We have a public contact folder residing on an Exchange server. Right now,
when people are working with a contact and want to talk to somebody else in
the company about that, they tend to use the Forward command on the Actions
menu. Unfortunately, this creates a lot of confusion, as the recipients of
the e-mail essentially have a copy of the contact and sometimes open it from
the e-mail and attempt to edit it and so on, then either can't save it, don't
understand why their changes aren't reflected in the original item or manage
to create duplicates in our contact folder.

What I'd like to have them be able to do is embed a link or a reference to
the contact in their e-mail message such that the other parties can click the
link and open the original contact in the shared folder, rather than the
attached copy from the e-mail.

We don't send the contacts outside the company and everybody receiving them
has direct access to the shared contact list. Also, the contact use a custom
form to display which already has some buttons containing code, so if the
only solution uses visual basic, that's okay.

Everybody involved is using Outlook 2003.

Am I totally missing something and this is trivial, or if not, does anybody
have any suggestions on how to approach this?

The part you're missing is that for this to work, the message needs to be in rich-text format. In an RTF message, the Insert Item dialog should have an option to insert it as a link.

--
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

"Irfon-Kim Ahmad" wrote in message ...
We have a public contact folder residing on an Exchange server. Right now,
when people are working with a contact and want to talk to somebody else in
the company about that, they tend to use the Forward command on the Actions
menu. Unfortunately, this creates a lot of confusion, as the recipients of
the e-mail essentially have a copy of the contact and sometimes open it from
the e-mail and attempt to edit it and so on, then either can't save it, don't
understand why their changes aren't reflected in the original item or manage
to create duplicates in our contact folder.

What I'd like to have them be able to do is embed a link or a reference to
the contact in their e-mail message such that the other parties can click the
link and open the original contact in the shared folder, rather than the
attached copy from the e-mail.

We don't send the contacts outside the company and everybody receiving them
has direct access to the shared contact list. Also, the contact use a custom
form to display which already has some buttons containing code, so if the
only solution uses visual basic, that's okay.

Everybody involved is using Outlook 2003.

Am I totally missing something and this is trivial, or if not, does anybody
have any suggestions on how to approach this?

Thanks! Making the e-mail Rich Text does cause the Insert Item dialog to
show an option to insert as a shortcut. However, it doesn't appear to work.
I tried sending one to myself as a test. When I receive the e-mail message,
it shows a link to the contact, but double-clicking it does nothing. If I
right-click it, there is an option called "Open Message Object," but it's
greyed out.

"Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

The part you're missing is that for this to work, the message needs to be in rich-text format. In an RTF message, the Insert Item dialog should have an option to insert it as a link.

Note that in trying to figure this out, I came across this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281046/en-us

It seems to apply here. If I open the resulting message and then click
"Forward", I can open the contact via the shortcut in the resulting window.
However, any better solution would be preferable. I can't tell my users
to forward the message they receive and then open the attachment. They'll
never remember that instruction and they'll balk at the absurdity of it in
the first place.

"Irfon-Kim Ahmad" wrote:

Thanks! Making the e-mail Rich Text does cause the Insert Item dialog to
show an option to insert as a shortcut. However, it doesn't appear to work.
I tried sending one to myself as a test. When I receive the e-mail message,
it shows a link to the contact, but double-clicking it does nothing. If I
right-click it, there is an option called "Open Message Object," but it's
greyed out.

"Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]" wrote:

The part you're missing is that for this to work, the message needs to be in rich-text format. In an RTF message, the Insert Item dialog should have an option to insert it as a link.