J
Julius Perkins
I hope I'm posting this in the correct forum group...
I need help viewing & editing specific forms in Outlook. I essentially want to look at the existing 'Reply' and 'Reply to All' forms, make a copy of the existing 'Forward' form, save it under a new name, make some minor edits to it & incorporate it in such a way that will make it available for all current and new emails. My aim is to tweak the Forward action slightly, so that it includes the original recipients in the To & CC fields (just like 'Reply' & 'Reply to All') & pre-pends 'RE' instead of 'FW' in the subject line. That's it! I then need to create a new button on the quick access toolbar or the ribbon, if someone can link me to some documentation on how to modify the ribbon.
I'm not looking to be spoon-fed and am more than willing to read up on how to do this, but have not had much luck constructing my Google search in such a way that will help me locate the documentation I need.
If you must know why I'm asking, please read on.
We're trying to accommodate the ever popular request: 'Reply with Attachment' & 'Reply to All w/ Attachment' buttons in Outlook. Take the following real-world scenario using identical Windows XP systems & the Office 2007 Enterprise Suite:
1 - Sender sends an email to Recipient that contains an attachment of a document that needs to be reviewed.
2 - Recipient receives the email, double clicks it to open it (assume they don't use the Reading Pane), double click the document to open it, makes edits to it, clicks saves & closes the attachment.
3 - Recipient closes the email the opened from the sender (remember, we opened it to read it then opened the attachment), and receives the following prompt: "The attachments of the message "SUBJECT" have been changed. Do you want to save changes to this message?"
4 - Recipient clicks 'Yes', which updates the email with the modified version of the attachment, and now wants to be able to click a button that will reply to the recipient with the modified attachment.
This is what I've found so far:
1 - Clicking 'Forward' on an email containing an attachment will result in a new email being created, with blank TO, CC & BCC fields, a 'FW' prepended to the subject, the original email body contents and the attachment.
2 - So, clearly Outlook is capable of passing an/the attachment/s on to a new email. I checked the form actions (Open Email > Developer > Design This Form > (Actions) tab) and found 4 actions: Reply, Reply to All, Forward & Reply to Folder.
3 - Comparing the 'Forward', 'Reply' & 'Reply to All' actions reveal that the 'Address form like a:' values are 'Forward', 'Reply', 'Reply to All' respectively.
4 - This, to me, suggests there may be a [VB(?)] Function or some other form that it refers to when performing said '(Action)'. These are the forms or funtions I'm trying to view in an attempt to modify it in such a way that will result in the creation of a new option under the 'Address form like a:' field that can be used for any new '(Actions)' on the forms.
5 - After that it's just a matter of creating a button that a user can click to perform said action.
In 2007, when you open a Word attachment (and possibly others; I've not tested with Excel, PowerPoint etc.), edit it, click save (not save as) then close the document, the new changes are saved to a temp file in randomly named folder within:
%userprofile%\locals~1\tempor~1\content.outlook\
One is not prompted to choose a save location unless they perform a Save As; We're dealing with users here, not IT people, who instincitvely click "Save". Following the real-world example above, why would Outlook behave this way (ask you to save it back to the original email) if there's no way to Reply with the attachment directly to the sender in a single action? If the the Microsoft Developers were operating on the pretense that one should create a new email to send the now modified attachment back to the sender, why would Outlook care to look at that file? In most cases you don't want to modify the original, so why ask the user if they do? (These are rhetorical questions but if you have a good answer I'll listen!) I don't know why it was designed this way, but it is what it is and I'm running with it!
Lastly, just to say it: I've read a number of forums where several resopnses are arguments stating this is pointless because "the sender already has a copy of the attachment, why would they need it again" etc. This I understand wholly and to a certain extent agree. Having said this, please refrain from contributing by posting such comments as we're already aware of these users' idiosyncrasies. .
I need help viewing & editing specific forms in Outlook. I essentially want to look at the existing 'Reply' and 'Reply to All' forms, make a copy of the existing 'Forward' form, save it under a new name, make some minor edits to it & incorporate it in such a way that will make it available for all current and new emails. My aim is to tweak the Forward action slightly, so that it includes the original recipients in the To & CC fields (just like 'Reply' & 'Reply to All') & pre-pends 'RE' instead of 'FW' in the subject line. That's it! I then need to create a new button on the quick access toolbar or the ribbon, if someone can link me to some documentation on how to modify the ribbon.
I'm not looking to be spoon-fed and am more than willing to read up on how to do this, but have not had much luck constructing my Google search in such a way that will help me locate the documentation I need.
If you must know why I'm asking, please read on.
We're trying to accommodate the ever popular request: 'Reply with Attachment' & 'Reply to All w/ Attachment' buttons in Outlook. Take the following real-world scenario using identical Windows XP systems & the Office 2007 Enterprise Suite:
1 - Sender sends an email to Recipient that contains an attachment of a document that needs to be reviewed.
2 - Recipient receives the email, double clicks it to open it (assume they don't use the Reading Pane), double click the document to open it, makes edits to it, clicks saves & closes the attachment.
3 - Recipient closes the email the opened from the sender (remember, we opened it to read it then opened the attachment), and receives the following prompt: "The attachments of the message "SUBJECT" have been changed. Do you want to save changes to this message?"
4 - Recipient clicks 'Yes', which updates the email with the modified version of the attachment, and now wants to be able to click a button that will reply to the recipient with the modified attachment.
This is what I've found so far:
1 - Clicking 'Forward' on an email containing an attachment will result in a new email being created, with blank TO, CC & BCC fields, a 'FW' prepended to the subject, the original email body contents and the attachment.
2 - So, clearly Outlook is capable of passing an/the attachment/s on to a new email. I checked the form actions (Open Email > Developer > Design This Form > (Actions) tab) and found 4 actions: Reply, Reply to All, Forward & Reply to Folder.
3 - Comparing the 'Forward', 'Reply' & 'Reply to All' actions reveal that the 'Address form like a:' values are 'Forward', 'Reply', 'Reply to All' respectively.
4 - This, to me, suggests there may be a [VB(?)] Function or some other form that it refers to when performing said '(Action)'. These are the forms or funtions I'm trying to view in an attempt to modify it in such a way that will result in the creation of a new option under the 'Address form like a:' field that can be used for any new '(Actions)' on the forms.
5 - After that it's just a matter of creating a button that a user can click to perform said action.
In 2007, when you open a Word attachment (and possibly others; I've not tested with Excel, PowerPoint etc.), edit it, click save (not save as) then close the document, the new changes are saved to a temp file in randomly named folder within:
%userprofile%\locals~1\tempor~1\content.outlook\
One is not prompted to choose a save location unless they perform a Save As; We're dealing with users here, not IT people, who instincitvely click "Save". Following the real-world example above, why would Outlook behave this way (ask you to save it back to the original email) if there's no way to Reply with the attachment directly to the sender in a single action? If the the Microsoft Developers were operating on the pretense that one should create a new email to send the now modified attachment back to the sender, why would Outlook care to look at that file? In most cases you don't want to modify the original, so why ask the user if they do? (These are rhetorical questions but if you have a good answer I'll listen!) I don't know why it was designed this way, but it is what it is and I'm running with it!
Lastly, just to say it: I've read a number of forums where several resopnses are arguments stating this is pointless because "the sender already has a copy of the attachment, why would they need it again" etc. This I understand wholly and to a certain extent agree. Having said this, please refrain from contributing by posting such comments as we're already aware of these users' idiosyncrasies. .
(Hey, I'm a VBA/VBScript, WMI, ADSI work in progress.) 
