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| Create custom forms for Outlook items |
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In Outlook, custom form creation is one area that offers easy configuration without writing any code. You can create forms to add often-needed properties to message, contact, and other forms. For example, maybe you want to add the Importance and Sensitivity drop-down lists to the new message form, below the Subject field, in order to help users quickly access those properties for new messages.
Follow these steps to customize a form in Outlook:
Choose Tools | Forms | Design A Form. In the Design Form dialog box, open the Standard Forms Library, choose the type of form you want to create, and click Open.
Drag items from the Field Chooser dialog box to the form. Click an item to select it, and then use an item's border lines to resize it and make room for other controls.
Add additional fields to the other form pages as needed.
Click the All Fields tab, select a field category from the drop-down list, and predefine any form values as needed.
Click the Properties tab and set additional properties for the form, such as category, icons, etc.
Click the Actions tab and set options for the form's use (e.g., changing the prefix for the subject in a forwarded message).
Choose File | Save As and save the form to disk where users who need it can access it. Then, close the form.
Users can open a custom form by either choosing File | New | Choose Form or Tools | Forms | Choose Form.
Outlook Forms Administrator, a downloadable tool, enables you to use a custom form as the default form for all items of a specific type. Forms Administrator is included with the Office 2000 Resource Kit, and you can download it here.
The tool works as is for Outlook 2000. However, to use Outlook Forms Administrator with Outlook 2002 you must export the changes to a .reg file, then edit the file in Notepad and change each instance of Office\ 9.0 in the key path to Office\ 10.0. |
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