The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group
Microsoft Outlook Forms
 A Guide to Designing and Building Custom Forms
Russell Richardson

Most of us who use Microsoft Outlook are aware of its primary capabilities. We can send and receive e-mail. We can keep a calendar, use its journal facilities, schedule tasks and create and maintain a raft of folders. Those who are on an exchange network can also share public folders and use the exchange facilities of inbox assistant and out of office assistant to automate some processes. When combined with our daily browse through the internet, our e-mail message handling, and, our necessary job functions there really isn't much time left to discover what else it can do.

One of the more interesting capabilities of Microsoft Outlook is the facility to modify the existing forms templates (message, note, journal, task, contact, post and appointment) in order to design new custom forms for our own use.
 
You might ask, why would you want to create your own form? Well, there could be any number of reasons why you might want to design your own form.
 
The simple addition of a special graphic to customise your view of your e-mail messages may satisfy a need to personalise your messages. This graphic may or may not be sent to the recipient depending on how you design and publish the form, but it can make your view look so much better.

More sophisticated forms can be created to provide an application platform within Outlook. The use of Outlook forms within an exchange environment can help control the flow of work or keep track of various resources within an office.
 
Imagine a personal assistant who needs to keep track of the whereabouts of several key staff. If a custom form was designed that the staff could use to inform the personal assistant of their movements into and out of the office, it would make it much easier to keep track of their locations. This form could have the address of the personal assistant coded into the address field so that it becomes much simpler and quicker to fill-in and send. Many verbal notifications are missed due to interruptions and confusion. Leaving notes is time consuming and again prone to confusion. However, clicking a few buttons on an outlook form just before leaving the desk or just after returning will be more secure and reliable and most importantly, easier. It will also give an accurate reflection of the time taken for specific out of office functions.

This capability of generating custom forms has been available within Outlook for some time now and its functionality increased greatly when Microsoft incorporated a VBA Macro capability into the Office 2000 release. Using the forms capabilities with the enhanced HTML functionality of Outlook can provide an application solution that works well in conjunction with the immediate availability of the other Outlook functions such as the calendar and task and contact items.

Developers should keep in mind that both the senders and recipients must be using Microsoft Outlook. Even if the sender and recipient have Outlook, their mail services connectors and gateways must support attachments in rich text format.

Example Of a Useful Form

If you want to create a new form within Microsoft Outlook, you must start with an already existing form template. As a result, you need to think through just what you want this new form to be able to do before you choose the appropriate template. For the purposes of this article we will use the default message template. We want to build a simple message form that can be sent to a specified address and most importantly, be sent with a minimum of effort. It will allow the sender to notify the recipient when they leave their desk and when they return.

To begin customising a new message form, you must open the default message form. This is the form used to send e-mails. The easiest way to do this is to select to open a new message. When the form has appeared, fill in the address field with the address of the recipient and make a simple subject message.

We are now ready to redesign this form. In Outlook 97 the menu option is Tools|Design Outlook Form. In later versions of outlook there are slightly different menu commands to put the form into design mode for example in Outlook 2000 the menu options are Tools|Forms|Design this form.

Our users will not need to see the address, cc, subject or message fields so we will select these fields and their associated labels or control buttons and change their visible properties to false. To do this, you can select the field by right clicking it. You can then view its properties by clicking properties from the list that appears. When the properties form has focus, click the visible checkbox so that the check mark disappears, then click OK.

These fields should not be deleted from the form, but in order to make designing our own form easier we need to make them as unobtrusive as possible by reducing their size and moving them out of the way. Manipulating controls is a separate subject but suffice it to say you can move them about and reduce their size quite simply by using the mouse.

A separate read page is useful if you want the recipient to have a different view of the information, or, you want the recipient to have additional functionality such as control buttons that the sender doesn't need. Since this form will not require a response, we will not need a separate read layout. 
So we turn this option off by clicking Forms|Separate Read Layout toggle. This will discard any changes to the read page and turn off the Edit Compose Page and Edit Read Page speed bar items. Figure 1 is a view of our form to this stage. Note the various standard messages fields placed out of the way on the right hand side of the form.


Figure 1. First stages of development.

Our form will not need the options tab, so, click on the options tab. This brings the options tab form to the foreground. Click Form|Display This Page toggle to turn off its display capabilities.

The options tab's caption will be embraced in parenthesis (round brackets) to indicate it will not be available
Switch back to the message tab to begin putting our own controls on the form. We want to have a very simple display that gives information to indicate the movements of the sender.

To add controls, you need to get those controls from the toolbox. Make the toolbox visible by clicking the menu item for control toolbox or clicking the speedbar item. The location for the toolbox menu item may vary, depending upon your version of Outlook.

Place a label on the form by clicking the label button on the toolbox then positioning the label where it is to reside on the form and clicking the form. To change the caption, right click on the label and select the properties option from the list that appears. Change the caption and make the font larger to reflect that this is a heading then press OK. Figure 2 is a view of the form with label placed in position and the properties form displayed.

