Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and the distribution list? By the way this
is in the MAPI (Exchange) world.

The contacts list goes in next to the inbox and is shown as a "contact
list" because it is added to the folder collection as a olContactList
item, but the box to "show" as a contact list is not checked (this
information is from a post mortem examination of Outlook after
exporting the contact list from my Access VBA application to Outlook).
What is VBA for checking "Show this folder..."? Maybe I have to
"update" the address lists collection?? The new contact list is on
end of the list of address lists. When I try to reorder the addresslist
list I get a readonly error; apparently the Exchange "global" address
list, which is first in the default list, is protected -- so how is it
reordered through the GUI?? (What, the Profile resolution protocol and
AddressList collection are completely different entities or something??
-- one was done and Mars and the other was done on Venus)

I want to have my new contact list promoted to an Address Book and
placed first in the resolution list -- clear and simple? Then,
building a distribution list should work with this bizarre method of
resolution of recipients -- why isn't there a simple link from the
distribution list and the address book?? Looks like a remnant of MAPI
complexity that makes a simple operation like copying the email address
) from the email address book an exercise in "It _won't_
let me do that!!"

I may have to add all the addresses to the "Contacts" address book for
resolution purposes (easy enough in the VBA) and then do the resolve.
Actually I did try this and I still only get about half the items on
the recipients list to resolve and add to the distribution list. I'm
currently looking into what is happening in this case, but as I started
out saying this should be easy. However, given the complete absence of
usability for building and using distribution lists through the Outlook
client GUI (a common need in the corporate world), I guess I shouldn't
be surprised.

Thanks for any help!

Dave Boyd


Eric wrote:
I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

The MAPIFolder.ShowAsOutlookAB property allows you to programmatically
specify whether any given Contacts folder is displayed as an Outlook Address
Book.

Also, Contact folders local to your Mailbox or .pst cannot be resolved by
other users (not sure if this is what you're implying), although I believe a
shared Contacts folder can be used as an Outlook Address Book.

Furthermore, only Exchange administrators can control what goes into the
Global Address List, whether they are entries or additional address lists.
You can also control which address list is displayed first and in which order
address lists are used for resolution in the Addressing dialog from the Tools
- Options menu in the Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and the distribution list? By the way this
is in the MAPI (Exchange) world.

The contacts list goes in next to the inbox and is shown as a "contact
list" because it is added to the folder collection as a olContactList
item, but the box to "show" as a contact list is not checked (this
information is from a post mortem examination of Outlook after
exporting the contact list from my Access VBA application to Outlook).
What is VBA for checking "Show this folder..."? Maybe I have to
"update" the address lists collection?? The new contact list is on
end of the list of address lists. When I try to reorder the addresslist
list I get a readonly error; apparently the Exchange "global" address
list, which is first in the default list, is protected -- so how is it
reordered through the GUI?? (What, the Profile resolution protocol and
AddressList collection are completely different entities or something??
-- one was done and Mars and the other was done on Venus)

I want to have my new contact list promoted to an Address Book and
placed first in the resolution list -- clear and simple? Then,
building a distribution list should work with this bizarre method of
resolution of recipients -- why isn't there a simple link from the
distribution list and the address book?? Looks like a remnant of MAPI
complexity that makes a simple operation like copying the email address
) from the email address book an exercise in "It _won't_
let me do that!!"

I may have to add all the addresses to the "Contacts" address book for
resolution purposes (easy enough in the VBA) and then do the resolve.
Actually I did try this and I still only get about half the items on
the recipients list to resolve and add to the distribution list. I'm
currently looking into what is happening in this case, but as I started
out saying this should be easy. However, given the complete absence of
usability for building and using distribution lists through the Outlook
client GUI (a common need in the corporate world), I guess I shouldn't
be surprised.

Thanks for any help!

Dave Boyd


Eric wrote:
I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

Hi,

I'll try the propertly, thanks.

Not sure why the answer to my question on how to control the order of
address books has come back twice now that it can be done in a GUI
dialog. 1) I said that I can do that from the beginning. 2) The
reason for asking the question in the VBA programming section of
Outlook is to find out how to do that programmatically in VBA.

