I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere. I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the old deleted user defined fields.

I have also asked the vendor where they are getting the listing of
fields from.

Thanks

Shawn

First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in item)
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom Forms
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
also the basis for another article:
"Yes you can..but should you?"
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
which has a function that addresses that particular issue
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"
http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message
...
I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere. I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the old deleted user defined fields.

I have also asked the vendor where they are getting the listing of
fields from.

Thanks

Shawn

On Feb 20, 5:43*pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:
First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in item)http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom Formshttp://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
* * * * for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
* * * *(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
* * * * up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
* * * *Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
* * * *concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
* * * *every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
* * * *in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
* * * *UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
* * * *folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
* * * *have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
* * * *contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
* * * *rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
* * * *environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
* * * *also the basis for another article:
* * * "Yes you can..but should you?"
* * * *http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
* * * * fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
* * * * which has a function that addresses that particular issue
* * * *http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...

I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere. I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the old deleted user defined fields.

I have also asked the vendor where they are getting the listing of
fields from.

Thanks

Shawn

Karl:

Thank you very much. I read through your articles (very useful) and
had a few more questions if you don't mind. I greatly appreciate the
articles and your time.

1. If I want a field in a view, I must add it at the folder level.
Since I have no fields left at the folder level, I see that I cannot
add any of my custom fields (currently custom fields only used in my
custom form) to my custom view. Also, I'm assuming its probably best
to create the fields required at the folder level and then copy the
folder. That way I don't have to recreate the fields again at the
folder level for the new folder. Correct on these two items?

2. I have a custom form and have many custom fields created at both
the View level and the Form level. I am not using the IPM.Contact
form. Ignoring first how to clean up the old fields, if I understand
correctly it seems I should only create fields at the View level. I
should not create fields using the form designer. Is that correct?

So I create new fields at view level and then use them in the form
designer. Correct?

3. I tried your Contact Genie Toolkit on a subset contact folder as a
test. I selected the test folder, my custom form, select "Add/Remove
Orphan UDFs", and got a message beginning with FTK031 that it only
works on the IPM.Contact form. Can I use this tool on my custom form
to remove orphaned fields?

I don't know if this part of the discussion should be under your
website.

4. When I tested your export utility, none of the deleted fields
(e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appeared in your export list.

One thing to note is when I created a brand new contact and tried the
export, none of the old deleted fields (e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appear
in the list. It seems new contacts are OK, however, I have about
15,000 that probably still have old data that I want to clean up.

Thanks

Shawn

#1 - If you are using a custom form - user-defined fields should
ONLY be added/deleted within the custom form. You should
NEVER add any additional fields to a contact item assigned
to a custom form since you will only one-off the form. As for
copying contacts that use a custom form - make sure that the
custom form is available (i.e. by either publishing it to the target
folder or to the Personal Forms Lib but strongly advise against
the same form published to both the Pers Lib and a folder -
recipe for problems)

#2 - Custom forms do not have "orphan fields" - the UDF list is
assigned at the "custom form level" and every contact item
assigned a given custom form has the same UDF fields (unless you
have manually added other UDF's (see point #1) . As the two
articles regarding User-Defined fields point out - UDF's
for Folder/Items are different animals then those assigned within
a custom form

#3 - Custom fields in a custom form would be available to be
added to any view - not sure about anything added to the folder
or item outside of the custom form (see item#1). That said,
UDF's added manually to a contact item outside of the
custom form is not a scenario handled by CG Toolkit by design.

If you have 15000 contacts assigned to a custom form and
these contacts additionally have UDF fields that have been
manually added - that by definition means that each and every
one of the manually added UDF's has had a value added to it
a standard UDF does not get added to a specific contact item
unless and until a value is entered into the field. So the question
in this is - how exactly are you determining that the contacts
assigned to a custom form have extra fields - via Outlook or the
3rd party export program you are using?

#4 - Any of the ContactGenie products with export functionality
only include user-defined fields defined at the Folder level
(for items assigned to IPM.Contact) - all item level UDF's are
ignored for the reason(s) mentioned in the original answer. Items
assigned to a custom form only use the UDFs assigned to the
form regardless of what may actually be contained in the a
contact item's UserProperty collection. None of the CG products
directly reference any item via the Outlook object model (OOM)
anymore but instead use Redemption (http://www.dimastr.com )
which avoids a lot of potential problems (not sure about O'2007
and beyond but dealing with the UserProperty collection directly
via OOM opened up a wide variety of potential problems -
not the cleanest collection of fields in the world). Only reason for
mentioning this is that if your 3rd party export program (please
don't reference it by name in this thread - don't know what it is
and don't want to know) is still reporting UDF's outside of those
contained in the custom form, it is going through the contact item's
userproperty collection directly which will include anything and
everything that was ever added to it, something which should be
of no concern if you are using a custom form.

#5 - "Deleted field" not appearing in the CG Toolkit export
field list. Don't understand the comment - why would you want
a deleted field to appear?

