Outlook forms (Outlook 2000/2003)

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I am wondering how forms get attached a contact. We switched from Outlook 2000 to Office 2003. Some contacts open with the custom form that we had devised for them in Outlook 2000 and some don’t. We have 4 different types of forms, I think that they are all kept in the same place, but one form (the most often used in our 3,000 + contact database) will not open when I click on a contact. Instead the default Outlook 2003 form opens. I cannot find a switch where I can specify the name of the form for the contact. If I want to enter a new contact the proper custom form opens, it is just if I click on an old contact that this causes problems.

Any help much appreciated –

Codysage

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I think I’m struggling with the same issue. I’ve created a custom form for my contacts but it only seems to apply on NEW contacts and I’m unable to get the existing contacts to open in the new form. Further to that I thought I would export the contacts and then import them in to the new form however on import the import map only opens up the fields from the default form and in fact only imports into the default form.

What I did do is right click on the Contacts Folder and go to Properties, General and selected my new form. This assigns the new form for new contacts, but apparently not if you import or copy to the folder.

I think you are at the same place as me. I noticed your note is a couple months old so please let me know if you have discovered anything since.

Thanks,

Frank

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You want this MSKB article – OL2002: How to Update Existing Items to Use a New Custom Form. It’s specifically for XP (because that’s the one I wanted) but I’m sure there’ll be a 2003 version around there somewhere!

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Hi:

I’d like to expand on this idea little. I’d like to add some additional fields to the default form, and not have to tell Outlook 2003 which form to use when creating a new contact or opening existing ones, in ALL contact type folders, and I don’t want to loose any of the existing functionality vis-a-vis the setting of flags and such. So lets start with the first order of business. Modifying the default contact form. Is that even possible? When I attempt to invoke the form designer, the form that is displayed is quite different than the default contact form I see with Outlook 2003. What gives?

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