The reason I mention the Contacts folder is that this is already on the
address resolution list. However if the Global List is first then
there is still some problem in resolving myDistribution List.

I really want to set the resolution order so that myDistribution list
is resolved to addresses in myContact folder.

If this is still unclear and doesn't have a programmatic answer, I'll
put some sample code here.

Thanks for your patience.

Dave

Eric wrote:
The MAPIFolder.ShowAsOutlookAB property allows you to programmatically
specify whether any given Contacts folder is displayed as an Outlook Address
Book.

Also, Contact folders local to your Mailbox or .pst cannot be resolved by
other users (not sure if this is what you're implying), although I believe a
shared Contacts folder can be used as an Outlook Address Book.

Furthermore, only Exchange administrators can control what goes into the
Global Address List, whether they are entries or additional address lists.
You can also control which address list is displayed first and in which order
address lists are used for resolution in the Addressing dialog from the Tools
- Options menu in the Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and the distribution list? By the way this
is in the MAPI (Exchange) world.

The contacts list goes in next to the inbox and is shown as a "contact
list" because it is added to the folder collection as a olContactList
item, but the box to "show" as a contact list is not checked (this
information is from a post mortem examination of Outlook after
exporting the contact list from my Access VBA application to Outlook).
What is VBA for checking "Show this folder..."? Maybe I have to
"update" the address lists collection?? The new contact list is on
end of the list of address lists. When I try to reorder the addresslist
list I get a readonly error; apparently the Exchange "global" address
list, which is first in the default list, is protected -- so how is it
reordered through the GUI?? (What, the Profile resolution protocol and
AddressList collection are completely different entities or something??
-- one was done and Mars and the other was done on Venus)

I want to have my new contact list promoted to an Address Book and
placed first in the resolution list -- clear and simple? Then,
building a distribution list should work with this bizarre method of
resolution of recipients -- why isn't there a simple link from the
distribution list and the address book?? Looks like a remnant of MAPI
complexity that makes a simple operation like copying the email address
) from the email address book an exercise in "It _won't_
let me do that!!"

I may have to add all the addresses to the "Contacts" address book for
resolution purposes (easy enough in the VBA) and then do the resolve.
Actually I did try this and I still only get about half the items on
the recipients list to resolve and add to the distribution list. I'm
currently looking into what is happening in this case, but as I started
out saying this should be easy. However, given the complete absence of
usability for building and using distribution lists through the Outlook
client GUI (a common need in the corporate world), I guess I shouldn't
be surprised.

Thanks for any help!

Dave Boyd


Eric wrote:
I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

What I don't understand is WHY you have to change the order of address
books/name resolution programmatically, if you can do it in the UI and if
this is just for yourself.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Hi,

I'll try the propertly, thanks.

Not sure why the answer to my question on how to control the order of
address books has come back twice now that it can be done in a GUI
dialog. 1) I said that I can do that from the beginning. 2) The
reason for asking the question in the VBA programming section of
Outlook is to find out how to do that programmatically in VBA.

The reason I mention the Contacts folder is that this is already on the
address resolution list. However if the Global List is first then
there is still some problem in resolving myDistribution List.

I really want to set the resolution order so that myDistribution list
is resolved to addresses in myContact folder.

If this is still unclear and doesn't have a programmatic answer, I'll
put some sample code here.

Thanks for your patience.

Dave

Eric wrote:
The MAPIFolder.ShowAsOutlookAB property allows you to programmatically
specify whether any given Contacts folder is displayed as an Outlook Address
Book.

Also, Contact folders local to your Mailbox or .pst cannot be resolved by
other users (not sure if this is what you're implying), although I believe a
shared Contacts folder can be used as an Outlook Address Book.

Furthermore, only Exchange administrators can control what goes into the
Global Address List, whether they are entries or additional address lists.
You can also control which address list is displayed first and in which order
address lists are used for resolution in the Addressing dialog from the Tools
- Options menu in the Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and the distribution list? By the way this
is in the MAPI (Exchange) world.

