OL2000: How to Populate a Combo Box with Your Contacts

• Create a new Contact form and place a ComboBox1 control on the form.
• Create the VBScript code that populates ComboBox1 with the FullName field of all of your contacts.
• Publish the new form so that the Item_Open event runs when you open the new Contact form.
  
• Use the new form to expose the combo box list containing your contacts.

Create a New Contact Form and ComboBox1 Control

1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Contact.
2. On the Tools menu, point to Forms, and then click Design This Form.
3. Click the P.2 tab in the form.
4. On the Form menu, click Display This Page.
5. On the Form menu, click Rename Page. In the Page Name box, type TabName, and then click OK.
6. On the Form menu, click Control Toolbox. Drag the ComboBox control to the form TabName page.

Create the VBScript Code to Populate ComboBox1

1. On the Form menu, click View Code. This opens the Script Editor.
2. Type the following code in the Script Editor.

   Sub Item_Open
   
      ' Set the NameSpace object
      Set objOLNS = Application.GetNameSpace("MAPI")
   
      ' Set the Contacts folder, which is in the MAPI NameSpace
      Set objContactFolder = objOLNS.GetDefaultFolder(10)
   
      ' Set the collection of all Contact items
      Set objAllContacts = objContactFolder.Items
   
      ' Set the object referring to the form page the combo box is on
      Set objFormTab = Item.GetInspector.ModifiedFormPages("TabName")
   
      ' Set the object referring to the combo box
      Set objCombo = objFormTab.Controls("ComboBox1")
   
      ' Loop through all of the contacts
      For Each Contact in objAllContacts
         ' Add the current contact's full name to the combo box
         objCombo.AddItem Contact.FullName
      Next
   End Sub
   					

3. In the Script Editor, on the File menu, click Close.

Publish the New Contact Form

1. In the form, on the Tools menu, point to Forms and then click Publish Form As.
2. Confirm that Look In is set to Outlook Folders and the Contacts folder is selected.
3. In the Display name box, type a name for the form, and then click Publish.
4. On the File menu, click Close. When prompted to save changes, click No so that a new item is not created.

Using the New Contact Form

1. Open your Contacts folder.
2. On the Actions menu, click the new form name to open your newly published form.
3. In the new form, click the TabName tab.
4. On the TabName page of the form, you will see a single ComboBox control. If you click to display the combo box list, you will see a list containing the full name of all of your contacts.