Outlook developer news

Updated solution for a custom form list box bound to a keywords field

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 16:36:00 GMT

On an Outlook custom form, if you bind a multi-select list box to a keywords field and populate the list box's rows in code, the list box will have no selected rows when the user reopens a previously saved item, making it look like the user's data has been lost. The Form Controls Demo form has been updated to demonstrate a workaround for this issue.

The problem apparently is that the field value is applied to the control before the list box rows are populated. The solution is to use code in the form's Item_Open event handler to select the appropriate rows after the list rows have been populated, but -- to add to the complications -- it is not possible to access the value of a custom keywords field directly. A workaround for that issue is to bind a text box to the keywords property and read the value from the text box control; see More Fun with Keywords. To simplify the process of finding the row whose text matches a particular value in the keywords field, the code uses a Scripting.Dictionary object to hold the same values as the data used to populate the rows and handle the lookup.

To see the solution, download Form Controls Demo.zip (9kb, 9 Jul 09), unzip it, open the .oft file, and publish that form. Then use the published form to create a new task.

This form also demonstrates two other ways of handling a multi-select list box and two ways to handle option buttons. For more information on those controls and others, see Controls on Outlook Forms.

New hotfix for Outlook 2007 - June 30, 2009

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:25:00 GMT

The June 30, 2009, hotfix package for Outlook 2007 fixes several developer issues:

A new ReliableFolderMoveEvent registry entry solves a problem with the BeforeFolderMove event ceasing to fire after a while.

When applications create new categories programmatically, those categories should now still be available after a restart of Outlook.

Custom form icons that weren't displaying on Windows Vista with a high DPI display (for example, 120 DPI) should now display correctly.

In Cached Exchange Mode with the reading pane active, messages based on custom forms that have VBScript code behind them should no longer increase CPU usage or crash Outlook.

The hotfix also resolves a problem with accessing fields in CDO 1.21 applications.

Outlook 2007 Programming chapters available on MSDN

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:17:00 GMT

Three chapters from Sue Mosher's Microsoft Outlook 2007 Programming book are now available on MSDN:

Sample code for these chapters is available from the get Sue's code link at the top of the page.

Outlook 2007 performance improvements in SP2

Fri, 29 May 2009 14:11:00 GMT

Office 2007 Service Pack 2 targets Outlook with a long list of performance improvements related to .ost and .pst files, startup, shutdown, and folder switching. For details, see:

Outlook 2010: No support for Exchange client extensions

Thu, 07 May 2009 15:54:00 GMT

Back before Microsoft extended Outlook with support for add-ins, beginning with Outlook 2000, developers added functionality to Outlook by building Exchange client extensions -- or ECEs -- using the Extended MAPI programming interface. Microsoft in fact built its own ECEs to manage such Outlook features as deleted item recovery.

Beginning with Outlook 2010, ECEs will not load in Outlook, according to Randy Byrne of the Outlook team. Randy provides more background on ECEs in his article for the Outlook team blog, where he explains the options that ECE developers face if they want to redesign their applications to work in Outlook 2010 and asks for your feedback, especially your concerns about parity between ECE and add-in capabilities.

Convert a business form to an Outlook custom form

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 18:29:00 GMT

Have you ever wanted to convert a business form to electronic transmission using Outlook? In a detailed step-by-step walkthrough, Jimmy shows you how, with plenty of screen shots for every procedure, including tricky techniques like tab order and validation.

The walkthrough is for a message form, so it assumes that the organization has an Exchange server where the forms can be published, but the basic form design methods are applicable to any type of form.

Another round of sample VSTO add-ins for Outlook

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:45:00 GMT

Here are more sample add-ins using Visual Studio 2008 and Outlook 2007:

Simple Outlook Add-in with VSTO 3.0 - Walkthrough with screen shots by Janne Mattila showing how a delegate can send a reply on behalf of another user automatically
Out Loud for Outlook - applies speech recognition and speech synthesis to the task of communicating with Outlook
Combining Information Rights Management with Watermarking via an Outlook 2007 add-in - Ronan Geraghty sends personalized messages with Outlook and IRM
VSTO - Importing addresses from Database to Outlook - add-in from Naresh Bojja showing how to import from and synchronize with a database
Error saving command bar position: Outlook 2007, VS 2008 add-in - shows how to save the user's preference for a custom command bar's position on an Explorer window
Using Visual Studio 2008 / VSTO / Outlook to Pull Out RFC 822 Header Data - use a form region to display a message's Internet headers

Outlook and VS2008 on video

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:44:00 GMT

Microsoft has a new Office Developer Show series that offers tips on creating applications for Outlook and other Office programs. Some highlights:

Episode 2 - how to create a class in an Outlook project to avoid the object model security prompts
Episode 4 - a tip about saving and restoring the position of custom toolbars in Outlook 2007
Episode 5 - an Outlook add-in that uses the Application.ItemSend event to help users remember to send an attachments

Using the Outlook object model with .NET

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Matt Staehle, who works on Microsoft's Messaging Developer Support Team, has been running a series of articles on working with the Outlook object model in .NET languages. Read all the installments to pick up best practices and avoid common mistakes. Code examples are in C#:

Integrating .NET controls in a folder home page

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:23:00 GMT

A folder home page (or FHP) is a web page displayed in an Explorer window in Outlook. A simple FHP might include an Outlook View Control (OVC) instance to show the folder contents, plus other controls to add functionality, such as filtering the view to show only items related to the current user. Two samples are available for more complex implementations using managed code controls.

In the article Outlook Folder Homepage: Hosting WPF, ActiveX and Windows Forms controls, H�lya Pamuk�u describes how to incorporate Windows Presentation Foundation controls into an FHP, including a control that wraps an OVC. A complete code sample is available.

An earlier MSDN article, Outlook Customization for Integrating with Enterprise Applications, describes a CRM application that wraps an OVC in a managed code control and hosts it in an FHP. The accompanying sample is written for VSTO 2005, not VSTO 2005 SE or VS 2008, so you won't be able to load the project directly. You should, however, be able to start a new Outlook VSTO add-in project and add the code files from the CRM project to see how it works.