The contacts list goes in next to the inbox and is shown as a "contact
list" because it is added to the folder collection as a olContactList
item, but the box to "show" as a contact list is not checked (this
information is from a post mortem examination of Outlook after
exporting the contact list from my Access VBA application to Outlook).
What is VBA for checking "Show this folder..."? Maybe I have to
"update" the address lists collection?? The new contact list is on
end of the list of address lists. When I try to reorder the addresslist
list I get a readonly error; apparently the Exchange "global" address
list, which is first in the default list, is protected -- so how is it
reordered through the GUI?? (What, the Profile resolution protocol and
AddressList collection are completely different entities or something??
-- one was done and Mars and the other was done on Venus)

I want to have my new contact list promoted to an Address Book and
placed first in the resolution list -- clear and simple? Then,
building a distribution list should work with this bizarre method of
resolution of recipients -- why isn't there a simple link from the
distribution list and the address book?? Looks like a remnant of MAPI
complexity that makes a simple operation like copying the email address
) from the email address book an exercise in "It _won't_
let me do that!!"

I may have to add all the addresses to the "Contacts" address book for
resolution purposes (easy enough in the VBA) and then do the resolve.
Actually I did try this and I still only get about half the items on
the recipients list to resolve and add to the distribution list. I'm
currently looking into what is happening in this case, but as I started
out saying this should be easy. However, given the complete absence of
usability for building and using distribution lists through the Outlook
client GUI (a common need in the corporate world), I guess I shouldn't
be surprised.

Thanks for any help!

Dave Boyd


Eric wrote:
I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

Eric,

I see your problem, it's not for myself. The Access application has
been distributed to the corporate team working on a particular project,
call it Project X. The team members need to communicate with others on
the Project X Contacts List. The distribution list feature of the
Access application is a key feature. Each member should be able to
send email information to a set or subset of the Project. This is
called "collaboration".

As a team leader on Project X, I find the contacts features in Outlook
to be difficult to use -- the multitude of fields in the contacts list
is _never_ used beyond a few key ones like name and telephone numbers
and ... _the_ key field --email address-- is, in many Outlook usage
scenarios, half buried in unusable (ie cut and paste doesn't work!)
MAPI clutter.

So to reiterate: The Access application is distributed to each member
(about a hundred) in a useful table with fields for name, telephone#,
email address, organization, building, role etc. The Access
application has a switchboard with "View" and "Export to Outlook".

Never had to explain my application to get a technical explanation, is
this stuff secret? You can send the answer to me privately if it
shouldn't be shown to the great unwashed masses. Is it changing
dramatically and rapidly? In the conservative corporate IT world, we
just migrated from Office 97 to Office 2003 last week , so no worries
there.

Or is the real answer that Outlook is such a patched mess that it can't
be done programmatically?

Dave

PS By the way the "Global Address Book", is not global across these
project team members in case you want/need a justification for every
feature of the application before answering. The GUI method works, but
trying to rearrange the order programmatically seems to give an access
violation and I'm not sure which list/cache is used to do the
"resolution". A reasonable answer might involve updating a "cache"
somewhere as well as explaining how the order of the resolution list is
manipulated.

Eric wrote:
What I don't understand is WHY you have to change the order of address
books/name resolution programmatically, if you can do it in the UI and if
this is just for yourself.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Hi,

I'll try the propertly, thanks.

Not sure why the answer to my question on how to control the order of
address books has come back twice now that it can be done in a GUI
dialog. 1) I said that I can do that from the beginning. 2) The
reason for asking the question in the VBA programming section of
Outlook is to find out how to do that programmatically in VBA.

The reason I mention the Contacts folder is that this is already on the
address resolution list. However if the Global List is first then
there is still some problem in resolving myDistribution List.

I really want to set the resolution order so that myDistribution list
is resolved to addresses in myContact folder.

If this is still unclear and doesn't have a programmatic answer, I'll
put some sample code here.

Thanks for your patience.

Dave

Eric wrote:
The MAPIFolder.ShowAsOutlookAB property allows you to programmatically
specify whether any given Contacts folder is displayed as an Outlook Address
Book.

