Hi
Our organaisation has several departments keeping their own contacts in
various formats Excel Access etc.
We want to have a single outlook . contacts folder for everyone to use
across the exchange network. This would be used formail merge as well.
What I am going to do is create a contacts folder and import all the data,
and have this as a public folder with permissions.
I then need to create a custom contact form with just the fields we need. I
also need to make custom categories for fiiltering for mail merges i.e
corporate, media,political etc.
Where I am stuck is, some of the categories will only be used by particular
departments. whereas some will be applicable to everyone. Is it possible to
have corporate categories for everyone and a button that will let users
select their department and then see \ select additional categories for
their department only.
Sorry if this badly explained help appreciated.
Outlook 2003 on exchange server.
Kim

The ContactItem object supports only a single built-in Categories collection. You could create other custom keywords fields, but they would not have all the same functionality as Categories. What you might do is have two unbound multi-select list boxes, one with corporate categories and one with departmental categories, and in the Item_Save event, merge the selections into a single list and use that to set the Categories property value. Note that this won't prevent users from right-clicking an item and changing its categories, although you may be able to work around that with additional code behind the form.

--
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


"kim" wrote in message ...
Hi
Our organaisation has several departments keeping their own contacts in
various formats Excel Access etc.
We want to have a single outlook . contacts folder for everyone to use
across the exchange network. This would be used formail merge as well.
What I am going to do is create a contacts folder and import all the data,
and have this as a public folder with permissions.
I then need to create a custom contact form with just the fields we need. I
also need to make custom categories for fiiltering for mail merges i.e
corporate, media,political etc.
Where I am stuck is, some of the categories will only be used by particular
departments. whereas some will be applicable to everyone. Is it possible to
have corporate categories for everyone and a button that will let users
select their department and then see \ select additional categories for
their department only.
Sorry if this badly explained help appreciated.
Outlook 2003 on exchange server.
Kim