Do I have an option other than Custom Form?

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Guest

Exchange (SBS) 2003/Office 2003 - using a public folder for contacts. Over
6000 contacts.

The "created date" is very important to us - however due to various things
(such as updateing large numbers of contacts at a time) we export/import -
which changes all the created dates. I created a form that uses the user
field 4 with an initial value of the current day.

Dealing with a custom form, especially when importing/exporting is a royal
pain!

Is there another way I can automate a date in a contact field without the
difficulties of a custom form?

Thanks!
 
You have three choices -- a custom form, a COM add-in (which would need to
be installed on each user's machine), or possibly an Exchange event sink.

Why are you importing and exporting? If you leave the items in place and
update the items themselves, the created date will never change.
 
Sue,

Thanks for answering.

The first time we got burned by the created date was migrating from Exchange
2000 - 2003.

The reason I started doing import/export was to deal with large numbers of
changes.

Example - for some reason about 1/3 of our contacts (2000+) started printing
the country during a mail merge. Why those contacts included it and the rest
did not, I don't know. In order to get the mailing out in time, I exported
to Excel - removed the country - and imported back in.

The current (and more important) issue is when we recieve a large list of
prospects (just under 1000). The list is really updates for us as it
contains members of an organization we've been part of for years. So 75 -
85%+ are duplicates and 25% or less are new entries.

We cannot allow Outlook to create duplicate contacts for obvious reasons.

We cannot allow Outlook to update the contact information because important
existing information (i.e. user fields 1 and 2) would be overwritten, while
additional information (categories) are not added to the existing contact.

In the past this list was only added every couple of years (because they
were writing down the names Outlook reported as a duplication and then
manually checking each duplicate and entering the changes). I've been asked
to find a way that it can be done at least 2x per year if not every quarter.

My thought has been to export from Outlook to a database (Access would
probably work) so it can be compared to the incoming list. Automate the
identification of duplicates and new contacts. Import new contacts. Provide
a UI for reconcilling changes in the duplicates and then importing the
changed contacts allowing Outlook to overwrite the existing contact.

Problem is, the changed contacts need their original created date.

With so many contacts (6000+) and the importance of that information, I get
very nervious when someone starts making a lot of changes. I would very much
prefer to make the changes in a sanitized area (excel or another folder),
confirm everything is correct and then add the updated contacts back to the
folder.

All suggestions/thoughts are greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
John
 
Bottom line is, if you make the changes anywhere other than in the Outlook
item, you'll lose the original creation date. You could, of course, put that
date into another Outlook property, using any of the three methods I
originally mentioned.

If it were my list, I'd automate the updates right in Outlook. You could
copy the original, non-updated item to a separate folder as a backup.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
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