Also, Contact folders local to your Mailbox or .pst cannot be resolved by
other users (not sure if this is what you're implying), although I believe a
shared Contacts folder can be used as an Outlook Address Book.

Furthermore, only Exchange administrators can control what goes into the
Global Address List, whether they are entries or additional address lists.
You can also control which address list is displayed first and in which order
address lists are used for resolution in the Addressing dialog from the Tools
- Options menu in the Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and the distribution list? By the way this
is in the MAPI (Exchange) world.

The contacts list goes in next to the inbox and is shown as a "contact
list" because it is added to the folder collection as a olContactList
item, but the box to "show" as a contact list is not checked (this
information is from a post mortem examination of Outlook after
exporting the contact list from my Access VBA application to Outlook).
What is VBA for checking "Show this folder..."? Maybe I have to
"update" the address lists collection?? The new contact list is on
end of the list of address lists. When I try to reorder the addresslist
list I get a readonly error; apparently the Exchange "global" address
list, which is first in the default list, is protected -- so how is it
reordered through the GUI?? (What, the Profile resolution protocol and
AddressList collection are completely different entities or something??
-- one was done and Mars and the other was done on Venus)

I want to have my new contact list promoted to an Address Book and
placed first in the resolution list -- clear and simple? Then,
building a distribution list should work with this bizarre method of
resolution of recipients -- why isn't there a simple link from the
distribution list and the address book?? Looks like a remnant of MAPI
complexity that makes a simple operation like copying the email address
) from the email address book an exercise in "It _won't_
let me do that!!"

I may have to add all the addresses to the "Contacts" address book for
resolution purposes (easy enough in the VBA) and then do the resolve.
Actually I did try this and I still only get about half the items on
the recipients list to resolve and add to the distribution list. I'm
currently looking into what is happening in this case, but as I started
out saying this should be easy. However, given the complete absence of
usability for building and using distribution lists through the Outlook
client GUI (a common need in the corporate world), I guess I shouldn't
be surprised.

Thanks for any help!

Dave Boyd


Eric wrote:
I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

You mentioned that you have tried to rearrange the order of the address lists
programmatically - I'd be very interested in hearing how you are doing this;
could you post some sample code please?

You are also being very quick to shoot down Outlook in terms of being unable
to meet your needs, but I am still at a loss to understand what your key
difficulty is. If you want to ensure that addresses are resolved, ensure
that it's containing list is published as an Outlook Address Book. If you
want to ensure that certain addresses are resolved first, use the GUI to
control this on a per-profile basis. However, as long as you don't have
duplicate information the order of resolution shouldn't really matter as long
as addresses are resolved, which they will if they exist.

Furthermore, Contacts in Outlook are only as unwieldy as you make them out
to be. Views can be customized to only display frequently used fields, and
the Contact forms themselves can be designed to show only frequently used
fields.

How exactly does Access fit into this? Are you linking Outlook Address
Books as a table in the database? Are you using Access VBA to control
Outlook for sending e-mails? Please give me some more specifics as to the
functionality of your current solution and I'll endeavour to address any pain
points.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

I see your problem, it's not for myself. The Access application has
been distributed to the corporate team working on a particular project,
call it Project X. The team members need to communicate with others on
the Project X Contacts List. The distribution list feature of the
Access application is a key feature. Each member should be able to
send email information to a set or subset of the Project. This is
called "collaboration".

As a team leader on Project X, I find the contacts features in Outlook
to be difficult to use -- the multitude of fields in the contacts list
is _never_ used beyond a few key ones like name and telephone numbers
and ... _the_ key field --email address-- is, in many Outlook usage
scenarios, half buried in unusable (ie cut and paste doesn't work!)
MAPI clutter.

So to reiterate: The Access application is distributed to each member
(about a hundred) in a useful table with fields for name, telephone#,
email address, organization, building, role etc. The Access
application has a switchboard with "View" and "Export to Outlook".

Never had to explain my application to get a technical explanation, is
this stuff secret? You can send the answer to me privately if it
shouldn't be shown to the great unwashed masses. Is it changing
dramatically and rapidly? In the conservative corporate IT world, we
just migrated from Office 97 to Office 2003 last week , so no worries
there.

