Managing Published Forms


After you've published a form, you might want to always use it when you create an item in your folders, convert all existing items to use the new form, or delete old forms that you no longer use.

As I mentioned previously, when the form is published to a folder, it's listed in the Actions folder when you open the folder. This works well for a form that you don't want to use for every item, but it won't work when you automatically create items without opening the folder, such as dropping messages in a folder to create contact, task, or calendar entries.

When you want the new form set as your default, select a folder, right-click on it, and choose Properties (see Figure 20.11). Select the new form from the When P osting to This Folder, Use drop-down list. To test it, drag a message to the folder. It should use your new form.

Figure 20.11. Use the Properties dialog to manage your custom forms. Set the default form for the folder from the General tab and manage your forms from the Forms tab.

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If your form wasn't published in this folder, you'll have to copy it to the folder.

  1. Switch to the Forms tab and select M anage (see Figure 20.12).

    Figure 20.12. Use the Forms Manager to copy forms between folders and delete forms you no longer want.

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  2. Choose S e t and browse to the folder you need to copy a form to or from.

  3. Select the form you want to copy and choose C opy.

  4. Delete forms you no longer use by selecting the form and choosing De l ete.

Use the P roperties button to look at and edit the properties of the selected form. If you didn't enter categories, contact, or description information before you published the form, you can add the information using the Form Manager. The description displays on the Forms Manager dialog and in the description field on the Forms tab. Choose Clear C a che to delete the forms cache file and create a fresh one.

Changing existing items to use the new form requires VBA code or a utility to change the old MessageClass to the new MessageClass. I use Change Forms, a utility included in the Office 2000 Resource Kit. It was written for Outlook 2000 and works well with Outlook 2003, although you'll have to unzip ChangeForms.exe and run Changeforms.msi to install it.

After installed, select an item you want to change to use the new MessageClass, and run Change Forms from the Tools, Forms, Change Forms menu. Type the name of the new MessageClass in the field and run the utility. Only the items using the old MessageClass are changed to the new MessageClass.

Another utility is Omsgclas, which is available from Microsoft's Knowledge Base Article 201089. It changes all items in the folder to the new message class. As a result, when you run Omsgclas on a Contacts folder, it destroys all distribution lists in the folder. You can use Omsgclas to identify the different message classes you have in a folder, and then use Change Forms to change specific message classes.

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For more information and utilities you can use to change the MessageClass, see http://www.slipstick.com/dev/newdefaultform.htm.




Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 in 24 Hours
ISBN: 0672325543
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 228

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