Limiting Categories?

  • Thread starter Thread starter leah977
  • Start date Start date
L

leah977

I've created an event form for our departmental attendance calendar in
Outlook. On this form I have the following fields:

Subject = dropdown list of departmental employees
Categories = value field with checkboxes for possible leave type
(annual, sick, personal, etc)
Start & End
Hours = Custom number field required for total number of hours leave
taken

Here's where I have a problem. I want to limit the categories. What I
mean is, I only want the user to be able to choose one category, not
multiple. So when a second category is chosen the first category is
unchecked, or at the very least a warning pops up letting them know
they can only select one. I know this can be achieved with radio
buttons, but when I list "possible values" in properties it
automatically lists them with checkboxes. Did that make sense? Can
anyone help me?
 
Categories is a keyword-type data field and, therefore, by design accepts multiple values. To enforce selection of just a single category, you would need to use code behind the form (probably in the Item_Write event handler) to check the number of categories chosen and warn the user if they have more than one.

Another approach that might be easier to implement (but that I haven't tested) would be to bind the option buttons to a text field instead of Categories, then use a formula to set the value of the Categories propertie to that one text field.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
Thanks for your reply :) What I ended up doing was actually creating
the radio buttons I mentioned before and grouped them in a frame. In
the properties of each selection I designated it as "Categories" and
assigned the shorthand code (i.e. Annual Leave = AL) in the value
field. All I had to do was change the caption. Once I tooled around
with it a bit it seemed to work quite well.

I did, however, take a bit of your advice on the formula you mentioned.
I wanted the category to show up in the calendar view so I made
Location (which is usually shown in parenthesis next to the subject)
equal to Categories. It worked beautifully!
 
All good solutions! Sounds like you're finding that Outlook can be fun if you can stay flexible in your approach.
--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Outlook and Exchange solutions at http://www.slipstick.com
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming: Jumpstart
for Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
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