Or is the real answer that Outlook is such a patched mess that it can't
be done programmatically?

Dave

PS By the way the "Global Address Book", is not global across these
project team members in case you want/need a justification for every
feature of the application before answering. The GUI method works, but
trying to rearrange the order programmatically seems to give an access
violation and I'm not sure which list/cache is used to do the
"resolution". A reasonable answer might involve updating a "cache"
somewhere as well as explaining how the order of the resolution list is
manipulated.

Eric wrote:
What I don't understand is WHY you have to change the order of address
books/name resolution programmatically, if you can do it in the UI and if
this is just for yourself.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Hi,

I'll try the propertly, thanks.

Not sure why the answer to my question on how to control the order of
address books has come back twice now that it can be done in a GUI
dialog. 1) I said that I can do that from the beginning. 2) The
reason for asking the question in the VBA programming section of
Outlook is to find out how to do that programmatically in VBA.

The reason I mention the Contacts folder is that this is already on the
address resolution list. However if the Global List is first then
there is still some problem in resolving myDistribution List.

I really want to set the resolution order so that myDistribution list
is resolved to addresses in myContact folder.

If this is still unclear and doesn't have a programmatic answer, I'll
put some sample code here.

Thanks for your patience.

Dave

Eric wrote:
The MAPIFolder.ShowAsOutlookAB property allows you to programmatically
specify whether any given Contacts folder is displayed as an Outlook Address
Book.

Also, Contact folders local to your Mailbox or .pst cannot be resolved by
other users (not sure if this is what you're implying), although I believe a
shared Contacts folder can be used as an Outlook Address Book.

Furthermore, only Exchange administrators can control what goes into the
Global Address List, whether they are entries or additional address lists.
You can also control which address list is displayed first and in which order
address lists are used for resolution in the Addressing dialog from the Tools
- Options menu in the Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and the distribution list? By the way this
is in the MAPI (Exchange) world.

The contacts list goes in next to the inbox and is shown as a "contact
list" because it is added to the folder collection as a olContactList
item, but the box to "show" as a contact list is not checked (this
information is from a post mortem examination of Outlook after
exporting the contact list from my Access VBA application to Outlook).
What is VBA for checking "Show this folder..."? Maybe I have to
"update" the address lists collection?? The new contact list is on
end of the list of address lists. When I try to reorder the addresslist
list I get a readonly error; apparently the Exchange "global" address
list, which is first in the default list, is protected -- so how is it
reordered through the GUI?? (What, the Profile resolution protocol and
AddressList collection are completely different entities or something??
-- one was done and Mars and the other was done on Venus)

I want to have my new contact list promoted to an Address Book and
placed first in the resolution list -- clear and simple? Then,
building a distribution list should work with this bizarre method of
resolution of recipients -- why isn't there a simple link from the
distribution list and the address book?? Looks like a remnant of MAPI
complexity that makes a simple operation like copying the email address
) from the email address book an exercise in "It _won't_
let me do that!!"

I may have to add all the addresses to the "Contacts" address book for
resolution purposes (easy enough in the VBA) and then do the resolve.
Actually I did try this and I still only get about half the items on
the recipients list to resolve and add to the distribution list. I'm
currently looking into what is happening in this case, but as I started
out saying this should be easy. However, given the complete absence of
usability for building and using distribution lists through the Outlook
client GUI (a common need in the corporate world), I guess I shouldn't
be surprised.

Thanks for any help!

Dave Boyd


Eric wrote:
I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

Eric,

Here's a quick response (more to follow -- including source code):
Access VBA fits in since I haven't been able to export a contact list
from the Outlook GUI and share it with others. Perhaps Outlook doesn't
fit my needs because I'm ignorant -- that's a given -- so let's just
say, show me how to export a contact list, make a few addtions and
corrections to it and then email it to someone else so they can import
it and use it.

One problem with using the existing order for resolution is duplicates
in the Contacts folder. I want to provide the latest information
relevant to the Project is a new, separate Contacts folder. (Don't get
me started on duplicates -- adding them more than once seems to result
in random behavior by the target Contact list.)

