Outlook 2007 - Organizational Forms Library Issues

[Aaron, CISSP]

A handful of my power users recently upgraded from Office 2003 to Office
2007. One complaint they have is that they can no longer mail forms within
the Organizational Forms Library to predefined recipients from within
Outlook.

I experience the same behavior that they documented: After opening Outlook
2007, I go to Tools -> Forms -> Choose Form -> Select a Form and Choose Open.
The form offers the option of opening in Word as "Untitled.doc" or saving to
disk. My users say that the form should open within an Outlook email, with a
predefined recipient specified, so that users only have to fill the form out
and click the send button. I looked through Word 2007 to see if there's a
send option, but I'm not seeing one.

Does anybody know how to enable this behavior or does anybody know if it's
deprecated in 2007?

Also, I don't know if this is related but, if I try the "Design a form"
option and select one of the forms in the Organizational Library, I recieve a
"the form you selected cannot be displayed" message. I get the feeling this
is related to my first issue...

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Can you get the form into design mode in Outlook 2003? If so, look on the (Properties) page and see if it is pointing to a Word .dot template or asking for the form always to use WordMail. I would try turning off those options and then republishing.

 

[Aaron, CISSP]

Sue,

Many thanks for the reply.

I chose the "Design form" option and viewed the properties tab. I don't see
a reference to a .dot template or WordMail on the properties page. Do I need
to go into one of the menus to see this?

Also, I'm not sure if it matters but the "Send form definition with item"
checkbox is checked.

Aaron

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Above the Contact box, there should be a Template button and an "Always use Microsoft Word as the e-mail editor" check box.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Aaron, CISSP]

Sue, thanks again for the reply.

I went into design view and "Always use Microsoft Word as the email editor"
is unchecked.

Aaron

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Something I missed in your earlier post. The "Send form definition with item" box should *not* be checked. If you check it, the custom design features of the form generally will not work.

You might also try running Help | Office Diagnostics. Is the o/s Vista or WIndows XP?

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Aaron, CISSP]

I unchecked the "Send form definition with item" box and then attempted to
open the form in Outlook 2007. The form still opens with a prompt asking me
to either open it as "untitled.doc" or save it to disk.

The machine running Outlook 2007 is running Windows XP. I'm editing the
form on a different machine running Windows XP and Outlook 2003.

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

After you unchecked that box, did you increment the version number and republish the form? Did you run Office Diagnostics? Have you tried clearing the forms cache? Can users work with other forms or are all of them a problem?

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54

 

[Aaron, CISSP]

Thanks for the reply and apologies for the delay on my response.

I tested unchecking the "Send form definition with item" checkbox and then
republishing. The issue still existed. I ran Office Diagnostics with the
"Download a file periodically that helps determine system problems." option
enabled. The diagnostics came back clean. I cleared the forms cache after
performing the above two operations and the issue still existed. The issue
does exist with other forms in the Organizational Forms Library and isn't
isolated to one form.

One think I did find interesting was that the message class fields for the
forms begin with "IPM.Document.Word.Document.8.". I'm assuming this means
that the forms were composed in version 8 of Office (Office 97). Asking them
to reconstruct their forms every 10 years isn't asking too much, in my
opinion.

I appreciate all your persistence and help in troubleshooting!

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

Ah, the message class is the key. Outlook 2007 no longer supports those "Office document" forms. Support for them started to disappear in Outlook 2003, which provided no way to create new forms of that type.

The "Send to Mail Recipient" command is still available, though, if you can get the document to open in Word. You have to add it to the QAT. For instructions, see http://turtleflock-ol2007.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C1013F1F9A99E3D8!535.entry
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming:
Jumpstart for Power Users and Administrators
http://www.outlookcode.com/article.aspx?id=54