All works well when I open an item with the form, and click the toolbar
button (or run the associated macro).

When I open the item from Access using Outlook's VB object model, I see the
form, same as before, and the button.  When I click the button, though, the
VBA form opens up with the OK, Cancel, listbox, the works, but the listbox
is not populated (the Activate event handler hasn't run) and the OK and
Cancel buttons don't do anything (the Click handlers don't fire).

Which leads me to suspect that something needs to be dimensioned in the
Access code using the "WithEvents" keyword.  For example, the variable
referring to the Outlook item needs to be declared WithEvents, or something.
I tried this, naturally, and as you can tell it didn't work.

What am I missing?

--rbt

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
Lead Author, Professional Outlook 2000 Programming, Wrox Press
Co-author of "Programming Microsoft Outlook 2000", Chapters 8-13,
Appendices, Sams

--

For Outlook and VB Experts: http://escapecoms.homestead.com
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In Outlook:
----------
Items in this particular folder have a custom Outlook Form associated with
them.  On the toolbar, there's a button that runs the macro
RunSelectGrantCategories(), which looks like this:

Public Sub RunSelectGrantCategories()
    On Error GoTo criticalError
    Dim dlg As SelectGrantCategoriesDialog

    Set theItem = Application.ActiveInspector.CurrentItem
    Set dlg = New SelectGrantCategoriesDialog

    Load dlg
    With dlg
        .GrantCategoryArray = grantCategories()
        .NumGrantCategories = UBound(grantCategories, 1)
        .CatString = theItem.Categories
        .Show
    End With

    On Error GoTo noncriticalError
    If dlg.ChangeFlag Then theItem.Categories = dlg.CatString
    Unload dlg

    Exit Sub

criticalError:
    MsgBox "There was an error.  Try rerunning the Initialize_Handler
macro.", vbExclamation, "Error in Categories"
    Exit Sub

noncriticalError:
    Exit Sub

End Sub

This routine loads a VBA Form of the class SelectGrantCategoriesDialog, sets
some of the properties associated with the form, and then displays it.  The
form has event code associated with both itself and its contained controls;
for example, the UserForm_Activate event fills a listbox on the form from
the GrantCategoriesArray property, and the OK and Cancel buttons set
properties appropriately and close the form using their _Click event code.

As mentioned, everything runs fine when the Item Inspector is invoked from
Outlook and the button that triggers the macro clicked there.  However, when
the Item is displayed with an inspector from VBA code in Access, the event
code associated with the SelectGrantCategoriesDialog isn't triggered: the
Userform_Activate code doesn't happen, and the OK and Cancel buttons don't
do anything.

From Access:
-------------
There's a button on an Access form, that, when clicked, does the following:

    ' get the contact details for a given StubID, if we have one
    If Not IsNull(Me![StubID]) Then refreshContactDetails

    ' If there's a current Contact Item, display it
    If Not (cItem Is Nothing) Then
        cItem.Display True
    Else ' there's no current one, so create a new one
        If contactFolder Is Nothing Then
              ...

The line "cItem.Display True" brings up the contact in it's Outlook Form,
complete with custom button for displaying the dialog that's not working
right.

"cItem" is declared thusly:

    Dim cItem As ContactItem

in the General/Declarations section of the Access Form code.

refreshContactDetails() is also in the Form code; it looks like this:

Public Sub refreshContactDetails()
    ' Find the contact in the contacts folder corresponding to the
IndividualLink
    If contactFolder Is Nothing Then
        Set contactFolder = openFolder(contactFolderName)
    End If

    Set cItem = findContact(Me![StubID], contactFolder)

    ' Update the relevant fields
    If cItem Is Nothing Then
        Me![Address] = ""
        Me![Phone] = ""
    Else
        Me![Address] = cItem.BusinessAddress
        Me![Phone] = cItem.BusinessTelephoneNumber
    End If
End Sub

openFolder() is a utility routine in a separate Access module.  It looks
like this:

Public Function openFolder(folderName)
    On Error GoTo handleErr

    ' Open Outlook
    Set outlookApplication = New Outlook.Application

    ' Open MAPI Folders
    Set outlookNamespace = outlookApplication.GetNamespace("MAPI")

    ' Open folder
    Set parentFolder = FollowPath(outlookNamespace, networkPath)
    If parentFolder Is Nothing Then Set parentFolder =
FollowPath(outlookNamespace, localPath)
    Set openFolder = parentFolder.Folders(contactFolderName)
    Exit Function

handleErr:
    LogAnError ("OutlookFunctions:openFolder")

End Function

where "outlookApplication" is declared as an Object.  Finally,
findContact(), used to find a specific contact using the field "User1" in
the Outlook ContactItem, is another utility routine as follows:

Public Function findContact(ID, f)
    On Error GoTo handleErr

    ' Set a restriction on the Folder
    Set c = f.Items.Find("[User1] = '" & ID & "'")
    Set findContact = c
    Exit Function

handleErr:
    LogAnError ("OutlookFunctions:findContact")

End Function

Lots of bits and pieces.  Thanks for offering to take a quick gander at it.

--rbt

    - Start out with Outlook closed, Access open.
    - I hit the button in Access.  It finds the contact in Outlook and opens
an Inspector on it.
    - I hit the toolbar button in the Inspector that runs my custom VBA form
    - I get the dialog about enabling/disabling macros, since this is the
only instance of Outlook running.
    - The custom dialog form opens, and everything is fine!
    - I close the dialog, and close the Item Inspector.
    - I hit the button again in Access.
    - Inspector appears.  I hit the toolbar button.  No dialog about
enabling/disabling macros this time.
    - The custom dialog form opens, but events are disabled: the
Userform_Activate event didn't run, and the OK and Cancel buttons do
nothing.  I can close the dialog using the standard close gadget on the
window itself.

Is it me, or does the fact that it works once seem odd to y'all?

--rbt

    cItem.Display True

to

    cItem.Display

The difference is that the "True" parameter tells Outlook to display the
item inspector as a modal dialog.  Apparently this hoses the event handling
of dialogs invoked from that inspector.

For now, I'm happy to open the Outlook inspector as a non-modal window,
although I'm not sure of the ramifications for my code.  Correct me if I'm
wrong, but either this is way too subtle for me to follow, or it's a bug in
the way the Outlook object model works.  Before I send off a bug report,
anyone else have an opinion?

--rbt

My guess is your oddity is due to using modal Inspector windows. Get
rid of those and your events should fire.

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
Lead Author, Professional Outlook 2000 Programming, Wrox Press
Co-author of "Programming Microsoft Outlook 2000", Chapters 8-13,
Appendices, Sams

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
Lead Author, Professional Outlook 2000 Programming, Wrox Press
Co-author of "Programming Microsoft Outlook 2000", Chapters 8-13,
Appendices, Sams

--
Ken Slovak
[MVP - Outlook]
Lead Author, Professional Outlook 2000 Programming, Wrox Press
Co-author of "Programming Microsoft Outlook 2000", Chapters 8-13,
Appendices, Sams