To distribute Microsoft Outlook forms to other users

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Outlook forms are not limited to use within a single Exchange organization. However, if you want to get full benefit in other environments, you generally need to make sure that the published form definition is available with the identical message class to both creators and consumers of the items using the form.

This page discusses strategies for making sure that both parties can use the form.

Publish

The general command for publishing a form is Tools | Forms | Publish. In a Microsoft Exchange environment, you should publish message forms to the Organizational Forms Library and other forms either to OrgForms or to the specific folder where items using the form will be created. In a non-Exchange environment, there is no Organizational Forms Library, so the form would need to be published either to the Personal Forms library or the appropriate folder library.

For more information on the publishing process, see:

Save as File

You can save the form as a Microsoft Outlook template file (.oft), then e-mail that file to users and have them publish it to their Personal Forms Library.

For an alternative method that uses .fdm files, see OL2000: How to Move a Custom Form to Another Computer.

Bulk Installation

To programmatically install a form, you can use the FormDescription.PublishForm method, which is available from any Outlook item (except a sticky note), even one that you create by running an .oft file. Here is a generic VB procedure for generating a form from an .oft file and publishing it to the Personal Forms library. The display name is also used by Outlook to build the message class name:

Sub PublishForm(strPath, strName) Dim objOL As Outlook.Application Dim objItem As Outlook.ContactItem Dim objFD As Outlook.FormDescription Set objOL = CreateObject("Outlook.Application") Set objItem = objOL.CreateItemFromTemplate(strPath) Set objFD = objItem.FormDescription With objFD .DisplayName = strName .PublishForm olPersonalRegistry End With objItem.Close olDiscard Set objFD = Nothing Set objItem = Nothing Set objOL = Nothing End Sub

To adapt the above code to VBScript, remove the typed variable declarations and replace the Outlook constants with their literal values, which you can look up in the object browser.

See Automating the Installation of Outlook Forms for another code sample demonstrating this technique.

Send as Custom Form

Sending a message using an embedded custom form is not recommended because of these problems:

Code will not run in versions of Outlook with the Email Security Update
You cannot set a custom reply form in this situation.

If the layout of the initial message is all that's important, it should work as long as all of the following are true:

The recipient is running Outlook.
You checked the box in form design mode on the (Properties) page for Send form definition with item
The mail gateways between you and the recipient support binary attachments using the same encoding scheme. (In other words, you both can send/receive with MIME or UUENCODE.)
You specified Send rich text for this recipient or, in Internet Mail Only mode, you did not specify "plain text" for the recipient.

See To send a form via the Internet.

Other Tools

Outlook Form Installer	Installs a custom Outlook form into any number of folders.
Script Director	Tool for installing, managing and editing script agents throughout an organization. For Routing Objects, provides access to details on each item being routed, including the tracking status of each recipient. Also manages custom Outlook forms.

More Information

To launch a custom form


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