Service Reports which has a custom form with a
field called "Time billed for call". I set up the Activities for the
Central Contacts folder to see the Service Reports public folder. To
customize the Activities tab I open a contact, go to the Activities tab,
use the dropdown to locate and select the Service Reports public folder,
right click on the field header of the Activities tab, choose Field
Chooser, in the dropdown I used to be able to access any custom form I
wanted using the "Forms..." item. (just like is available when
customizing a view and selecting a custom form to access the custom
fields) I would select the custom form for the Service Report public
folder and be able to drag and drop the field "Time billed for call" to
the field header area of the Activities tab. I would repeat this process
for any subfolder set up in the Activities properties of the Central
Contact public folder. For some reason now I cannot access any custom
forms on the Field Chooser. This was a great way to customize the
Activities tab for each individual subfolder.

I hope I'm making sense and not babbling. I swear it was really easy to
do, plus we still have many custom fields set up on our Activities tab
for our centralized contact solution that we did several years ago and
stayed in tact when we migrated to our new servers.

Thanks for listening,
Andrea