Outlook Tips--Flagging a Change in a Custom Form

My company's sales department uses a custom contact form with a drop-down list that lets you mark the contact Customer, Prospect, or Open. How can I configure Outlook to automatically flag the contact when the field's value changes?

—Andrew McCarty

The simplest solution that I can think of is to add the code in Listing 1, page 6, to your custom form, change Type to the name of the property bound to the drop-down list, and republish the form with an updated version number.

When the item opens, this code puts the current value for Type into a module-level variable, m_strType. Then, when the user saves the item, the code checks the current value for Type against the original value stored in m_strType. If they're different, the code updates the built-in BillingInformation property with the original value for Type.

To make the most of this information, create a view that filters only the items in which BillingInformation isn't blank. Display the BillingInformation, Modified, and Type fields to quickly see which items were modified and when, along with their original and modified values for the Type property.