Off the cuff, if you want to clean up what sounds like a mess - you
may want to try the following (backing up your PST file before
proceeding!!!!!!)

a) Re-publish your custom form under a new name
b) assign all your contacts to this new form name - that should result
in your contacts only having the UDF's assigned to the custom form
and everything returns to normal. the only custom fields you
should see at this point are those solely assigned within the custom
form. (Am assuming this to be correct but not 100% sure since
haven't tested what happens when #1) UDF's have been manually
added to an item assigned to a custom form and then
#2) changing the assigned custom form)

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"
http://www.contactgenie.com





"SRM" wrote in message
...
On Feb 20, 5:43 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:
First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in
item)http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom
Formshttp://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
also the basis for another article:
"Yes you can..but should you?"
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
which has a function that addresses that particular issue
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...

I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere. I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the old deleted user defined fields.

I have also asked the vendor where they are getting the listing of
fields from.

Thanks

Shawn

Karl:

Thank you very much. I read through your articles (very useful) and
had a few more questions if you don't mind. I greatly appreciate the
articles and your time.

1. If I want a field in a view, I must add it at the folder level.
Since I have no fields left at the folder level, I see that I cannot
add any of my custom fields (currently custom fields only used in my
custom form) to my custom view. Also, I'm assuming its probably best
to create the fields required at the folder level and then copy the
folder. That way I don't have to recreate the fields again at the
folder level for the new folder. Correct on these two items?

2. I have a custom form and have many custom fields created at both
the View level and the Form level. I am not using the IPM.Contact
form. Ignoring first how to clean up the old fields, if I understand
correctly it seems I should only create fields at the View level. I
should not create fields using the form designer. Is that correct?

So I create new fields at view level and then use them in the form
designer. Correct?

3. I tried your Contact Genie Toolkit on a subset contact folder as a
test. I selected the test folder, my custom form, select "Add/Remove
Orphan UDFs", and got a message beginning with FTK031 that it only
works on the IPM.Contact form. Can I use this tool on my custom form
to remove orphaned fields?

I don't know if this part of the discussion should be under your
website.

4. When I tested your export utility, none of the deleted fields
(e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appeared in your export list.

One thing to note is when I created a brand new contact and tried the
export, none of the old deleted fields (e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appear
in the list. It seems new contacts are OK, however, I have about
15,000 that probably still have old data that I want to clean up.

Thanks

Shawn

On Feb 22, 11:34*am, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:
#1 - If you are using a custom form - user-defined fields should
ONLY be added/deleted within the custom form. You should
NEVER add any additional fields to a contact item assigned
to a custom form since you will only one-off the form. As for
copying contacts that use a custom form - make sure that the
custom form is available (i.e. by either publishing it to the target
folder or to the Personal Forms Lib but strongly advise against
the same form published to both the Pers Lib and a folder -
recipe for problems)

#2 - Custom forms do not have "orphan fields" - the UDF list is
assigned at the "custom form level" and every contact item
assigned a given custom form has the same UDF fields (unless you
have manually added other UDF's (see point #1) . As the two
articles regarding User-Defined fields point out - UDF's
for Folder/Items are different animals then those assigned within
a custom form

#3 - Custom fields in a custom form would be available to be
added to any view - not sure about anything added to the folder
or item outside of the custom form (see item#1). That said,
UDF's added manually to a contact item outside of the
custom form is not a scenario handled by CG Toolkit by design.

If you have 15000 contacts assigned to a custom form and
these contacts additionally have UDF fields that have been
manually added - that by definition means that each and every
one of the manually added UDF's has had a value added to it
a standard UDF does not get added to a specific contact item
unless and until a value is entered into the field. So the question
in this is - how exactly are you determining that the contacts
assigned to a custom form have extra fields - via Outlook or the
3rd party export program you are using?

#4 - Any of the ContactGenie products with export functionality
only include user-defined fields defined at the Folder level
(for items assigned to IPM.Contact) - all item level UDF's are
ignored for the reason(s) mentioned in the original answer. Items
assigned to a custom form only use the UDFs assigned to the
form regardless of what may actually be contained in the a
contact item's UserProperty collection. None of the CG products
directly reference any item via the Outlook object model (OOM)
anymore but instead use Redemption (http://www.dimastr.com)
which avoids a lot of potential problems (not sure about O'2007
and beyond but dealing with the UserProperty collection directly
via OOM opened up a wide variety of potential problems -
not the cleanest collection of fields in the world). Only reason for
mentioning this is that if your 3rd party export program (please
don't reference it by name in this thread - don't know what it is
and don't want to know) *is still reporting UDF's outside of those
contained in the custom form, it is going through the contact item's
userproperty collection directly which will include anything and
everything that was ever added to it, something which should be
of no concern if you are using a custom form.

#5 - "Deleted field" not appearing in the CG Toolkit export
field list. Don't understand the comment - why would you want
a deleted field to appear?

