1) Can I create a "New" text box field in the custom Appointment form
called "Country" and also use it in my custom Contact form (in lieu of the
normal Country field) and in my custom Journal Form to have commonality of
the data field in views/reports across records from all these Item classes?

Yes, this should work. You will need to create the field independently in each of the three folders.

2) I need to convert the message class of all the previous Appointment
items that were one-offed in my folder to the corrected custom form message
class. I studied the three options on how to do this at the link you pointed
me to. Can I use the Omsgclas.doc Word document utility described at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/201089/EN-US/ to do this??

No, because each item already has a one-off form embedded in it. You must remove that form first. See http://blogs.msdn.com/stephen_griffi...29/507991.aspx for a CDO 1.21 sample of how to do that. YOu can add an oMessage.Type = "IPM.Appointment.MyForm" statement to change the message class before you update the item.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003
http://www.turtleflock.com/olconfig/index.htm
and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
http://www.outlookcode.com/jumpstart.aspx

"John E." wrote in message ...
Sue,
Again, thanks so much. It was a one-off problem. as you suspected The
referal you gave me enabled me to discover why. My problem was that I was
using the Country field from the Contact Item in my custom Appointment Item
which evidently was causing the one-off when I published. I was doing this
so I would have commonality of data accross different item classes (Contact,
Appointment, Journal Entry, et al) with this field. However, thru trial and
error I discovered that this Contact "Country" field was the one causing the
custom Appointment form to one-off...when I deleted this field and published
the problem went away.
Now I have two remaining problems due to this one-offing to solve, if you
could advise me best way to proceed:
1) Can I create a "New" text box field in the custom Appointment form
called "Country" and also use it in my custom Contact form (in lieu of the
normal Country field) and in my custom Journal Form to have commonality of
the data field in views/reports across records from all these Item classes?
My purpose is to have only one column named "Country" in views/reports that
will pick up the "Country" data entry from all of these item classes when I
create a Journal report that lists multiple activities from different item
classes.
2) I need to convert the message class of all the previous Appointment
items that were one-offed in my folder to the corrected custom form message
class. I studied the three options on how to do this at the link you pointed
me to. Can I use the Omsgclas.doc Word document utility described at
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/201089/EN-US/ to do this?? I am using OL2003
and the list of products it applies to only goes up to OL2002, but the last
review on this KB article #201089 was 12/27/04, so maybe it still works with
OL2003?? If not, what do you suggest to get all of my folder items to the
new custom form message class?