Microsoft® Outlook® 2007 Bible

Chapter 26. Working with Outlook Forms

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding Outlook forms

• Creating a custom form

• Working with fields, controls, and pages

• Understanding control and page properties

• Testing and publishing a form

Almost everything you do in Outlook is based on a form. When you create or read an email message, you use a message form. When you read an appointment, you use an appointment form. The same goes for contacts, journal entries, and tasks. Outlook provides you with all these predefined forms, but you do not have to limit yourself to these—you can create your own custom forms and publish them for others to use. This chapter takes you through the basics of creating and using forms in Outlook. The next chapter goes beyond the basics to cover more advanced form topics.

Understanding Outlook Forms

An Outlook form provides a way to collect and distribute information. In addition to all the standard things you can do with forms in Outlook, such as creating email messages, you can use custom forms for tasks such as posting information to public folders, gathering requests from meeting attendees, and the like. The term form application is sometimes used for a collection of one or more Outlook forms designed to serve a particular purpose.

Custom forms in Outlook are based on existing form templates. All Outlook installations include the basic set of templates that correspond to the forms that Outlook itself uses. These are

• Appointment

• Contact

• Journal Entry

• Message

• Task

Forms and Microsoft Exchange ...