OL98: PropertyChange Event Does Not Run for Some Fields

• Microsoft Outlook 98

SYMPTOMS

When you use the PropertyChange event in Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) to determine when another user has changed the value of either the Categories or Message field, the event does not run.

NOTE: The Message field is also called the Notes field or, in the object model of Outlook, the Body property.

CAUSE

Outlook does not run the event for these fields.

WORKAROUND

To programmatically determine when the Categories field changes, you can create a user-defined field, link the user-defined field to the Categories field, and then determine when the user-defined field has changed.

NOTE: This approach will not work with the Message field.

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1. On the File menu, point to New, and click Contact.



2. On the Tools menu, click Forms, and then click Design This Form.



3. Click the All Fields tab. Click New at the lower-left corner of the form, type MyCategories as the name of the field, select Formula in the Type list, and type [Categories] in the Formula box. Click OK.



4. On the Form menu, click View Code. Type the following Visual Basic Script into the Script Editor, and then close the editor:

   
         Sub Item_CustomPropertyChange(ByVal myPropertyName)
            Select Case myPropertyName
               Case "MyCategories"
                  MsgBox "Categories changed!"
               Case Else
            End Select
         End Sub 




5. Click the P.2 tab of the form. Make sure "User-defined fields in this folder" is selected in the list at the top of the Field Chooser window and drag the MyCategories field from the Field Chooser window onto the form.
   
   This will add the field to the form so the procedure will work correctly. You can delete these controls that are used to display the MyCategories field from the P.2 tab and hide the page.



6. On the Form menu, click Run This Form.
   
   NOTE: The CustomPropertyChange event will run multiple times.



7. Type a value into the Categories field and then click somewhere else in the form to remove focus from the field. The CustomPropertyEvent will now run multiple times.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article.

MORE INFORMATION

The Message field is an OLE-based field and the only field that can contain rich text, attachments, or other data, such as Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The Categories field is a Keywords field that is designed to store multiple values.

When user-defined fields are set to "automatically update" or are defined as Formula or Combination fields, they will run the CustomPropertyChange event multiple times. When another field is updated or other circumstances occur (for example, if the user changes pages on the form), the event is run. This behavior will vary depending on the type of form being used. The Contact form will run the event more frequently than other types of forms, because many of the standard fields on the Contact form are actually Combination fields, which are calculated based on the values of other fields. While having the event run multiple times does not affect most of the CustomPropertyChange event usage, you should expect the code in the event to run repeatedly.

REFERENCES

For more information about creating solutions with Microsoft Outlook 98, please see the following articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q180826 OL98: Resources for Custom Forms and Programming

Q182349 OL98: Questions About Custom Forms and Outlook Solutions

Additional query words: OutSol OutSol98 vbscript

Keywords : kbdta OffVBS
Version : WINDOWS:
Platform : WINDOWS
Issue type : kbprb