Off the cuff, if you want to clean up what sounds like a mess - you
may want to try the following (backing up your PST file before
proceeding!!!!!!)

a) Re-publish your custom form under a new name
b) assign all your contacts to this new form name - that should result
in your contacts only having the UDF's assigned to the custom form
and everything returns to normal. the only custom fields you
should see at this point are those solely assigned within the custom
form. (Am assuming this to be correct but not 100% sure since
haven't tested what happens when #1) UDF's have been manually
added to an item assigned to a custom form and then
#2) changing the assigned custom form)

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...
On Feb 20, 5:43 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:



First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in
item)http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom
Formshttp://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
also the basis for another article:
"Yes you can..but should you?"
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
which has a function that addresses that particular issue
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

....

I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere. I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the old deleted user defined fields.

I have also asked the vendor where they are getting the listing of
fields from.

Thanks

Shawn

Karl:

Thank you very much. I read through your articles (very useful) and
had a few more questions if you don't mind. I greatly appreciate the
articles and your time.

1. If I want a field in a view, I must add it at the folder level.
Since I have no fields left at the folder level, I see that I cannot
add any of my custom fields (currently custom fields only used in my
custom form) to my custom view. Also, I'm assuming its probably best
to create the fields required at the folder level and then copy the
folder. That way I don't have to recreate the fields again at the
folder level for the new folder. Correct on these two items?

2. I have a custom form and have many custom fields created at both
the View level and the Form level. I am not using the IPM.Contact
form. Ignoring first how to clean up the old fields, if I understand
correctly it seems I should only create fields at the View level. I
should not create fields using the form designer. Is that correct?

So I create new fields at view level and then use them in the form
designer. Correct?

3. I tried your Contact Genie Toolkit on a subset contact folder as a
test. I selected the test folder, my custom form, select "Add/Remove
Orphan UDFs", and got a message beginning with FTK031 that it only
works on the IPM.Contact form. Can I use this tool on my custom form
to remove orphaned fields?

I don't know if this part of the discussion should be under your
website.

4. When I tested your export utility, none of the deleted fields
(e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appeared in your export list.

One thing to note is when I created a brand new contact and tried the
export, none of the old deleted fields (e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appear
in the list. It seems new contacts are OK, however, I have about
15,000 that probably still have old data that I want to clean up.

Thanks

Shawn

Karl:

Yes, I did inherit a mess. I agree. I'm going to read through your
comments in detail and try to proceed forward.

The comment about the "Deleted" field was the 3rd party program listed
all fields that were ever created (I think). Some had numbers by them
like "Test[#-7EE2FFE2]". What I did as a test is copied a few contacts
in a separate contacts folder, did the same test exporting, and those
"Deleted" fields appeared in the 3rd part program as fields to export.
Since there was only 5 contacts I was easily able to see the item and
folder level fields for each contact.

The extra "Deleted" fields were in neither the item level or the
folder level, hence my question when this topic got started. If they
aren't in the folder level or item level, what are they still
appearing in this programs export list of fields. They are not being
listed in your program when exported.

May its an issue with the 3rd party program.

Shawn

"May its an issue with the 3rd party program."

My I offer a suggestion that will probably save you a great deal
of unnecessary aggravation and time....

Given that you are using a custom form, focus ONLY on
the fields you explicitly see in Outlook (those fields
and any UDF's displayed by any ContactGenie program
should be identical). Ignore everything else unless additional
user-defined fields were added to an individual contact
after a custom form was assigned to it. In this case, the custom
form will be "one-offed" but that still should never result in
any "deleted" field from appearing.

IF the program you are using is explicitly iterating through the
contact item's UserProerties collection from start to finish
(i.e. starting at entry #1 for the total number of entries in the
collection) - there is absolutely no question that extraneous info
may be found and if each and every entry is not checked to
ensure that it is valid - you will get the results you are seeing -
deleted fields will be included - there are no ifs, ands or buts
about it. Outlook is not especially meticulous as to what the
UserProperty collection contains but it knows what is relevant
for its purposes. That was a lesson learned the hard way a long
time ago with the release of the first ContactGenie program
back in 2001.

Without knowing the background, sounds nothing more than
what you are seeing is the field add/delete activity that took place
when the custom form was designed (deleting a field from a
custom form does not delete it from the raw UserProperties
collection which I'm guessing is what is going on and not at all
something that you should be remotely concerned about).

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"
http://www.contactgenie.com


"SRM" wrote in message
...
On Feb 22, 11:34 am, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:
#1 - If you are using a custom form - user-defined fields should
ONLY be added/deleted within the custom form. You should
NEVER add any additional fields to a contact item assigned
to a custom form since you will only one-off the form. As for
copying contacts that use a custom form - make sure that the
custom form is available (i.e. by either publishing it to the target
folder or to the Personal Forms Lib but strongly advise against
the same form published to both the Pers Lib and a folder -
recipe for problems)

#2 - Custom forms do not have "orphan fields" - the UDF list is
assigned at the "custom form level" and every contact item
assigned a given custom form has the same UDF fields (unless you
have manually added other UDF's (see point #1) . As the two
articles regarding User-Defined fields point out - UDF's
for Folder/Items are different animals then those assigned within
a custom form

#3 - Custom fields in a custom form would be available to be
added to any view - not sure about anything added to the folder
or item outside of the custom form (see item#1). That said,
UDF's added manually to a contact item outside of the
custom form is not a scenario handled by CG Toolkit by design.

