Disabled ActiveX on Folder homepage in OL2003 SP1?

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  • Start date Start date
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Guest

Hello

My overall objective is to dispay a new window from a current Active
Explorer within the Outlook parent window. I realize that there is no
legitimate way to do this (that I can find)...

So far I have created a very simple ActiveX control that displays nicely in
a local .HTM file. The idea is to use the local file web page as a shim to
show the ActiveX.

When I place this as the folder homepage in Outlook 2003 SP1 it does not
display (just get the placeholder). It displays fine from within IE.

If I get nowhere with this, then I guess the next risky thing to try would
be all sorts of Win32 Find/SetParent() tricks - anyone ever done that
reliably?

Any tips on the general problem or this ActiveX issue in particular?

Thanks for any help,
David
 
Maybe I'm missing something big, but is there a reason why you're not using the Outlook View Control?

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
Sorry Sue, my explanation was a little poor - apologies.

What I want to do is build my own small UI window from within Outlook, i.e.
I want to do the following:

->User clicks on 'MyApp' Folder in their Personal Folders list
->Inbox list (or whatever) goes away
->My apps UI appears from within the Outlook UI.

The way I was approaching this was to use the Folders Homepage approach of
using a HTML file to show when the folder was clicked.

My understanding of the Outlook View Control (which could be wrong) is that
it is an ActiveX for showing an outlook style UI from within a webpage, i.e.
show your tasks or inbox from within a intranet page.

What I want to do is host a windows app inside outlook for my own UI, and I
was using the HTM page as a 'shim' to do that. I know via VSTO2005 I can trap
the Explorer.Active event, but that just lets me bring up a new window
outside the main outlook parent, i.e. doesn't look integrated like Newgater
or some of the Mendocino stuff does...

Does that make more sense?

- David
 
Yes, details help. A folder homepage is the way to go. If you want to show the items in any folder within your UI, the Outlook View Control will do that for you. You're setting WebViewURL and WebViewOn, right?

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
Actually I'm not doing any of this programmatically yet, although that's the
plan. I am just using the Folder->Properties and setting the example.htm
location manually.

The html page is trivial, i.e:

<html><head></head><body>
<p>Hello World</p>

<OBJECT classid=CLSID:C0F55EDC-3BA6-4A12-A0D0-571F64FFFB7C
id=idtest
width="500"
height="500"
codebase="outcontrol.ocx#ver=1,0,0,0">

<p>How are you?</p>
</body></html>

....and works fine it I look at in IE (with 'Enable ActiveX' of course). In
Outlook it just shows an empty box and never gets to the 'How are you' text'.

The mystery for me is that I can take the CLSID of the Outlook View Control,
or even something like the Macromedia Flash viewer COM object, and they both
work fine from within Outlook 2003 folder homepages - which is odd?

So what's so wrong with my little ActiveX - I built it in VC++ 2005 and it
behaves fine in the TestContainer too.

Thanks for your help,
David
 
Just an additional thought. Perhaps I need to mark the control as Safe for
Scripting, i.e. implement the IObjectSafety interface to make it display in
the folder HTML Render shell? Maybe it has to be signed too?

I can't find anything in the KB about this though, I guess I should crack
out an old copy of VB6 and go see??

Goodness- this is a lot of trouble, all I want to do is place a .NET winform
so that it appears as part of the main Outlook window, quite the journey...
 
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