Moving Calendar Entries

  • Thread starter Thread starter Paul Mateer
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Paul Mateer

Hi folks.

I've been playing around with Outlook and found that you can drag
calendar items between calendar folders no problem, but if you drag a
calendar item to a mail folder Outlook automatically creates an email
based upon the calendar item.

That's fine, however it automatically presents me with the standard
mail form so that I can supply values for the From, To, etc. fields.
The problem is that I don't actually want it to do that - I want it to
store the mail item that it creates in the target folder (I don't care
about the other details).

Is there any way to change the behaviour of Outlook so that it will
automatically create and save the email, rather than presenting me
with the aforementioned form?

Thanks fo any help offered.

Paul Mateer
Meridio Limited.
 
Can't you just save the message without filling in the fields you don't want
to use? Also note that any mail message saves automatically in Drafts.
You'll need to move it to the desired folder.

Maybe it would be helpful if you explained just what you're trying to
accomplish with this procedure.
 
Hi Sue. Thanks for replying. I should have given an overview of what
I'm trying to achieve.

One of my companies products is a MAPI message store provider that
interfaces with our document and records management system. It allows
customers to store all their emails in a secure repository.

One particular customer wants to be able to store calendar entries as
well as emails. They can drag emails into the folders in our message
store, but when they drag calendar entries the entry is converted to
an email and the new email form appears. They can either save it at
this point (which places the saved email in the drafts folder, as you
mentioned) or they can send it to themselves. Either way they wind up
with an email that they can then drag into our message store.

The customer feels that this 2 step approach is inconvenient and
ideally would like to be able to drag the calendar entries directly
into the folder(s) in our message store and have them saved there,
without the need for the email form to be presented, etc.

The problem seems to be the default Outlook action when a calendar
entry is dragged onto an email folder, as the same problem occurs if
you drag a calendar entry into your inbox.

Obviously I could avoid the problem by enhancing the message store
implementation to support Calendar folders, but I wondered if there
was a simpler solution. That's why I was asking if it were possible to
force Outlook to just automatically save the email (generated to
encapsulate the calendar entry) in the target folder, in the same way
that it would if the user had actually dragged in an email.

Regards,

Paul Mateer
Meridio Limited
 
No, it's not possible to bypass Outlook's default behavior, at least not by
any simple means. Remember that mail items are designed to be sent, not
create unsaved in folders.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of
Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers
 
Thanks again for the reply. I suspected as much but thought that I
should check anyway.

Regards,

Paul Mateer
Meridio Limited
 
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