If you have 15000 contacts assigned to a custom form and
these contacts additionally have UDF fields that have been
manually added - that by definition means that each and every
one of the manually added UDF's has had a value added to it
a standard UDF does not get added to a specific contact item
unless and until a value is entered into the field. So the question
in this is - how exactly are you determining that the contacts
assigned to a custom form have extra fields - via Outlook or the
3rd party export program you are using?

#4 - Any of the ContactGenie products with export functionality
only include user-defined fields defined at the Folder level
(for items assigned to IPM.Contact) - all item level UDF's are
ignored for the reason(s) mentioned in the original answer. Items
assigned to a custom form only use the UDFs assigned to the
form regardless of what may actually be contained in the a
contact item's UserProperty collection. None of the CG products
directly reference any item via the Outlook object model (OOM)
anymore but instead use Redemption (http://www.dimastr.com)
which avoids a lot of potential problems (not sure about O'2007
and beyond but dealing with the UserProperty collection directly
via OOM opened up a wide variety of potential problems -
not the cleanest collection of fields in the world). Only reason for
mentioning this is that if your 3rd party export program (please
don't reference it by name in this thread - don't know what it is
and don't want to know) is still reporting UDF's outside of those
contained in the custom form, it is going through the contact item's
userproperty collection directly which will include anything and
everything that was ever added to it, something which should be
of no concern if you are using a custom form.

#5 - "Deleted field" not appearing in the CG Toolkit export
field list. Don't understand the comment - why would you want
a deleted field to appear?

Off the cuff, if you want to clean up what sounds like a mess - you
may want to try the following (backing up your PST file before
proceeding!!!!!!)

a) Re-publish your custom form under a new name
b) assign all your contacts to this new form name - that should result
in your contacts only having the UDF's assigned to the custom form
and everything returns to normal. the only custom fields you
should see at this point are those solely assigned within the custom
form. (Am assuming this to be correct but not 100% sure since
haven't tested what happens when #1) UDF's have been manually
added to an item assigned to a custom form and then
#2) changing the assigned custom form)

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...
On Feb 20, 5:43 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:



First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in
item)http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom
Formshttp://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
also the basis for another article:
"Yes you can..but should you?"
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
which has a function that addresses that particular issue
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact
Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...

I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere. I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the old deleted user defined fields.

I have also asked the vendor where they are getting the listing of
fields from.

Thanks

Shawn

Karl:

Thank you very much. I read through your articles (very useful) and
had a few more questions if you don't mind. I greatly appreciate the
articles and your time.

1. If I want a field in a view, I must add it at the folder level.
Since I have no fields left at the folder level, I see that I cannot
add any of my custom fields (currently custom fields only used in my
custom form) to my custom view. Also, I'm assuming its probably best
to create the fields required at the folder level and then copy the
folder. That way I don't have to recreate the fields again at the
folder level for the new folder. Correct on these two items?

2. I have a custom form and have many custom fields created at both
the View level and the Form level. I am not using the IPM.Contact
form. Ignoring first how to clean up the old fields, if I understand
correctly it seems I should only create fields at the View level. I
should not create fields using the form designer. Is that correct?

So I create new fields at view level and then use them in the form
designer. Correct?

3. I tried your Contact Genie Toolkit on a subset contact folder as a
test. I selected the test folder, my custom form, select "Add/Remove
Orphan UDFs", and got a message beginning with FTK031 that it only
works on the IPM.Contact form. Can I use this tool on my custom form
to remove orphaned fields?

I don't know if this part of the discussion should be under your
website.

4. When I tested your export utility, none of the deleted fields
(e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appeared in your export list.

One thing to note is when I created a brand new contact and tried the
export, none of the old deleted fields (e.g., Test 1, Test 2) appear
in the list. It seems new contacts are OK, however, I have about
15,000 that probably still have old data that I want to clean up.

Thanks

Shawn

Karl:

Yes, I did inherit a mess. I agree. I'm going to read through your
comments in detail and try to proceed forward.

The comment about the "Deleted" field was the 3rd party program listed
all fields that were ever created (I think). Some had numbers by them
like "Test[#-7EE2FFE2]". What I did as a test is copied a few contacts
in a separate contacts folder, did the same test exporting, and those
"Deleted" fields appeared in the 3rd part program as fields to export.
Since there was only 5 contacts I was easily able to see the item and
folder level fields for each contact.