Place an edit control to the right of the label. This will be used to hold the current date and time. Right click the control, select the properties option from the list, click the value tab and then click the new button to define a new field which will hold this date/time information. 


Figure 2. Label in position and properties displayed.

Give the new field a name (any name of your own choosing) then select type Date/Time and accept the default format. Press OK

When the properties form regains focus, type NOW in the "initial value field" making sure that the "set initial value" check box is ticked. Figure 3 is a view of the form with the edit field placed in position and the properties form visible and filled in.

Now place a combo box on the form under the label. This combo box will contain a list of activities that can normally be expected to cause the worker to leave or return to their desk.


Figure 3. Edit field in position and modifying properties.
Activities such as "Meetings", "Sales Call", "Interview", "Lunch" are standard activities that happen quite regularly.
 
Right click on the combo box and create a new field to hold the value stored when the user selects (or enters) an item in the combo box. After creating the new field, enter default values in the property field "possible values". Separate each list item with a semi colon. In this example, we set the initial value to "Returned to Desk" (Figure 4)

We could enhance the form's appearance with some graphics but our intent was to keep this form simple and easy to use while performing the function required. The controls we have placed will allow the sender to pick from several options in the combo box or enter a more specific activity. 


Figure 4. Setting the initial value.

The system enters the date/time and the address information has been embedded in the appropriate fields. The sender need only call up the form, click the appropriate combo box entry and press Send. 

The recipient need only browse their Inbox to find the latest received message from the sender. Opening the message reveals where the sender is located at any particular time.

Figure 5 is our finished form. With extra effort the form could be visually enhanced, but for our purposes we are finished.

Saving/Publishing

Now we have to save this form so that it can be reused. Theoretically we should have been saving the form at each step of our development. But, for new users, the saving and publishing of forms is a bit confusing and I have left this until now, focussing firstly on the basic mechanics of creating a form.


Figure 5. The finished Form.

Considerations for Saving and Publishing Forms.
 
Save to Outlook Folder

At any time during the form design, pressing file/save will save that form in an Outlook folder. Outlook 97 uses the Inbox. Subsequent versions save the form in the user configured default "save to" location. Most post Outlook 97 setups I have seen use the Drafts folder. Keep in mind that each save creates a new entry in the folder so you could wind up with a lot of copies of the form by the time you have finished. To open a saved form just double click it. Once it is opened you can continue designing the form by switching to the design mode.

Save to Outlook Form Template

You can also save the form as an Outlook Form Template (.oft) file by clicking File|Save As and specifying a path and filename. It is strongly suggested that any .oft files saved should be saved in the folder with the already existing Outlook templates. In Outlook 97 this is c:\program files\microsoft office\templates\outlook but it may differ on latter versions. To open a form saved as a .oft you must use the menu commands available in your particular outlook version. Menu Files|New|Choose Template. In Outlook 97, it appears that this function only accesses templates stored in the default outlook template location. To browse for a stored custom form, use the menu option Tools|Find Items. From there select Look For :Files and click browse.

Publishing a Form

When you publish a form, you are saving it in a forms library. Publishing the form makes it easier to access that form on a regular basis in Outlook. There are three types of forms libraries. The personal forms library, the folder forms library and the organisational forms library.
 
The personal form's library is unique to the user and is stored in the user's mailbox. Only that user can use forms stored in their personal form's library.

The organisational forms library is stored on the exchange server. Forms published in the organisational folder are accessible by all users within the organisation.

The folder forms library can be unique to the user (Private Folder) or it can be available to all (Public Folder). Forms published in a folder are accessible to the user when that folder is open.
 
Using a Published Form

To use a form published in the personal forms library or the organisational forms library use the menu item File|New|Choose Form and then select the form from the appropriate library.

To use a form published in a folder, open the folder by clicking on its icon. When you click the menu item Compose in Outlook 97, the list of forms published in the folder that is open will be displayed so that new forms can be opened with a single click. Alternatively, you can select File|New|Choose Form and select the required form in a similar fashion to selecting from personal forms libraries. In Outlook 2000 it is the action menu item that lists forms published in an open folder.

Back to our simple example. We want our user to be able to send this form with a minimum of effort. We also want to distribute the developed form as efficiently as possible. In this case, we would more than likely publish this form in the organisational forms folder. With the advent of macro capabilities in Outlook 2000, it is possible to generate a macro which can be controlled by a speedbar item. This will automatically bring up the form with a single mouse click, thus making the form even easier to use.

It is obvious that you can't cover the entire scope of the subject in a small article, but I hope this brief introduction will help readers understand the concept of custom Outlook forms, their functionality and design.
 
A word of caution. You can publish the same form to all three locations. This can cause difficulty while you are developing the forms because Outlook has a default routine for choosing published forms of the same name. 
If you change and republish forms, you must republish them in all libraries where they are currently published in order to avoid confusion.

Reprinted from the November 2001 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia