Need to have "job-number" included in all email printouts...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Philip Herlihy
  • Start date Start date
P

Philip Herlihy

I've been asked to come up with a way of making sure that all emails printed
out by colleagues in my organisation show a "job-number".

That means (ideally!) prompting users to enter one if they haven't already
when they try to print, and then getting the thing to appear on the paper.
We also need this to happen every time, so it needs to involve no extra
thinking or action on users' part!

We're using Outlook 2000 on a variety of desktops with a basic in-house POP3
server. I'm reasonably competent at VBA and forms design, but rather rusty,
so it would be good to have a steer in the right direction.

I've thought of putting "job-number" into the "categories" field, as you can
drag and drop entries in the "by category" view to add an existing value to
an item, and I can see how to add the Categories field to a custom form. We
could create a macro to check for an empty or invalid Categories string, and
prompt the user, and this macro could be installed under a "print" button
easily enough, although if folk are used to printing from the menus then the
macro wouldn't be called.

I bet there is a more elegant solution, though. Can anyone out there
suggest what it might be?

--
####################
## PH, London
####################
microsoft.public.outlook.printing, microsoft.public.outlook.program_forms,
microsoft.public.outlook.program_vba
 
I think you have! I did some more digging today, and this is the best I
could come up with (haven't yet been give a free hand to spend much time on
it).

Use the utlity from the ORK 2000 to allow me to change the default forms:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;241235

Then add a text box for either the "Billing Information" value, or
"Categories" (if multiple Job Numbers can apply) or create a custom field.
Set that box to insist on a non-null value, and optionally create validation
rules. Tick the box which says it should be printed, and then distribute
the form to everyone in the organisation. Looks like it might work, but
then, that's what testing's for!

Of course, if there was a way to have this value included in the header or
footer (can't find a suitable field code despite guessing at possible
undocumented options) then the problem only remains to make sure that folks
enter a suitable value.

--
####################
## PH, London
####################
Eric Legault said:
There isn't really a reliable mechanism for enforcing business rules prior
Click to expand...
to enabling Printing. You can trap the Print toolbar button/menu to
intercept the click and prevent printing based on an evaluation of your
business rules, but this can always be bypassed by CTRL+P.
The best approach is to enforce validation or entry of data in your form
Click to expand...
before it can be saved. Then you can ensure that when the user prints an
item, any data that needs to be in the item will be there.
 
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