The extra "Deleted" fields were in neither the item level or the
folder level, hence my question when this topic got started. If they
aren't in the folder level or item level, what are they still
appearing in this programs export list of fields. They are not being
listed in your program when exported.

May its an issue with the 3rd party program.

Shawn

On Feb 22, 3:05*pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:
"May its an issue with the 3rd party program."

My I offer a suggestion that will probably save you a great deal
of unnecessary aggravation and time....

Given that you are using a custom form, focus ONLY on
the fields you explicitly see in Outlook (those fields
and any UDF's displayed by any ContactGenie program
should be identical). Ignore everything else unless additional
user-defined fields were added to an individual contact
after a custom form was assigned to it. In this case, the custom
form will be "one-offed" but that still should never result in
any "deleted" field from appearing.

IF the program you are using is explicitly iterating through the
contact item's UserProerties collection from start to finish
(i.e. starting at entry #1 for the total number of entries in the
collection) - there is absolutely no question that extraneous info
may be found and if each and every entry is not checked to
ensure that it is valid - you will get the results you are seeing -
deleted fields will be included - there are no ifs, ands or buts
about it. Outlook is not especially meticulous as to what the
UserProperty collection contains but it knows what is relevant
for its purposes. That was a lesson learned the hard way a long
time ago with the release of the first ContactGenie program
back in 2001.

Without knowing the background, sounds nothing more than
what you are seeing is the field add/delete activity that took place
when the custom form was designed (deleting a field from a
custom form does not delete it from the raw UserProperties
collection which I'm guessing is what is going on and not at all
something that you should be remotely concerned about).

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...
On Feb 22, 11:34 am, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:

#1 - If you are using a custom form - user-defined fields should
ONLY be added/deleted within the custom form. You should
NEVER add any additional fields to a contact item assigned
to a custom form since you will only one-off the form. As for
copying contacts that use a custom form - make sure that the
custom form is available (i.e. by either publishing it to the target
folder or to the Personal Forms Lib but strongly advise against
the same form published to both the Pers Lib and a folder -
recipe for problems)

#2 - Custom forms do not have "orphan fields" - the UDF list is
assigned at the "custom form level" and every contact item
assigned a given custom form has the same UDF fields (unless you
have manually added other UDF's (see point #1) . As the two
articles regarding User-Defined fields point out - UDF's
for Folder/Items are different animals then those assigned within
a custom form

#3 - Custom fields in a custom form would be available to be
added to any view - not sure about anything added to the folder
or item outside of the custom form (see item#1). That said,
UDF's added manually to a contact item outside of the
custom form is not a scenario handled by CG Toolkit by design.

If you have 15000 contacts assigned to a custom form and
these contacts additionally have UDF fields that have been
manually added - that by definition means that each and every
one of the manually added UDF's has had a value added to it
a standard UDF does not get added to a specific contact item
unless and until a value is entered into the field. So the question
in this is - how exactly are you determining that the contacts
assigned to a custom form have extra fields - via Outlook or the
3rd party export program you are using?

#4 - Any of the ContactGenie products with export functionality
only include user-defined fields defined at the Folder level
(for items assigned to IPM.Contact) - all item level UDF's are
ignored for the reason(s) mentioned in the original answer. Items
assigned to a custom form only use the UDFs assigned to the
form regardless of what may actually be contained in the a
contact item's UserProperty collection. None of the CG products
directly reference any item via the Outlook object model (OOM)
anymore but instead use Redemption (http://www.dimastr.com)
which avoids a lot of potential problems (not sure about O'2007
and beyond but dealing with the UserProperty collection directly
via OOM opened up a wide variety of potential problems -
not the cleanest collection of fields in the world). Only reason for
mentioning this is that if your 3rd party export program (please
don't reference it by name in this thread - don't know what it is
and don't want to know) is still reporting UDF's outside of those
contained in the custom form, it is going through the contact item's
userproperty collection directly which will include anything and
everything that was ever added to it, something which should be
of no concern if you are using a custom form.

#5 - "Deleted field" not appearing in the CG Toolkit export
field list. Don't understand the comment - why would you want
a deleted field to appear?

Off the cuff, if you want to clean up what sounds like a mess - you
may want to try the following (backing up your PST file before
proceeding!!!!!!)

a) Re-publish your custom form under a new name
b) assign all your contacts to this new form name - that should result
in your contacts only having the UDF's assigned to the custom form
and everything returns to normal. the only custom fields you
should see at this point are those solely assigned within the custom
form. (Am assuming this to be correct but not 100% sure since
haven't tested what happens when #1) UDF's have been manually
added to an item assigned to a custom form and then
#2) changing the assigned custom form)

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

....
On Feb 20, 5:43 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:

First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in
item)http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom
Formshttp://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
also the basis for another article:
"Yes you can..but should you?"
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
which has a function that addresses that particular issue
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact
Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

....

I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere. I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the

...

read more »

Karl:

Thank you for all your help. I will go the route of leaving it as is
and ignore the other (deleted) data. I would of liked to clean it up,
but it seems that is not possible and not really required. I'll learn
from your hard learned lesson.

