OL 2003 Extremely Annoying Contacts Form Behavior

[Dave Allen]

Problem: Contacts folders items revert to using OL2003 form on a
stand- alone non-networked installion.

I would not be surprised to discover I am in some way at fault, but I
have been frustrated with OL 2003 Contacts forms since I installed the
program.

I wish to use the OL 2000 form rather than the OL2003 form, which in
additon to the image box which I never use, rearrranges the fields
wastes considerable space at the bottom of the form, and constricts
the memo field in which I store the bulk of my information in hundreds
of contacts folders and subfolders.

It does not seem that Outlook provides an easy option to revert to the
previous form. Shortly after I installed OL2003, I investigated this
newsgroup and other sources and came up with a solution: I published
the desired OL2000 form (which one can easily get by "designing" the
OL2003 form and immediately saving it unde another name. (It seems the
OL2003 Contact form will tolerate no tinkering).

I saved the OL2000 form in my personal forms library, which seems to
be the only place I could publish the form. I them laboriously went to
each subfolder in my Contacts folder and in the properties dialog
instructed Outlook to use that form, which I labeled
IPM.Contact.Office2000. Then, in order to restore all of my existing
items to use this form, I hsad to select each subfolder in Outllook
and then jump to the MS Word 97 Message Class Documtment
(omsgcals.doc) macro for each and every bloody folder. It was a
tedious process requiring many hours, but I finally had all of my
contacts restored to the form in which I had created them.

Twice subsequently, however, for no apparant reason, Outlook has
somehow lost these settings, and most, but not all of my hundreds of
outlook folders and their individual contact items can not open using
the desired form. Instead I get this error message:
"The custom form could not be opened. Outlook will use an Outlook form
instead. The form required to view the message [SIC] can not be
displayed. Contact your administrator." Either closing the form or
clicking OK opens the contact item in the OL2003 form, which I
absolutely do not like.

[I am not sure if I quibble or I have hit an esoteric clue when I note
the error message refers to a "message" rather than a contact item]

Two Questions:

What is causing this random (as far as I know) behavior? (The only
thing I do on occasion is run the automatic Outlook folders backup
utility.)

What can I do to restore things without having to go though the
arduous task of altering properties and running the word macro on each
and every Contacts folder?

My preferred form is still in my Personal Forms Folder (wherever that
is) and a few of my contacts subfolders will use it as they should,
but the majority have been buggered. Finally, how can I prevent this
abberent behavior in the future.

I suspect it may have something to do with how and where and under
what name I published the OL2000 form. If possible, I would like to
replace the OL2003 form in the standard forms library with the correct
one.

I am hoping there is an easy fix, but my feeble brain and limited
patience have been exhausted on this one, and I am hoping some kind
soul will take pity and walk me through a permanent fix.

Many thanks,

Dave Allen

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

You could have saved yourself some steps by making an adjustment in the
Windows registry to substitute your published custom contact form for the
default. See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/newdefaultform.htm#changedefault .

 

[Dave Allen]

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 08:04:23 -0500, "Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]"

Well, I am sure that I am missing something here.

I visited your webpage back in December when I initially encountered
this problem. Neither then nor now do I see any reference to
adjustment of the registry to subsitute the custom form for the
default, other than the Microsoft Forms Administrator, about which
more later. I do not see any reference to the specific registry key
whcih I can set or check.

I did follow the steps regarding new forms in each folder but as I
indicated those settings have seemingly at random been ignored for
some but not all folders. Second, I reset the existing items in each
folder using the "Word 2000 Document to Change Outlook Folder Message
Class" link, which is the Word 97 document to which I referred in my
initial post.

I seem to have resolved the issue, not properly I suspect, by again
publishing the form using the precise form title I had previously
applied, then shutting down outlook and restarting after the prompt to
back-up the outlook folders. Since some forms had not lost the
abitlity to access the original form, I am at a loss to understand
what is happening or why.

As your webpage indicates in the "New" section at the bottom, Outlook
2003 seems to be a different creature when it come to certain types of
forms.

I have downloaded the Forms Adminstrator tool and the Change Existing
Items tool, but note that the later requires Outlook to be set as the
existing mail client.

I appreciate the reply and apologize for the apparent disconnect due
undoubtedly to my technical deficiencies in dealing with Outlook.
Still, it seems to me that forms settings in OL200e should not be
this complicated. All told, a large amount of time has been expended
dealing with this issue. A layman's off-hand observation is that the
OL2003 default form was not well thought-out (as evidenced by the its
"fragile" design, and the adminstration of Outlook Forms in general
needs to be made less complicated.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Dave Allen

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Forms substitution is an advanced feature. The potential for creating havoc
by substituting malformed forms is quite great, so IMO it's a good thing
that it's not easy to do. There are actually several registry keys involved,
sometimes requiring null values that you can't enter from the keyboard, so
you need the Forms Administrator tool to do the job.

There are lots of tools for changing the Message Class existing items, or
you can write your own. If you look at the macro code for the Word template,
for example, you'll see that it takes just a few lines of code.

I'll try to update the information under Substitute Default From on that
page to make the forms substitution process clearer.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers




On Mon, 15 Mar 2004 08:04:23 -0500, "Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]"

Well, I am sure that I am missing something here.

I visited your webpage back in December when I initially encountered
this problem. Neither then nor now do I see any reference to
adjustment of the registry to subsitute the custom form for the
default, other than the Microsoft Forms Administrator, about which
more later. I do not see any reference to the specific registry key
whcih I can set or check.

I did follow the steps regarding new forms in each folder but as I
indicated those settings have seemingly at random been ignored for
some but not all folders. Second, I reset the existing items in each
folder using the "Word 2000 Document to Change Outlook Folder Message
Class" link, which is the Word 97 document to which I referred in my
initial post.

I seem to have resolved the issue, not properly I suspect, by again
publishing the form using the precise form title I had previously
applied, then shutting down outlook and restarting after the prompt to
back-up the outlook folders. Since some forms had not lost the
abitlity to access the original form, I am at a loss to understand
what is happening or why.

As your webpage indicates in the "New" section at the bottom, Outlook
2003 seems to be a different creature when it come to certain types of
forms.

I have downloaded the Forms Adminstrator tool and the Change Existing
Items tool, but note that the later requires Outlook to be set as the
existing mail client.

I appreciate the reply and apologize for the apparent disconnect due
undoubtedly to my technical deficiencies in dealing with Outlook.
Still, it seems to me that forms settings in OL200e should not be
this complicated. All told, a large amount of time has been expended
dealing with this issue. A layman's off-hand observation is that the
OL2003 default form was not well thought-out (as evidenced by the its
"fragile" design, and the adminstration of Outlook Forms in general
needs to be made less complicated.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Dave Allen