Forms

Hi Lorraine, Thank you for your post and welcome to the forum.

In answer to your question: Whenever you open an item in Outlook, its contents are displayed in a form and the form is said to be in "Run" mode. Each standard item type, therefore, has an associated form design that allows Outlook to create and display messages, appointments, meeting invitations etc. To modify the form, you must switch to "Design" mode.

The form design is usually kept separate from the item contens, since the amount of data required to store the design is much higher than the amount of data typically contained in an item. This means that when an item such as an email message, a meeting invitation or a task is sent by Outlook, only the contents are sent, along with the name of the form design. When the item is opened by another user, their copy of Outlook will locate the relevant form design and use this to display the contents.

You use the Outlook Forms design environment to create a custom form, either from an item (based on a built in form) or from an Office file. You can then modify a form by adding and removing fields, controls, options and tabs. You can use an Office file to incorporate functionality from another Office program (such as Excel or Word) into a custom form. A form can be saved as a file (for use as a template or in another program) or in a forms library (to make the form available to others).

To create a new custom form follow these steps:

1. Choose the Tools>Forms>Design a Form command, A dialog box will be displayed.
2. Select the type of form you wish to base your custom form on and click on Open.
3. The form will open in Design view
4. Add the fields, controls and code that you want to your new form

Forms can consist of more than one page with controls that show the contents of the fields. In general you can customise up to five (5) pages on a form. For email messages and posts you can customise a sixth (6th) page.

There are numerous options that you can now follow to customise your form and the controls on it, to go through them all would take a few hours to say the least, however I am sure that you have got the jist and can continue on from this point.

Lets just say that Forms are pre-created and we as users can modify them within reason.

I hope that has helped, if so please click the resolved link, regards Pete