Thanks,

Dave

Eric wrote:
You mentioned that you have tried to rearrange the order of the address lists
programmatically - I'd be very interested in hearing how you are doing this;
could you post some sample code please?

You are also being very quick to shoot down Outlook in terms of being unable
to meet your needs, but I am still at a loss to understand what your key
difficulty is. If you want to ensure that addresses are resolved, ensure
that it's containing list is published as an Outlook Address Book. If you
want to ensure that certain addresses are resolved first, use the GUI to
control this on a per-profile basis. However, as long as you don't have
duplicate information the order of resolution shouldn't really matter as long
as addresses are resolved, which they will if they exist.

Furthermore, Contacts in Outlook are only as unwieldy as you make them out
to be. Views can be customized to only display frequently used fields, and
the Contact forms themselves can be designed to show only frequently used
fields.

How exactly does Access fit into this? Are you linking Outlook Address
Books as a table in the database? Are you using Access VBA to control
Outlook for sending e-mails? Please give me some more specifics as to the
functionality of your current solution and I'll endeavour to address any pain
points.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

I see your problem, it's not for myself. The Access application has
been distributed to the corporate team working on a particular project,
call it Project X. The team members need to communicate with others on
the Project X Contacts List. The distribution list feature of the
Access application is a key feature. Each member should be able to
send email information to a set or subset of the Project. This is
called "collaboration".

As a team leader on Project X, I find the contacts features in Outlook
to be difficult to use -- the multitude of fields in the contacts list
is _never_ used beyond a few key ones like name and telephone numbers
and ... _the_ key field --email address-- is, in many Outlook usage
scenarios, half buried in unusable (ie cut and paste doesn't work!)
MAPI clutter.

So to reiterate: The Access application is distributed to each member
(about a hundred) in a useful table with fields for name, telephone#,
email address, organization, building, role etc. The Access
application has a switchboard with "View" and "Export to Outlook".

Never had to explain my application to get a technical explanation, is
this stuff secret? You can send the answer to me privately if it
shouldn't be shown to the great unwashed masses. Is it changing
dramatically and rapidly? In the conservative corporate IT world, we
just migrated from Office 97 to Office 2003 last week , so no worries
there.

Or is the real answer that Outlook is such a patched mess that it can't
be done programmatically?

Dave

PS By the way the "Global Address Book", is not global across these
project team members in case you want/need a justification for every
feature of the application before answering. The GUI method works, but
trying to rearrange the order programmatically seems to give an access
violation and I'm not sure which list/cache is used to do the
"resolution". A reasonable answer might involve updating a "cache"
somewhere as well as explaining how the order of the resolution list is
manipulated.

Eric wrote:
What I don't understand is WHY you have to change the order of address
books/name resolution programmatically, if you can do it in the UI and if
this is just for yourself.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Hi,

I'll try the propertly, thanks.

Not sure why the answer to my question on how to control the order of
address books has come back twice now that it can be done in a GUI
dialog. 1) I said that I can do that from the beginning. 2) The
reason for asking the question in the VBA programming section of
Outlook is to find out how to do that programmatically in VBA.

The reason I mention the Contacts folder is that this is already on the
address resolution list. However if the Global List is first then
there is still some problem in resolving myDistribution List.

I really want to set the resolution order so that myDistribution list
is resolved to addresses in myContact folder.

If this is still unclear and doesn't have a programmatic answer, I'll
put some sample code here.

Thanks for your patience.

Dave

Eric wrote:
The MAPIFolder.ShowAsOutlookAB property allows you to programmatically
specify whether any given Contacts folder is displayed as an Outlook Address
Book.

Also, Contact folders local to your Mailbox or .pst cannot be resolved by
other users (not sure if this is what you're implying), although I believe a
shared Contacts folder can be used as an Outlook Address Book.

Furthermore, only Exchange administrators can control what goes into the
Global Address List, whether they are entries or additional address lists.
You can also control which address list is displayed first and in which order
address lists are used for resolution in the Addressing dialog from the Tools
- Options menu in the Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and the distribution list? By the way this
is in the MAPI (Exchange) world.

