How to create a custom Outlook item?

Question

I understand that Outlook has installed the elements, i.e. mail, task, calendar, notes, etc. How to create a custom item that Outlook recognizes as others? I know that when you add a contact manager, it creates elements such as "Features"

Can you override an element or inherit an element and change / add properties and methods?

examples:

olAppointmentItem 1 Represents an AppointmentItem olContactItem 2 Represents a ContactItem olDistributionListItem 7 Represents an DistListItem olJournalItem 4 Represents a JournalItem olMailItem 0 Represents a MailItem olNoteItem 5 Represents a NoteItem olPostItem 6 Represents a PostItem olTaskItem 3 Represents a TaskItem 

Answer 1

You cannot create new "types"; but you can certainly reuse existing types by adding your own properties.

This comment is incorrect. you can use custom forms, you just need to publish them to the form library first and make them available to users. they are usually based on the design of one of the default item types and can also be associated with a folder as the default item type.

Edit: (update message as requested by comment)

A. Creating and publishing a custom form - http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/outlook/HA012106101033.aspx

C. programmatically create an instance of a custom form.

 Outlook.Application olApp = new Outlook.Application(); //mapifolder for earlier versions (such as ol 2003) Outlook.Folder contacts = olApp.Session.GetDefaultFolder(Outlook.olDefaultFolders.olFolderContacts); //must start with IPM. & must be derived from a base item type, in this case contactItem. Outlook.ContactItem itm = (Outlook.ContactItem)contacts.Items.Add(@"IPM.Contact.CustomMessageClass"); itm.Display(false); 

Answer 2

Outlook has the ability to create custom forms. You are using the bultin form designer for Outlook, there is one built all versions of Outlook. You can start a design session with tools | Forms | Create a Form command. Alternatively, open any Outlook item in Outlook 2003 or earlier and select "Tools | Forms | Design this form.

When you create a form on which you start to base on an outgoing form, such a meeting, task, etc. The closest thing to an empty form is the message form.

Forms may contain VBScript code to respond to user actions - checking data, synchronizing it with databases, creating new Outlook items, etc. To add code as soon as you are in the form design mode, click the View Code command on the toolbar or ribbon.

You can then publish your form to the Organization Forms library so that each of them has access to it. They can also be published directly to the folder. Personal forms are published either in a folder or in your Personal form.

The Outlook help contains quite a lot of reference documentation for this kind of thing, also google will return a lot of sites that will show you how to do this.

Answer 3

You cannot create new "types"; but you can reuse existing types by adding your own properties.