OL98: Additional Control Properties Available for Programming (180972)

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Microsoft provides programming examples for illustration only, without warranty either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. This article assumes that you are familiar with the programming language being demonstrated and the tools used to create and debug procedures. Microsoft Support professionals can help explain the functionality of a particular procedure, but they will not modify these examples to provide added functionality or construct procedures to meet your specific needs. If you have limited programming experience, you may want to contact the Microsoft fee-based consulting line at (800) 936-5200. For more information about the support options available from Microsoft, please see the following page on the World Wide Web: If you customize Outlook forms, you can set properties for the controls on the form by right-clicking the control and clicking Properties or Advanced Properties on the shortcut menu. The properties described in this article are not standard properties for the controls, and therefore, it may not be intuitive that these properties can actually be changed using Microsoft Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) or Visual Basic for Applications Automation code.

NOTE: The ItemProperty and LayoutFlags properties are documented in the Outlook Forms Help file (Olform.hlp). Use the Find tab of the Help file to search for the property names.

PossibleValues Property

You can use the PossibleValues property to programmatically set multiple values in a control, typically a list box or combo box. The following VBScript example fills a list box with the values Test1, Test2, and Test3 when you open the form:

Sub Item_Open()

      ' Sets the name of page on the form, in this case, the
      ' Message page on a MailItem form.
      Set FormPage = Item.GetInspector.ModifiedFormPages("Message")

      ' Sets Control to a list box called ListBox1.
      Set Control = FormPage.Controls("ListBox1")

      ' Assign values to the list box.
      Control.PossibleValues = "Test1;Test2;Test3"

   End Sub
				

NOTE: You can also use the AddItem method of the control to populate list boxes and combo boxes one line at a time. This is a typical approach used in Visual Basic solutions.

ItemProperty Property

The ItemProperty property can be used in VBScript to bind a control to a MAPI field in the Outlook item. The following VBScript example binds a list box to the Mileage property:

      Sub Item_Open()

      ' Sets the name of page on the form, in this case, the
      ' Message page on a MailItem form.
      Set FormPage = Item.GetInspector.ModifiedFormPages("Message")

      ' Sets Control to a list box called ListBox1.
      Set Control = FormPage.Controls("ListBox1")

      ' Bind the control to the Mileage field in the item.
      Control.ItemProperty "Mileage"

   End Sub

LayoutFlags Property

When working with a control in design mode, you can view the properties of a control by right-clicking on a control and clicking Properties on the shortcut menu. The Display tab of the Properties dialog box contains an option for Resize With Form, which may be on or off by default depending on the type of control. If this property is turned on, then the control will horizontally resize when the form itself is being horizontally resized.

In the Properties dialog box, you cannot set the control to vertically resize, but you can write VBScript code to change both the vertical and horizontal Resize With Form setting.

  Sub Item_Open()

      ' Sets the name of page on the form, in this case, the
      ' Message page on a MailItem form.
      Set FormPage = Item.GetInspector.ModifiedFormPages("Message")

      ' Sets Control to a text box called TextBox1.
      Set Control = FormPage.Controls("Textbox1")

      ' Use one of the following lines to achieve the noted effect.
      Control.LayoutFlags = 1   ' Do not resize.
      Control.LayoutFlags = 4   ' Resize horizontally.
      Control.LayoutFlags = 65  ' Resize vertically.
      Control.LayoutFlags = 68  ' Resize horizontally and vertically.

   End Sub