Help with users replying to custom form.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ultrace
  • Start date Start date
U

Ultrace

I've developed a few custom forms for my company in an attempt to
streamline some of our internal application processes. The forms have gone
over swimmingly, except that when an application is sent using one of the
forms, the recipient can view it just fine, but when they go to reply to
the message, all the form formatting is stripped out (even though the
"compose" page was there when it was sent.)

I thought the solution to this was to go into the "actions" section of the
form design and set the "reply" and "forward" commands to open up a form
identical to the form itself instead of "message"--hoping that since the
form is obviously being sent (else how could it be read in the proper
format) that it would also open for composing. Instead, recipients who try
and reply or forward get the message "The form you selected could not be
displayed."

Is there any way around this other than manually having each user install
the form on their Outlook, perhaps a way to force the form to be sent with
the message? Or if installing the form is required, is there a way to do it
easily, such as with a batch file? The group size is a couple hundred
people and many of them lack the computer savvy or patience to go through
the sequence of menus to install the form, and wouldn't any subsequent
changes to the form require it to be re-installed?

Any help would be appreciated. The version of OL being used is Outlook
2000.

Mike
 
You didn't say where the custom form is published or what your mail
server is. Both are a critical factors in custom forms operations.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what the mail server is, I'll have to check when I get back to
work. I know it's an exchange server, but I'm not sure which it is. I
published the form to my personal forms list. I'm not sure of a way to
publish it to any other location. I imagine publishing it to some sort of
master list for the mail server would help, but that's probably both beyond
my capabilities and what the IT people would allow.

FYI, there is a newsgroup specifically for Outlook forms issues "down
the hall" at microsoft.public.outlook.program_forms or, via web
interface, at
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microso
ft.public.outlook.program_forms
Click to expand...

I'll be sure to take a look there as well and see if this issue has been
discussed. Thanks for the help.


Mike
 
If this is a message form, you'll need to be able to publish it to the
Organizational Forms library. If not, each person who needs to use it will
have to publish it to their own Personal Forms library.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
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