How do I transfer existing contacts to a new custom form?

G

Guest

I have an existing data base of contacts in Outlook 2003. I created a new
form that I would like to apply to all my existing contacts and change the
default to use the new form with any new contacts that are created. Can
anyone provide suggestions as to how to do this?
 
K

Karl Timmermans

You can use our Message Class Modifier product (free download) that will
do what you're looking for

ContactGenie - Message Class Modifier
http://www.contactgenie.com/cgtmcm.htm

Words of advice/caution to those who write their own code to change the
message class themselves or use any of the currently available utilities
that simply let you change the message class to "anything" without
validating that it is in the proper format for a contact record

If you do not follow the correct construct of the message class which is
"IPM.Contact.AnyName" and instead change it to something like <IPM.AnyName>
or just <AnyName> without <IPM.Contact> as the complete prefix - you will
find that after you're done - your contacts will appear as email messages
since the message class controls the way Outlook interprets the item. We
found out about this problem the hard way since CG-MCM will currently incur
an error when non-contact records are found in a folder because of this very
issue. The next update to CG-MCM will contain "repair" capabilities for
exisitng "non-contact" entries in a contact folder to handle this problem.
In the couple of scenarios we were informed of this - in each case the
individual used another "simple tool" to change the message class prior to
using CG-MCM. We're not sure if any of these other utilities allow changing
the messageclass back to a valid name after this occurs but suspect these
don't for the same reason we currently don't - which is because a
"ContactItem" is expected to be returned and not a "MailItem".

CG-MCM enforces that the correct <contact> message class format is used when
changing the contents of the MessageClass field and will only allow it to be
changed to a form name (MessageClass) that has been already published to one
of the form libraries (Personal, Folder, or Exch Org)

Karl

__________________________________________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - Importer 1.3 / DataPorter 2.0
"Power contact importers for MS Outlook '2000/2003"
http://www.contactgenie.com
 

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