Outlook calendars (1 Viewer)

[whenthegeeseinvade]

Dear fellow AWFers

I have some VBA code that enables me to enter appointment data in Access and this creates appointments in the default Outlook calendar.

I would like to be able to write data to different calendars so I can have one to handle the scheduling of jobs and say another to show engineer's holidays etc.

Does anyone have experience of writing data to outlook and how I can programmatically create or access calendars other than the default one?

Many thanks to all,

Larry

 

[HiTechCoach]

it should be possible to do.

I would urge you to consider NOT doing it. IMHO, the first step to better time/project/team management is to have a single calendar for everything.

 

[whenthegeeseinvade]

Thanks Boyd

Are you suggesting that I should write all appointments to the same calendar and then use filters to view the required info?

 

[HiTechCoach]

Thanks Boyd

Are you suggesting that I should write all appointments to the same calendar and then use filters to view the required info?

Yes, that is correct.

If it were me, I would probably do it all within Access.

Things to consider if using Oulook.

What if the appointment data changes in Access? Will you be able to upfate the correct Oulook Calendar?
Also what is the Outlook calendar gets updated? How will you sync the Access data?

 

[whenthegeeseinvade]

I was thinking of preventing the calendar being opened within Outlook and just using the Outlook View Control within Access as the calendar viewer.

Not sure if I can get the viewer to open my access data entry form rather than the appointment entry form in Outlook if I double click the appointment.

 

[darbid]

I gave users the ability to enter meeting dates into outlook from access. I know you did not ask about sharedfolders but maybe you meant it - Thus I also managed for the secretary to be able to enter dates in shared calendars - for example she initiated the invite to somebody else on behalf of the boss.

If you know how to add calendar items you will understand the slight difference below..you use the getshareddefaultfolder method which is part of the namespace outlook object. objRecip is the email address of the other persons calendar.

objNS.GetSharedDefaultFolder(objRecip, olFolderCalendar)

Further making a couple of comments on HiTechCoach (who helps me out on regular occasions so I would consider him way more experienced than I).

Communication between Access and Outlook is not easy.
If somebody changes a calendar item in outlook, unless you have some code added to your outlook that follows the events of a changing calendar item then you are in trouble.

The way I overcome this in all cases with outlook is I use a field for outlook items that is not usually used (mileage) and I put my own unique code in there. Then every time access opens up this calendar item it does a quick search in outlook to make sure it is still there and has not changed. This is time consuming and getting it right is hard. Further if you are dealing with 2003 then you have to deal with security messages that MS stupidly put in which only annoys us users and in my opion did nothing to stop hackers or virus from reading email addresses and the like.

For me it was a very small feature or problem to solve and ended up being a lot of work and still is cause it does not work properly. For some reason I always have problems with outlook codeing.