The contacts list goes in next to the inbox and is shown as a "contact
list" because it is added to the folder collection as a olContactList
item, but the box to "show" as a contact list is not checked (this
information is from a post mortem examination of Outlook after
exporting the contact list from my Access VBA application to Outlook).
What is VBA for checking "Show this folder..."? Maybe I have to
"update" the address lists collection?? The new contact list is on
end of the list of address lists. When I try to reorder the addresslist
list I get a readonly error; apparently the Exchange "global" address
list, which is first in the default list, is protected -- so how is it
reordered through the GUI?? (What, the Profile resolution protocol and
AddressList collection are completely different entities or something??
-- one was done and Mars and the other was done on Venus)

I want to have my new contact list promoted to an Address Book and
placed first in the resolution list -- clear and simple? Then,
building a distribution list should work with this bizarre method of
resolution of recipients -- why isn't there a simple link from the
distribution list and the address book?? Looks like a remnant of MAPI
complexity that makes a simple operation like copying the email address
) from the email address book an exercise in "It _won't_
let me do that!!"

I may have to add all the addresses to the "Contacts" address book for
resolution purposes (easy enough in the VBA) and then do the resolve.
Actually I did try this and I still only get about half the items on
the recipients list to resolve and add to the distribution list. I'm
currently looking into what is happening in this case, but as I started
out saying this should be easy. However, given the complete absence of
usability for building and using distribution lists through the Outlook
client GUI (a common need in the corporate world), I guess I shouldn't
be surprised.

Thanks for any help!

Dave Boyd


Eric wrote:
I believe your e-mail addresses/Contacts will resolve if you configure the
Contacts folder containing that data via the Outlook Address Book tab in the
folder's Properties page. If you check off "Show this folder as an e-mail
Address Book" the Contacts in the folder can now be resolved against an
e-mail address or name.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"daveboyd" wrote:

Hello,

I want to add a distribution list to a new contact list. I can do this
using the contact list name adding this to a temporary recipients list
and then resolveall and addmembers. Unfortunately, this appears to not
work for all the contacts because some contacts are not on the
resolution location list (they are only in the new contact list).


It works if I manually set the new contact list in the address book
resolution list, but there's got to be an easier way. Why doesn't
resolve allow a list of address books?


Do I have to programmitically vba the new contact list into the
resolution list just to make dist lists from a newly defined contact
list?? What would this code look like?


Thanks!

You can easily export a Contacts folder to a .pst file that you can e-mail to
another user. Choose "Import and Export..." from the File menu in Outlook.

However, if you are both in the same Exchange organization, you can share
access to your default Mailbox folders (Contacts, Tasks, etc.) through the
Delegates tab in Outlook's Options dialog. Then other users can open your
folder from "File - Open - Other User's Folder...". They can't use a
shared Contacts folder as an Outlook Address Book for address resolution
though. A better alternative is to put shared Contacts in a Public Folder,
which CAN be used as an Outlook Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Here's a quick response (more to follow -- including source code):
Access VBA fits in since I haven't been able to export a contact list
from the Outlook GUI and share it with others. Perhaps Outlook doesn't
fit my needs because I'm ignorant -- that's a given -- so let's just
say, show me how to export a contact list, make a few addtions and
corrections to it and then email it to someone else so they can import
it and use it.

One problem with using the existing order for resolution is duplicates
in the Contacts folder. I want to provide the latest information
relevant to the Project is a new, separate Contacts folder. (Don't get
me started on duplicates -- adding them more than once seems to result
in random behavior by the target Contact list.)

Thanks,

Dave

Eric wrote:
You mentioned that you have tried to rearrange the order of the address lists
programmatically - I'd be very interested in hearing how you are doing this;
could you post some sample code please?

You are also being very quick to shoot down Outlook in terms of being unable
to meet your needs, but I am still at a loss to understand what your key
difficulty is. If you want to ensure that addresses are resolved, ensure
that it's containing list is published as an Outlook Address Book. If you
want to ensure that certain addresses are resolved first, use the GUI to
control this on a per-profile basis. However, as long as you don't have
duplicate information the order of resolution shouldn't really matter as long
as addresses are resolved, which they will if they exist.

