Outlook 2007 custom form action launches wrong form template

Question

I'm building my first Outlook custom form. What I'm trying to achieve is a custom enquiry form for our users to record enquiries from the public and pass them to subject matter experts for response. The SME may need to forward the enquiry internally to another SME using the same custom form or respond to the external enquirer directly using the standard email message template.

I am using Outlook 2007 in a Novell networked Windows XP environment.

Tutorials of various sorts have got me to a functional form, but now I've hit what looks like a bug.

The form is based on the Message template, saved to a shared drive and published to my Personal Forms Library. I'm using Sue Mosher's makeitem macro to launch the form from the toolbar. The form consists of one page with Compose and Read views. All of this works fine. I can send the form to myself and to other users with the form installed, with the compose and read views appearing as expected.

I have modified the standard Reply, Reply to All and Forward Actions so that they send the custom form too. This also works fine.

I have also added a custom action 'Reply to Enquirer' set to send the standard Message form, addressed like a Forward. The problem is that when I use this Action, it launches the custom form, instead of the standard Message form.  Earlier in development I'm sure this worked correctly, but after a few more edits it now doesn't.

I haven't replaced or overwritten the standard Message template - I can still send regular email using it. 

Am I doing something wrong, or is this an Outlook bug?  Is the makeitem macro overriding the standard form launch, perhaps?

Answer 1

Hi rmarshnz,

Thanks for posting in the MSDN Forum.

I'll invoke some experts into this issue to see whether them can help you. It might have some time delay. Appreciate for your patience.

Have a good day,

Tom

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Tom Xu [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 2

Thanks Tom.

A few more data points that might help:

At some point in early development the two types of action (default form and custom form) were both working.  Two significant things that may have been the turning point are:

1. The addition of the Read view.
2. At some stage I launched the editor from a copy of the form which included a signature.  I then had to recreate the form on a fresh Message template to get a clear body field.  I did this by copying and pasting all the other fields across to the fresh template and then rebuilding the actions.

Since discovering the apparent bug I have tried switching the Action properties back and forth and deleting the custom Action and rebuilding it with the same and different names and initial options.  I've tried saving the form with a different name and filename (and adjusting the Actions accordingly).  I've tried copying the whole form onto another fresh template and rebuilding the actions from scratch.  I even hunted through the .oft file to make sure there weren't any references to the custom form where they shouldn't be.

The only thing left that I can think of is to rebuild the whole form from scratch - and I'm not at all confident that'll work either.

I'm happy to provide a copy of the .oft file and more detail about the environment if that'll help.

Answer 3

Hi rmarshnz,

Would you please share your .oft file on SkyDriver and show the link in this thread? I think that will make it easier for community members to get your .oft file and do further research.

Have a good day,

Tom

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Tom Xu [MSFT]
MSDN Community Support | Feedback to us

Answer 4

Hi Tom,

Thanks again for looking into this. Skydrive link below:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=92de3a438e1362ac&resid=92DE3A438E1362AC!107&parid=92DE3A438E1362AC!105

Rob.

Answer 5

Hi rmarshnz

Thanks for the .oft file.

Can you please record the reproducible steps after which the issue is seen, so that I can have better understanding of the issue.

You can use PSR.exe tool to record the steps. PSR.exe (Problem Steps Recorder), which can be used for recording steps of reproducible issues. It’s available by default in Win7 and Win2k8.

All you have to do is, Click Start –> Run –> type PSR and click <ENTER> before hitting the “start record” button in the tool.

It records every single “click” with screenshots of the UI and also records all readable text on the screen… with a nice little summary in the final report at the end. When you click “stop recording” it creates a .MHT file that you can share with us on SkyDriver.

Best Regards,

Syed Fayaz [MSFT]

Answer 6

Hi Syed,

Thanks for taking an interest.

I'm on a restricted network and don't have access to Start|Run.  I'm also using Windows XP, so it's not clear from your post whether the PSR would be available anyway.

The steps I am using are:

* Launch custom form (method independent - at the moment I have to enable macros the first time I launch it each session because I haven't had it signed yet - could this be part of the problem?)

* Complete custom form (content independent)

* Send form to myself

* Open form as recipient (double-click from inbox email list - note that I'm not receiving this to a specially equipped mailbox)

* Click reply/reply to all/forward all produce custom form as designed

* Click Custom Actions in the ribbon

* Click Respond to Caller - the custom form is launched.

I've uploaded a sequence of screenshots as a Powerpoint presentation on SkyDrive.

Answer 7

Hi rmarshnz,

Request: The standard message form should open when users try to respond to the custom form email.

Based on above request, I reseached and found that by default the action item for reply/reply all/forward items, the custom form was associated. We need to change the assosciation from custom form to standard message form.

I have created a document with screenshots depicting on how this can be achived. Please access the document from below SkyDrive link.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=8c815fb4cda2a33a&resid=8C815FB4CDA2A33A!125&parid=root

In case if you need any further assistance on this issue, then I would suggest you open a support ticket with Microsoft as this might require indepth troubleshooting.

Best Regards,

Syed Fayaz [MSFT]