I did notice one thing about the folder level fields. Not sure if
related to my mess or not, but when I merge from outlook, I need the
folder level fields to complete a merge with Word. I always start my
merges with Outlook. I didn't know if that was unique to my situation
or if you had it documented that I did not find in your articles.

Thanks again for all your help.

Shawn

If my assumption as to what is going on is correct - you don't
have an issue with "orphan" fields and most likely don't have
anything to clean up. The meer action of adding and deleting
a field when designing a custom form will result in this field
remaining in the UserProperty collection. However, there is a
very simple way to clean this up -- re-create the custom form
and re-publish it with the same name. If no fields were
deleted when re-creating the form, the "deleted fields"
issue with the other export program will be a thing of the past.

As for the "Folder Level" question - in general terms,
user-defined fields are only available for anything if
included at the "folder level" when using the standard
contact form (IPM.Contact) or when part of a custom
form. UDFs that exist solely at the contact item level are never
accessible for any kind of global function/views etc. Only way
you'll see item level fields which are not included in the "folder
group" is by opening each contact individually.

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"
http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message
...
On Feb 22, 3:05 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:
"May its an issue with the 3rd party program."

My I offer a suggestion that will probably save you a great deal
of unnecessary aggravation and time....

Given that you are using a custom form, focus ONLY on
the fields you explicitly see in Outlook (those fields
and any UDF's displayed by any ContactGenie program
should be identical). Ignore everything else unless additional
user-defined fields were added to an individual contact
after a custom form was assigned to it. In this case, the custom
form will be "one-offed" but that still should never result in
any "deleted" field from appearing.

IF the program you are using is explicitly iterating through the
contact item's UserProerties collection from start to finish
(i.e. starting at entry #1 for the total number of entries in the
collection) - there is absolutely no question that extraneous info
may be found and if each and every entry is not checked to
ensure that it is valid - you will get the results you are seeing -
deleted fields will be included - there are no ifs, ands or buts
about it. Outlook is not especially meticulous as to what the
UserProperty collection contains but it knows what is relevant
for its purposes. That was a lesson learned the hard way a long
time ago with the release of the first ContactGenie program
back in 2001.

Without knowing the background, sounds nothing more than
what you are seeing is the field add/delete activity that took place
when the custom form was designed (deleting a field from a
custom form does not delete it from the raw UserProperties
collection which I'm guessing is what is going on and not at all
something that you should be remotely concerned about).

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...
On Feb 22, 11:34 am, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:

#1 - If you are using a custom form - user-defined fields should
ONLY be added/deleted within the custom form. You should
NEVER add any additional fields to a contact item assigned
to a custom form since you will only one-off the form. As for
copying contacts that use a custom form - make sure that the
custom form is available (i.e. by either publishing it to the target
folder or to the Personal Forms Lib but strongly advise against
the same form published to both the Pers Lib and a folder -
recipe for problems)

#2 - Custom forms do not have "orphan fields" - the UDF list is
assigned at the "custom form level" and every contact item
assigned a given custom form has the same UDF fields (unless you
have manually added other UDF's (see point #1) . As the two
articles regarding User-Defined fields point out - UDF's
for Folder/Items are different animals then those assigned within
a custom form

#3 - Custom fields in a custom form would be available to be
added to any view - not sure about anything added to the folder
or item outside of the custom form (see item#1). That said,
UDF's added manually to a contact item outside of the
custom form is not a scenario handled by CG Toolkit by design.

If you have 15000 contacts assigned to a custom form and
these contacts additionally have UDF fields that have been
manually added - that by definition means that each and every
one of the manually added UDF's has had a value added to it
a standard UDF does not get added to a specific contact item
unless and until a value is entered into the field. So the question
in this is - how exactly are you determining that the contacts
assigned to a custom form have extra fields - via Outlook or the
3rd party export program you are using?

#4 - Any of the ContactGenie products with export functionality
only include user-defined fields defined at the Folder level
(for items assigned to IPM.Contact) - all item level UDF's are
ignored for the reason(s) mentioned in the original answer. Items
assigned to a custom form only use the UDFs assigned to the
form regardless of what may actually be contained in the a
contact item's UserProperty collection. None of the CG products
directly reference any item via the Outlook object model (OOM)
anymore but instead use Redemption (http://www.dimastr.com)
which avoids a lot of potential problems (not sure about O'2007
and beyond but dealing with the UserProperty collection directly
via OOM opened up a wide variety of potential problems -
not the cleanest collection of fields in the world). Only reason for
mentioning this is that if your 3rd party export program (please
don't reference it by name in this thread - don't know what it is
and don't want to know) is still reporting UDF's outside of those
contained in the custom form, it is going through the contact item's
userproperty collection directly which will include anything and
everything that was ever added to it, something which should be
of no concern if you are using a custom form.

