How do I make a Custom Mail form the default?

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Guest

I am using Outlook 2003. I want to be able to make the default mail form
customized or use my custom form. Either would be fine. I want to be able
to publish this "default" for the entire firm.
 
Why do you want to do this? A custom message form introduces some potential
problems. Maybe there's a better way to accomplish what you want.
 
Sue, Thanks so much for responding. I would love a better way to accomplish
what I want. What potential problems?

Here is what the firm wants:

They want a client id field under the subject field. They will fill this
field in when sending email messages. They will then move messages into the
appropriate Public folders for the client. The custom view I have created
for these Public Folders is grouped by this field and it works great.

I want them to be able to click on the New button in the Inbox window and
have this form that has the client id field in it appear.

I gratefully welcome any suggestions you have.

By the way - I see your replies to other posts and you are awesome!
 
I would do this not as a custom form but perhaps as a COM add-in that
prompts for the client ID when the item is sent. Or have it prompt when the
item hits Sent Items, so you can enter both the client ID and what folder
the item should be copied to.

If you use a custom form, you won't be able to send attachments to
non-Outlook recipients unless you send to them in plain text (which people
won't remember to do).

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
Sue, thanks for your suggestion. However, that is so over my head. I am
very good a VBA in Word and have found it very much different in Outlook. I
went to the link to your book. Would this book tell me how to do the COM
add-in? I am on a short fuse for this and will have to figure out how to
make my custom mail form the default and then do what you suggested. I like
your idea much better and because of the rtf problem of attachments will need
to do that. Can you tell me how to make my custom form the default? When I
design my form based on message, it gives it a message class of IPM.Note.
When I go into the properties of the Inbox and ask it to use this IPM.Note it
tell me it is the wrong type. I tried designing the form based on a post and
it allows me to choose it in the properties of the INbox, however, clicking
on the New button still gives me the Outlook mail form.

I appreciate all your help. Do you do this type of work professionally and
do you have any code already written?
 
Randy Byrne's book covers COM addins. Mine is at more of a
novice-to-intermediate level.

If you have Outlook 2000 or later, you can make a registry change to
substitute your custom form for the default form. See
http://www.outlookcode.com/d/newdefaultform.htm#changedefault . Note that it
doesn't work completely for message forms in Outlook 2003. And I repeat my
warning about attachments.


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