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Outlook comes with a file named Outlook.txt that includes lists
of holidays that you can import into your personal Calendar folder.
But it doesn't know the exact day you use to observe a particular
holiday in your organization, and, in the case of Outlook 98, it's
oblivious to holidays outside a few English-speaking countries.
The Transmit Holidays form is a solution to make it easier for
administrators to distribute lists of company holidays and other
important dates to users. The compose page of the form includes a
regular message box where you enter the detail of the appointments
and events. Users who receive the form will see only an Add Holidays
button.
Version 7 (3 Dec 1999) adds this enhancement:
- Automatically generates a list of holidays from a calendar
folder. Ideally, you'll point it to a public folder that already
contains a company holiday calendar.
This form requires VBScript 2.0 or later. If you have Outlook 97
but not Internet Explorer 4.0 or 5.0, you will need to download
and install a newer version.
Setup | Usage
| Notes | Limitations
| Problems | More
Information
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Setup
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- Download the holiday.zip
file (11kb), then unzip it and open Holidays.oft in Outlook.
Choose Enable Macros so the form can test
whether you have the right version of VBScript.
- Follow the procedure below to publish the form to the
Organization Forms Library.
To publish a form with Outlook 97:
- In the open item that you want to publish as a form, choose File
| Publish Form As.
- In the Publish Form As dialog box, enter a Form
name, which will be used to select the form from the
folder menu or forms library.
- Click Publish In and select the location
where you want to publish the form, then click OK.
- Back in the Publish Form As dialog, click Publish.
To publish a form with Outlook 98 or Outlook 2000:
- In the open item that you want to publish as a form, choose Tools
| Forms | Publish Form.
- In the Publish Form As dialog box, use the Look
In list and Browse button to select
the location where you want to publish
the form.
- Give the form a Display name, which will be
used to select the form from the folder menu or forms library,
and Form name.
- Click the Publish button.
After publishing, the form is installed and ready to use.
Published form locations
Outlook forms can be published to three different types of form
"libraries":
| Personal Forms |
Library of forms stored in your Personal Folders or Exchange
Server mailbox. |
| Organization Forms |
Library of forms stored on the Exchange Server for group
use. You need permission from the Exchange Server
administrator to publish to this library. |
| Folder Forms |
Library of forms associated with a particular folder, either
in your mailbox or Personal Folders or in a public folder on
the Exchange Server. |
To remove a published form, choose Tools | Options |
Manage Forms, and use the Forms Manager that pops up. This
function is not available in Outlook 98 or Outlook 2000 in Internet
Mail Only mode, only in Corporate/Workgroup mode.
For more information on distributing forms, see How
do I distribute Outlook forms to other users? |
Usage
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You'll need to create a folder holding a separate Outlook
Appointment item for each holiday. These can be either one-time or
recurring holidays, and they may be either all-day events or
covering a particular time range. The following properties will be
copied from the Appointment items you create to those created in the
users' Calendar folders:
Subject
Start time
End time
All-day event
Reminder (True or False)
Reminder time
Show time as (Free = 0, Tentative = 1, Busy = 2, OutOfOffice =
3)
After you have created the holidays you want to transmit, choose Compose
| Choose Form (Outlook 97) or Tools | Forms |
Choose Form (Outlook 98 or Outlook 2000), and select the
form you published above.
After the form opens, click the Generate Holiday List button and,
when prompted, select the folder that contains your holidays and
indicate what year you want to generate holidays for. (Only one year
at a time is allowed in this version.) This will fill the body of
the message with a %-delimited list of information about each
holiday. You can edit this list before sending, following the
instructions on the form.
Enter recipients in the To field. Change the Subject, if desired.
Send the form as usual.
When a user opens the item, it will show an Add Holidays button
and a check box for marking all holidays with the Holiday category.
The user simply clicks that to add the holidays from your message to
his or her Calendar folder. After the items are added, a message
pops up reporting on what actions were taken and warning the user
not to run it again or else duplicates will be created.
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Notes
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You can
use this form to distribute any kind of appointments -- not just
holidays -- without having to send meeting invitations. |
Limitations
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If you
need to enter multiple- day events, make sure you set All-Day Event
= False and put in the exact dates you want included, ending at
midnight of the day following the day the event ends. For example,
if you want the item to end of Jan. 4, 2000, for example, set the
End Date to 1/5/2000 and the End Time to 12:00 AM. |
Problems
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Nothing in
the form prevents users from adding the same holidays more than
once. If this happens, the easiest way to clean out duplicates is to
apply the By Category view to the Calendar folder and expand the
Holiday category to see the duplicates. Adding the Modified date
field to the view can also help distinguish holidays adding in one
batch from those added earlier. |
More Information
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Updated 03 Dec 1999
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