#5 - "Deleted field" not appearing in the CG Toolkit export
field list. Don't understand the comment - why would you want
a deleted field to appear?

Off the cuff, if you want to clean up what sounds like a mess - you
may want to try the following (backing up your PST file before
proceeding!!!!!!)

a) Re-publish your custom form under a new name
b) assign all your contacts to this new form name - that should result
in your contacts only having the UDF's assigned to the custom form
and everything returns to normal. the only custom fields you
should see at this point are those solely assigned within the custom
form. (Am assuming this to be correct but not 100% sure since
haven't tested what happens when #1) UDF's have been manually
added to an item assigned to a custom form and then
#2) changing the assigned custom form)

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact
Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...
On Feb 20, 5:43 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:

First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in
item)http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom
Formshttp://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
also the basis for another article:
"Yes you can..but should you?"
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
which has a function that addresses that particular issue
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact
Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...

I'm using O2003. I have used many user defined fields that I have
deleted and no longer want to use. I have deleted them from my
form,
views, and contacts. In fact, I think none of my contacts have user
defined fields in the folder level anymore, only in the item level.
Hence - my first question.

Should I create the same fields at the folder level that are saved
in
the item level for my contacts folder? I will be creating other
contact folders.

I am using a third party program to export the custom fields I am
using. However, the program keeps finding all the user defined
fields
I have deleted. I'm guessing the fields are still listed somewhere.
I
have created new forms, applied new forms, cleared the cache, but
cannot get rid of the user defined deleted fields.

Second question - Is there a place these deleted fields are listed
in
Outlook that I can get rid of them? I don't know if there are some
of
these old deleted fields at the item level as I have over 15,000
contacts. I don't know if there is a way to find user defined
fields
at the item level.

The reason for this is I need to export select custom fields. When
there are dozens of extra fields listed but not used, its a laundry
list of fields I need to pick from. I was just hoping there was a
location I can clean up the

...

read more »

Karl:

Thank you for all your help. I will go the route of leaving it as is
and ignore the other (deleted) data. I would of liked to clean it up,
but it seems that is not possible and not really required. I'll learn
from your hard learned lesson.

I did notice one thing about the folder level fields. Not sure if
related to my mess or not, but when I merge from outlook, I need the
folder level fields to complete a merge with Word. I always start my
merges with Outlook. I didn't know if that was unique to my situation
or if you had it documented that I did not find in your articles.

Thanks again for all your help.

Shawn

On Feb 23, 9:38*am, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:
If my assumption as to what is going on is correct - you don't
have an issue with "orphan" fields and most likely don't have
anything to clean up. The meer action of adding and deleting
a field when designing a custom form will result in this field
remaining in the UserProperty collection. However, there is a
very simple way to clean this up -- re-create the custom form
and re-publish it with the same name. If no fields were
deleted when re-creating the form, the "deleted fields"
issue with the other export program will be a thing of the past.

As for the "Folder Level" question - in general terms,
user-defined fields are only available for anything if
included at the "folder level" when using the standard
contact form (IPM.Contact) or when part of a custom
form. UDFs that exist solely at the contact item level are never
accessible for any kind of global function/views etc. Only way
you'll see item level fields which are not included in the "folder
group" is by opening each contact individually.

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook '2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

...
On Feb 22, 3:05 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:

"May its an issue with the 3rd party program."

My I offer a suggestion that will probably save you a great deal
of unnecessary aggravation and time....

Given that you are using a custom form, focus ONLY on
the fields you explicitly see in Outlook (those fields
and any UDF's displayed by any ContactGenie program
should be identical). Ignore everything else unless additional
user-defined fields were added to an individual contact
after a custom form was assigned to it. In this case, the custom
form will be "one-offed" but that still should never result in
any "deleted" field from appearing.

IF the program you are using is explicitly iterating through the
contact item's UserProerties collection from start to finish
(i.e. starting at entry #1 for the total number of entries in the
collection) - there is absolutely no question that extraneous info
may be found and if each and every entry is not checked to
ensure that it is valid - you will get the results you are seeing -
deleted fields will be included - there are no ifs, ands or buts
about it. Outlook is not especially meticulous as to what the
UserProperty collection contains but it knows what is relevant
for its purposes. That was a lesson learned the hard way a long
time ago with the release of the first ContactGenie program
back in 2001.

Without knowing the background, sounds nothing more than
what you are seeing is the field add/delete activity that took place
when the custom form was designed (deleting a field from a
custom form does not delete it from the raw UserProperties
collection which I'm guessing is what is going on and not at all
something that you should be remotely concerned about).