Furthermore, Contacts in Outlook are only as unwieldy as you make them out
to be. Views can be customized to only display frequently used fields, and
the Contact forms themselves can be designed to show only frequently used
fields.

How exactly does Access fit into this? Are you linking Outlook Address
Books as a table in the database? Are you using Access VBA to control
Outlook for sending e-mails? Please give me some more specifics as to the
functionality of your current solution and I'll endeavour to address any pain
points.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

I see your problem, it's not for myself. The Access application has
been distributed to the corporate team working on a particular project,
call it Project X. The team members need to communicate with others on
the Project X Contacts List. The distribution list feature of the
Access application is a key feature. Each member should be able to
send email information to a set or subset of the Project. This is
called "collaboration".

As a team leader on Project X, I find the contacts features in Outlook
to be difficult to use -- the multitude of fields in the contacts list
is _never_ used beyond a few key ones like name and telephone numbers
and ... _the_ key field --email address-- is, in many Outlook usage
scenarios, half buried in unusable (ie cut and paste doesn't work!)
MAPI clutter.

So to reiterate: The Access application is distributed to each member
(about a hundred) in a useful table with fields for name, telephone#,
email address, organization, building, role etc. The Access
application has a switchboard with "View" and "Export to Outlook".

Never had to explain my application to get a technical explanation, is
this stuff secret? You can send the answer to me privately if it
shouldn't be shown to the great unwashed masses. Is it changing
dramatically and rapidly? In the conservative corporate IT world, we
just migrated from Office 97 to Office 2003 last week , so no worries
there.

Or is the real answer that Outlook is such a patched mess that it can't
be done programmatically?

Dave

PS By the way the "Global Address Book", is not global across these
project team members in case you want/need a justification for every
feature of the application before answering. The GUI method works, but
trying to rearrange the order programmatically seems to give an access
violation and I'm not sure which list/cache is used to do the
"resolution". A reasonable answer might involve updating a "cache"
somewhere as well as explaining how the order of the resolution list is
manipulated.

Eric wrote:
What I don't understand is WHY you have to change the order of address
books/name resolution programmatically, if you can do it in the UI and if
this is just for yourself.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Hi,

I'll try the propertly, thanks.

Not sure why the answer to my question on how to control the order of
address books has come back twice now that it can be done in a GUI
dialog. 1) I said that I can do that from the beginning. 2) The
reason for asking the question in the VBA programming section of
Outlook is to find out how to do that programmatically in VBA.

The reason I mention the Contacts folder is that this is already on the
address resolution list. However if the Global List is first then
there is still some problem in resolving myDistribution List.

I really want to set the resolution order so that myDistribution list
is resolved to addresses in myContact folder.

If this is still unclear and doesn't have a programmatic answer, I'll
put some sample code here.

Thanks for your patience.

Dave

Eric wrote:
The MAPIFolder.ShowAsOutlookAB property allows you to programmatically
specify whether any given Contacts folder is displayed as an Outlook Address
Book.

Also, Contact folders local to your Mailbox or .pst cannot be resolved by
other users (not sure if this is what you're implying), although I believe a
shared Contacts folder can be used as an Outlook Address Book.

Furthermore, only Exchange administrators can control what goes into the
Global Address List, whether they are entries or additional address lists.
You can also control which address list is displayed first and in which order
address lists are used for resolution in the Addressing dialog from the Tools
- Options menu in the Address Book.

--
Eric Legault (Outlook MVP, MCDBA, MCTS: Messaging & Collaboration)
Try Picture Attachments Wizard for Outlook:
http://www.collaborativeinnovations.ca
Blog: http://blogs.officezealot.com/legault/


"davyb" wrote:

Eric,

Thanks for the reply! I can get it to work exactly the way I want by
doing a lot of manual gui manipulation of the Outlook address book
resolution list. That is, if the new contact list is an "Address Book"
and has been put as the first item in the Profile's address resolution
list.

My question is how do I do that in the Access application that is
building the contacts list and