OL2000: ShowFormPage, HideFormPage No Longer Create One-Off Items (218618)

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You can use the ShowFormPage and HideFormPage methods in Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) to programmatically show and hide pages on an Outlook form. In previous versions of Outlook using these methods caused one-off items where the form definition was unexpectly saved with the item. Outlook 2000 is now designed so that using these methods will not cause this typically unwanted side-effect. However, this change in design may cause solutions that were created in previous versions of Outlook to not function correctly in Outlook 2000.

The remainder of this article assumes you are familiar with the concept and implications of one-off forms. For additional information about one-off forms and the potential problems they can cause, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
In forms solutions created with Outlook 97 and Outlook 98, the ShowFormPage and HideFormPage methods saved the form definition with the item. This meant that the next time a user opened an item it would open with the same form pages displayed as when it was last opened. Therefore, VBScript code was typically not required to set the initial state of the pages on the form.

When opening an item in Outlook 2000, it will always open displaying the same form pages as the form that was published. To achieve the same effect as in previous versions of Outlook you will have to place appropriate code in the Item_Open event of the form so that when the user opens the form, the VBScript code can show or hide the appropriate form pages as needed.