Help with MS Outlook

August 7, 2006 2:05 PM

MS OutlookFilter: How do I "lock in" the formatting of an Outlook Contacts public folder throughout our company intranet?

I am administering the setup of an Outlook Contacts list (a set of vendors or company does business with) on our company's Public Folders. I have done a lot of tweaking of the look/layout of the Contacts list to best display the information.

When other users in the company access the Contacts folder, it defaults back to generic "address card" view and lots of steps are needed to get it to the "ideal" way I have the master set up (view "by company," with specific columns and headers, etc.).

Is it possible to lock in MY formatting so that when anyone else in the company accesses the folder, they automatically see it the way I set it up rather than each person having to go through all the steps I took to get it formatted?

There are a lot of people involved and most are NOT computer-savvy enough to accomplish this. I would have to go desk-to-desk and then over the phone to those in our branch office and do it for them. Yuck.

posted by I_Love_Bananas to technology (5 comments total)

Oh damn. Been a while since I messed with Outlook (stopped using it after it couldn't handle more than six different email accounts), but I think you've developed a specialized form, which you need to "publish". Otherwise, everyone who doesn't have the specialized form does, as you note, revert to the default form for contacts.
posted by orthogonality at 2:09 PM on August 7, 2006

Go here for a tutorial - then go here for more help.

The short version is:
- Create a local PST (personal folders file) on your local computer. Customize the contact form there. Then publish the customized form to the Organizational Forms Library (which is server-wide). Then, open the shared contacts public folder from the System Manager on the server, and set the public folder to use the form.

It's fairly simple, but it usually requires some diddling around with permissions (especially if you're using Small Business Server) to be able to publish to the OFL and it also requires some knowledge of the Exchange public folder store, hence the advice to read up first.
posted by disclaimer at 3:01 PM on August 7, 2006

Also please note that Outlook 2003's personal contact form is a custom, protected form - so the cool layout you see there? Yeah. Not customizable - it defaults to the standard old Outlook 2002 contact form when you try to edit it. Just might save you some frustration there.
posted by disclaimer at 3:04 PM on August 7, 2006

I think I need to clarify- it's not the form I want to lock in- it's the format of how the contents are viewed.

When the folder is opened, the way the view looks should be the same for each person, regardless.

The preferred view is "By Company" which puts everything in a nice columnar format, with the column headers re-named etc. Most people's Outlook defaults to the "By Address Card" view, which is NOT optimal in this case.

Does that help?
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:28 PM on August 7, 2006

Thanks for that link though -I bet I can use that info in the future.
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 5:30 PM on August 7, 2006