How do I add a field to Business Contact Manager?

[Guest]

Hi,

Microsoft does a good job advertising the fact that you can customize fields
within Business Contact Manager, but then doesn't give step-by-step
instructions. I want to add fields to a form and then use that form as my
default. I have spent 2 hours looking for help on this, but to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Don

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

I don't know where you might have seen anything like that since Microsoft,
in fact, does not officially support customizing BCM forms. But Patricia
Cardoza explains how at
http://blogs.officezealot.com/cardoza/archive/2004/05/12/652.aspx

 

[Guest]

Thanks Sue. I thought for sure I heard somewhere that once can add/modify
fields within Outlook. I guess I must have been thinking of something else.
At any rate, I will give this a shot. Thanks again for taking the time to
show me the way.

Kind Regards,

Don

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Adding fields in Outlook and adding fields in BCM are two quite different
issues.

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

 

[Guest]

Don:

The "Business Contact Manager Tours" that are installed w/ BCM (and that I
think are/were available online) strongly imply (to me at least) that you
could customize the forms. For example, at one point it says "Store standard
information in Account and Business Contact records or customize the records
to capture information that's important to your business". There are some
other BCM related docs I've read that imply the same thing.

It seems to me that MS at one point (correctly) considered allowing user
customization and then by the time the product shipped (wrongly) disabled it.
Based on what we're hearing about v2 we may have to wait for v3 before they
allow it.

John

 

[Guest]

Thanks for that, John. So, I'm not going crazy (at least as far as this is
concerned).

Cheers!

Don

 

[Guest]

IMHO, the one crazy here was MS for not allowing any customization in BCM.
It would be nice to at least change some of the drop-down values, and/or they
could have provided 8 or 10 generic fields that could be customized, if
providing full-blown customization was too much for the initial release.
Sadly, it sounds like v2 will also be un-customizable as well...

John

 

[Guest]

This is an old stream but I thought I'd ask anyway. Besides wanting to
customize the forms, there are a bunch of fields already defined in BCM but I
don't see any way to enter data into them - they don't show up on any form,
you can include them in a list but you cannot enter data there? Any ideas ?

 

[Guest]

Hi samg,

While I don't have an answer for you on this, your post made me think of
another functionality that I have not been able to figure out -- pictures!
What happened to the ability to add a photo to your contacts? I can do this
within the standard contact, but not within business contacts. Why is that?

Don

 

[Luther]

The fields you can't see on a form are probably "hidden fields"; fields
used internally by BCM or Outlook fields BCM decided not to support. I
bet Outlook is showing you the list of fields, and BCM has no way to
tell Outlook to hide them.

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

The non customization of forms within BCM is completely inexcusable for this
application to fully meet the most basic of needs for most users and
unfortunately continues to annoy so many users. While Sue Mosher's link to
Patricia Cardoza's instructions above are well intended to be helpful this
route seems like a risky ride on the Beta experimental work around roller
coaster with a likely guarantee of error messages and subsequent data loss
related headaches. There is probably a good reason why forms customization
is not officially supported and that is simply that this feature (by design)
is not intended to work. Why should end users be left to their own devices
to try to concoct such attempted solutions around such an ill thought out or
intentional oversight?

For anyone still wondering, BCM is a distinctly SEPARATE (though similiar in
appearance) add-in database application to Outlook. It has different and
more limited functionality as compared to using regular Outlook by itself.
Things like contact photo fields and customized forms and fields layout
customization are NOT currently designed to be available in the BCM record
items eventhough they are somewhat available in Outlook. These limitations
are the current state of reality with BCM and it probably serves users best
to remain well aware of this fact so as to proceed accordingly with either
adapting to, or abandoning BCM depending upon what your needs are and the
trade offs with what you can live with in regard to these current limitations.


-THP

 

[Guest]

I managed to add two new fields and the data entered appears ok

However please tell me how I can get the field values to show through when
creating new views on theBusiness contact front page.

I am able to expose these new fields in the top title line of the "View"
area but cannot get the values to show through.

Thank you

Eileen

 

[Guest]

I agree! I've spent hours trying to customize the account form to no avail.
I'm giving up on BCM until they can make it more user friendly!

Kim

 

[Guest]

This is mostly for Sue,

I know you can customize the business contact form. However, that being
said. It is irritating when you do something in outlook and cannot translate
to BCM. I need to customize a form, simply with 2 date fields and a 3rd
field using a calculation or formula to the end result of the date period.
In Outlook this is not a problem. You can create the fields in BCM, you just
cannot have a formula or calculation. If you Stretch this out and go to
Visual Basic ( and I have) you can create the module there, however, there is
not way to import back in. Perhaps, you have to go and open the bcm form in
visual basic or visual studio and do it there. Can you import it back in.
It seems that if Microsoft wants to have BCM compete with ACT and Goldmine,
customizing would be the name of the game. Especially with Office Ulitmate.
If you have all your office, accounting, project, planning functionality in
one place great. However, you cannot make work for your business (I suspect
that many would) why would we use it?

Please help.

 

[emilberger]

Someone at MS just needed a job and created a very poor excuse for a product.
The marketingo of the product compares it to products like ACT and GOLDMINE
yet when you contact MS they tell you it is not to compete with those.

There literature says it will do many things that it cannot dpo. But MS
does not support or apparently have any dialog with their marketing
department.

Why they created Outlook and BCM as two but one product is just ignorant.
BCM should be an add-on to Outlook which does not do anything but add
features.

Instead hae have two differnt products that each have one good features but
they do not share those features.

Case in Point.
I cannot place a Job Number paramount inthe Database in BCM wher eit is
viible and usable. This is hte most important item for all out work

Point two:
I can no longer send a letter to a contact. Though I can merge an email to
my 3500 contacts. The latter is geared toward an all email company - not the
real work - and not considerd very professional where ime is wasted and
emails are too impersonnal.

Point Three:
BCM To-Do's tell you what to do but not for whom or what project.

So I see thirty to-dos 6 which are "complete floor plan one" but I have no
idea who for.

MS Hire me and I'll help you make money by producing a real product within 6
months.

 

[emilberger]

Anyone yet know how to add a simple filed like JOB NO, Box Number (where we
store the job when finished), etc.