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

....
On Feb 22, 11:34 am, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:

#1 - If you are using a custom form - user-defined fields should
ONLY be added/deleted within the custom form. You should
NEVER add any additional fields to a contact item assigned
to a custom form since you will only one-off the form. As for
copying contacts that use a custom form - make sure that the
custom form is available (i.e. by either publishing it to the target
folder or to the Personal Forms Lib but strongly advise against
the same form published to both the Pers Lib and a folder -
recipe for problems)

#2 - Custom forms do not have "orphan fields" - the UDF list is
assigned at the "custom form level" and every contact item
assigned a given custom form has the same UDF fields (unless you
have manually added other UDF's (see point #1) . As the two
articles regarding User-Defined fields point out - UDF's
for Folder/Items are different animals then those assigned within
a custom form

#3 - Custom fields in a custom form would be available to be
added to any view - not sure about anything added to the folder
or item outside of the custom form (see item#1). That said,
UDF's added manually to a contact item outside of the
custom form is not a scenario handled by CG Toolkit by design.

If you have 15000 contacts assigned to a custom form and
these contacts additionally have UDF fields that have been
manually added - that by definition means that each and every
one of the manually added UDF's has had a value added to it
a standard UDF does not get added to a specific contact item
unless and until a value is entered into the field. So the question
in this is - how exactly are you determining that the contacts
assigned to a custom form have extra fields - via Outlook or the
3rd party export program you are using?

#4 - Any of the ContactGenie products with export functionality
only include user-defined fields defined at the Folder level
(for items assigned to IPM.Contact) - all item level UDF's are
ignored for the reason(s) mentioned in the original answer. Items
assigned to a custom form only use the UDFs assigned to the
form regardless of what may actually be contained in the a
contact item's UserProperty collection. None of the CG products
directly reference any item via the Outlook object model (OOM)
anymore but instead use Redemption (http://www.dimastr.com)
which avoids a lot of potential problems (not sure about O'2007
and beyond but dealing with the UserProperty collection directly
via OOM opened up a wide variety of potential problems -
not the cleanest collection of fields in the world). Only reason for
mentioning this is that if your 3rd party export program (please
don't reference it by name in this thread - don't know what it is
and don't want to know) is still reporting UDF's outside of those
contained in the custom form, it is going through the contact item's
userproperty collection directly which will include anything and
everything that was ever added to it, something which should be
of no concern if you are using a custom form.

#5 - "Deleted field" not appearing in the CG Toolkit export
field list. Don't understand the comment - why would you want
a deleted field to appear?

Off the cuff, if you want to clean up what sounds like a mess - you
may want to try the following (backing up your PST file before
proceeding!!!!!!)

a) Re-publish your custom form under a new name
b) assign all your contacts to this new form name - that should result
in your contacts only having the UDF's assigned to the custom form
and everything returns to normal. the only custom fields you
should see at this point are those solely assigned within the custom
form. (Am assuming this to be correct but not 100% sure since
haven't tested what happens when #1) UDF's have been manually
added to an item assigned to a custom form and then
#2) changing the assigned custom form)

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans - The Claxton Group
ContactGenie - QuickPort/DataPort/Exporter/Toolkit/Duplicate Contact
Mgr
"Contact import/export/data management tools for Outlook
'2000/2010"http://www.contactgenie.com

"SRM" wrote in message

....
On Feb 20, 5:43 pm, "Karl Timmermans" wrote:

First a couple of articles that you may find of interest
#1 - User-defined fields - (in folder) versus (in
item)http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=99

#2 - User-Defined (Custom) fields in Custom
Formshttp://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=102

To specifically answer your 2 questions:
#1 - Unless you have specifically deleted a user-defined field
for a given item - it has not been deleted for that item
(hence, whatever export program you're using is picking
up the data at the item level versus the folder level)
Exporting every field at the item level may be a nice
concept but the drawback to that is that "technically"
every contact can have a different set of fields - i.e.
in your case, 15,000 contacts can each have a different
UDF resulting in 15,000 different UDF fields for the
folder. Try and put all your contacts in one file and you
have nothing short of a "mess". The chances of every
contact having a different UDF is highly unlikely but
rest assured that we've seen some "highly creative"
environments when it comes to Outlook data which is
also the basis for another article:
"Yes you can..but should you?"
http://www.contactgenie.com/blog/?p=54

#2 - There is no place in Outlook that lists "orphan" user-defined
fields - you may find ContactGenie Toolkit of interest
which has a function that addresses that particular issue
http://www.contactgenie.com/toolkit_4_outlook.htm

Karl
--
__________________________________________________ __________
Karl Timmermans

...

read more »

Karl:

Thanks. I made a new contacts folder and copied some contacts over to
complete some tests (per your instructions).

1. I took the default Outlook form, published it as the form I was
using (SRM). I added no new fields. Basically is was the default
Outlook form published as a new name. No change. Old deleted fields
still appearing.

2. I edited my current form and just published with a new name
(Test1). I changed the form of each contact to the new form. Also
changed the posting to the new form. No change. Old deleted fields
still appearing.

3. With the same contacts, I then took the default Outlook form,
published it as a new form (Test2). I changed the form of each contact
to the new form. Also changed the posting to the new form. There were
now no no fields at the item level or the folder level. No change. Old
deleted fields still appearing.

Shawn