Answering this pays: How to display custom fields in Outlook Contacts' Activities tab list?

  • Thread starter Thread starter MBParker
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MBParker

Answering This Pays. I understand your time isn't free. I will send a
send a little money via paypal to whomever can first give me a good
answer to this. Be sure to include a way to contact you.)

Question: How does one display custom fields in Outlook Contacts'
Activities tab list?

It's easy to do when viewing a contacts folder; for instance, just
display Field Chooser, then select "Custom-defined fields in folder..."
or click "New" to create a new one. But these options aren't available
in the Field Chooser (nor other Customize View -> Fields) when
displaying the Activites for a contact. How do customize them in this
way?

I can't find the answer in Google searching "Outlook Activites tab
custom field" nor searching google Groups.

But because EVERY item in Outlook can be linked to ANY NUMBER of
Contacts (causing the item to be listed in each of these Contacts
Activities tab, even if the Contact is renamed), linking an item to
contact and diplaying linked contacts in Activies seems the most
powerful and flexible way to organize items in Outlook (beats folders
(since an item can only be in one unless you copy it) and beats
categories (which break if you rename a category, and don't nest too
well); plus automatically categories email if a contact has that email
address); I have several nested contacts in in a directed, mostly
acyclic graph, plus the coolest linked Journal entries you can imagine.
However, this powerful use (probably more than the original Outlook
designers realized) is somewhat quite limited if the way to display
these links (Activities tab) can't (asymmetrically) display custom
fields as other (folder) views do. How to fix this?

Mike Parker, resume at www.Cytex.com/go/MBParker/Professional
 
Right-click the column headings, choose Field Chooser, and in the drop-down
list at the top, choose "user-defined fields in folder."

There are two catches to this, though, that make it relatively pointless:

1) If you are using an activity group that covers multiple folders, you may
get unexpected results if you add custom fields, since not every folder will
have the same fields defined.

2) You'd have to repeat the process for each contact, since changes to the
activities view cannot be persisted.

But that's the best you can do. Activities is one of those features that
could have been realized more fully.
 
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