auto-fill pg 1 from custom pg 2 (Contacts)

[Guest]

I understand that editing page 1 of Contacts can cause problems. I need to
build an intake form that has both spouses' names, some contact info, some
physical info, and some financial info. I'd like to have it in Contacts with
all the info on one page (pg 2) to make it easy for my intake person and to
be consistent with the paper form now used. However I assume page 1 will need
to be completed also, as I still want to access the various Contacts views,
use mail merge, and so on. I really want to avoid duplicate input. Can the
standard page 1 fields be made to auto-fill from the same fields on page 2?
Or can I edit pg 1 without messing anything up? I have Office 2003, and this
form will only be used by a few people. And I am very new at this. Thank you.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Yes in concept, but "autofill" isn't the right name for what you want to do.

Outlook stores data in fields/properties. What you see on the form are controls are either linked (bound) to those properties or are unbound controls (which don't store data in the item). The Field Chooser shows all the fields supported by the contact. Thus, you can drag any field from the Field Chooser to P.2 and it will show exactly the same data as on page 1 -- and vice versa. No "autofill" is involved. The control simply displays the value stored in the contact item.

See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/contactform.htm for information on the issues related to customizing the first page.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers