Programming Outlook Forms | Part I: The Basics

Until the release of Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Outlook was clearly an idiosyncratic member of the Office suite. First released in Office 97 and later released in an interim version as Outlook 98, Outlook was the sole member of the Office family to feature VBScript as its programming language. Outlook 2000 finally added support forVBA and for the VBA-integrated development environment. However, in Outlook 2000 and Outlook 2002, VBScript remains as the programming language behind Outlook's custom forms.

Designing and programming Outlook forms is a large topic that has been the sole focus of a number of books, most notablyBuilding Applications with Microsoft Outlook, published by Microsoft Press and available in various editions covering different versions of Outlook. Our focus in this chapter will not be on designing, creating, or modifying Outlook forms, but rather on programming those forms with VBScript.

Part I: The Basics

Introduction

Program Structure

Data Types and Variables

Error Handling and Debugging

VBScript with Active Server Pages

Programming Outlook Forms

Windows Script Host 5.6

VBScript with Internet Explorer

Windows Script Components

Part II: Reference

The Language Reference

Part III: Appendixes

Appendix D. Locale IDs

Appendix A. Language Elements by Category

Appendix B. VBScript Constants

Appendix C. Operators

Appendix E. The Script Encoder