Change Folder Default
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Once you've
published the form, right-click on the Contact folder or
its Outlook Bar icon. Choose Properties.
Then, select your form from the When posting to
this folder list. If you change the default form in the Contacts,
Calendar, Journal or Tasks folder, the new form will be
used whenever you click the New button for that type of
item, even if you're not in the folder.
In Message folders, if you want a custom post form to appear when
you double-click inside the folder or click the New button while
you're in that folder, you must restrict the forms used in the
folder. Go to the Forms page on the folder's Properties,
and choose Only forms listed above.
Also see:
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Substitute Default Form
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In
Outlook 97 and Outlook 98, you cannot replace the default
form with a custom form. However, Outlook 2000 introduced a
method to force Outlook to open items with a form other than the
default. The method involves a slightly complex change to the
Windows registry, and Microsoft provides a free tool that lets you
specify which form to substitute, say, for the default message form.
As noted below, this technique does not work completely in Outlook
2003. To substitute your custom
forms for Outlook's default forms, download Outlook
2000 Forms Administrator (FormsAdmin.exe). This tool installs in the
folder you specify during setup, along with a FormsAdminReadme.rtf file that explains how to use it. Use
this tool with caution. Make sure that your substitute form
includes all the functionality you need and that you enter the
correct form name. WARNING: The tool does not check to make sure that the
form name you enter is a valid, published form of the correct
type.
Also, note that the registry entries have two separate
effects on new and existing items:
- Existing items will open in the form whose message class you
specified in the tool, but the MessageClass property on the
items will remain that of the default form.
- The MessageClass of new items created with the New button
will be that of the custom form that was substituted. If you
later remove the substitution registry entry, the MessageClass
does not change. If you want the items to revert to the built-in
default form, you will need to use one of the Convert Existing Items
methods. An alternative approach is to include code in the
custom form's Write event handler to set the MessageClass to the
normal default form for that type of item (e.g. IPM.Contact for
a contact item).
In Outlook 2002 and 2003, the Forms Administrator tool puts the registry change in the wrong
key, the key for Outlook 2000. (This is harmless.) What you need
to do is export the key from the Forms Administrator tool, then
edit the .reg file in Notepad. For Outlook 2002, change the key from HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\9.0\Outlook\Custom Forms to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\10.0\Outlook\Custom
Forms. For Outlook 2003, change 9.0 to 11.0. Once you make that change, run the .reg file
to update the registry with the new forms substitution values. Also see
OL2002 How to Change the Default Outlook Forms.
In
Outlook 2003, forms substitution may not work with the New
Journal for Contact and other contact folder Actions menu
commands unless the form is published in the Personal Forms or
Organizational Forms library. More significantly, substituting
the form for reading does not seem to work at all on message
forms at all. We know of no workaround.
WARNING:
Using substitution to compose mail with a custom form generally
is a bad idea. In Outlook 2002 and 2003 (and also in some cases
in Outlook 2000), non-Outlook recipients will not be able to
read an attachments and, at best, will get an annoying
Winmail.dat attachment.
In
Outlook 2002, substituted forms may not appear in the preview
pane correctly. If the form does not have VBScript code behind
it, you can apply SP3 and use a new registry entry to force a
substituted form to preview as the basic form of that type. See:
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