Description of designing custom forms for different versions of Outlook

This article gives a general overview about designing Outlook forms for use with different versions of Outlook.

Back to the top

Outlook forms change slightly with each new version of Outlook, both in terms of the standard Outlook forms, and the features that are available to you when you customize the forms. The number of changes vary depending on the type of form that you use. For example, the Post form has undergone very few changes, both in the standard form, and in the customizable features. However, the Contact form has changed much more. With Outlook 98, you can customize the first page of the Contact form. With Outlook 2000, there is an Activities page for the form. Corresponding changes have also been made to the Outlook object model.

Custom Outlook form solutions vary greatly because there are different types of Outlook features and programming technologies that you can use to create a custom form. When you create a custom form to use with different versions of Outlook, it is important to consider the following topics:

•	Know which versions of Outlook will use the form.
•	Design the form by using the oldest version of Outlook.
•	Consider the Outlook feature sets.
•	Test the form on all versions of Outlook.

Back to the top

Know Which Versions of Outlook Will Use the Form

Before you begin to design a form, it is recommended that you research which versions of Outlook are being used within your organization.

If you determine that more than one version of Outlook is being used, you may want to upgrade the older versions of Outlook to the newer version of Outlook. This helps ensure that your form will be compatible, and it reduces the complexity of the environment that the form will be used in. This, in turn, may also help reduce the time that it takes you to develop and test the form.

Back to the top

Design the Form by Using the Oldest Version of Outlook

In general, you can use any type of Outlook custom form with any version of Outlook. However, you cannot use an Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, or Outlook 2002 custom Contact form in Outlook 97.

Almost all custom form features work with all versions of Outlook, such as standard fields, user-defined fields, custom controls, calculated field expressions, Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), and so on. The only problem that may occur is if you use a custom form or object model feature that is available in one version of Outlook but not in another version of Outlook, or if you use a feature that has changed between versions.

To help ensure compatibility between versions of Outlook, it is recommended that you design your custom forms by using the earliest version of Outlook that will use the form. For example, if your organization uses Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, and Outlook 2002, and the form will be used in a public folder on a computer that uses Microsoft Exchange Server, use Outlook 98 to design the custom form.

Later versions of Outlook are specifically designed to be compatible with earlier versions of Outlook. However, earlier versions of Outlook may not be able to interact with all of the new features that have been added to a later version of Outlook.

If you use a custom form that was created with an earlier version of Outlook, such as Outlook 98, it will work well on a later version of Outlook, such as Outlook 2000, but it may not work as well on an earlier version of Outlook, such as Outlook 97.

Back to the top

Consider the Outlook Feature Sets

When you design a custom form for more than one version of Outlook, consider how features may have changed between versions. If your custom form is designed with these new features, you may experience compatibility problems between Outlook versions.

For example, Outlook 2000 introduces a new contact linking feature and a corresponding Links collection in the Outlook object model. If you design a custom form in Outlook 2000, and then use VBScript to access the Links collection, the form does not function in Outlook 98 because the object model in the earlier version of Outlook does not support the Links collection.

Back to the top

Test the Form on All Versions of Outlook

If the custom form that you create will be used with different versions of Outlook, it is recommended that you test the form with each version of Outlook that will use the form.

Back to the top

For additional information about available resources and answersto commonly asked questions about Microsoft Outlook solutions, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Back to the top