The default contact form in Outlook 2007 lacks many of the fields I need to track for my business. Using Outlook's form design tool, I had no trouble creating a new template -- which I saved as a form in my personal forms library. However, I can't duplicate the behavior of two default features in the form I created. These seem relatively simple and I hope someone can show me steps toward enable them.
First, I'd like each record to reflect the category I assign it. Outlook's default contact form does this with a color-coded bar appearing across a contact's "General" tab that matches its assigned category. In my customized form, I can still assign categories using Outlook's category chooser (they show up in the "category" and "phone list" views). I inserted a "categories" bar in the custom form and while the chosen category appears in text, the color-coding doesn't occur. How complicated is the programming to achieve this?
Second, I can attach an icon (a person's photo, usually) to a custom form. I can verify the image is associated with my contact data, but I can't seem to cause it display anywhere in the form, the way default contact records do. What's involved in rendering this feature?
Alternatively, is there a way to customize Microsoft's default form so I can rely on the VB code already there? That's not my first choice, because of how much development I put into the customized form. But I'm not a VB programmer and I'd gladly add new fields to an existing form if it already had these features.
Thanks!
First, I'd like each record to reflect the category I assign it. Outlook's default contact form does this with a color-coded bar appearing across a contact's "General" tab that matches its assigned category. In my customized form, I can still assign categories using Outlook's category chooser (they show up in the "category" and "phone list" views). I inserted a "categories" bar in the custom form and while the chosen category appears in text, the color-coding doesn't occur. How complicated is the programming to achieve this?
Second, I can attach an icon (a person's photo, usually) to a custom form. I can verify the image is associated with my contact data, but I can't seem to cause it display anywhere in the form, the way default contact records do. What's involved in rendering this feature?
Alternatively, is there a way to customize Microsoft's default form so I can rely on the VB code already there? That's not my first choice, because of how much development I put into the customized form. But I'm not a VB programmer and I'd gladly add new fields to an existing form if it already had these features.
Thanks!