You need to change the value of the MessageClass property on the existing items to point to your new form's class. See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/newdefaultform.htm#convert for several tools and scripts to accomplish this.

--
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

wrote in message oups.com...
We have an existing contacts table in the Public Folder. We're created
a new custom form and have published it. Whenever a create a new
contact record, it picks up the new custom form. But we'd like to
attach the new custom form to all existing records. Is there a way to
do that? I've tried exporting and re-importing the contacts to the
folder w/ the custom form but it doesn't work. The custom form does not
appear in the imported records. As much as possible, we'd like to
avoid re-entering the contacts because there are close to 5000 entries.

Thanks in advance,
Joseph