October 15, 1999

With standard print functionality in Microsoft Outlook® 2000, you can preview and print only the text of a custom Outlook form. By using the Outlook XPrint add-in or ActiveX® control, however, you can preview and print custom forms as they appear on the screen - also known as "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG).

You can use the XPrint add-in and control separately, or include them in the same form, depending on your requirements. The XPrint control gives you more flexibility for customizing the previewing and printing of custom forms; however, you must install it on users' computers before they can use it. The XPrint add-in, by contrast, does not need to be installed on users’ computers to be used locally by a custom form.

Note that the XPrint add-in and control do not print the message field and recipients fields of a form (that is, fields such as From, To, Cc, and so on). To print these fields as they appear on the screen, the custom form must be designed to work around this problem.

Toolbox   The Office Resource Kit includes the Outlook XPrint add-in and ActiveX control. See the Outlook custom forms print add-in and ActiveX control section and download the file setupex.exe. You can find this downloadable file on the Office 2000 Resource Kit Downloads page.

Using the XPrint add-in

The XPrint add-in provides standard WYSIWYG previewing and printing. Without the Xprint add-in, Outlook displays a standard Print dialog box when you click Print (File menu) in a custom Outlook form. Printing from the standard dialog box prints only the text of the custom form.

The XPrint add-in is implemented as an Exchange Client Extension. When it is installed on your computer, the add-in enhances printing functionality for any custom Outlook form based on one of the following standard forms:

• Message (IPM.Note)
• Post (IPM.Post)

When you install the XPrint add-in, a new Print (PrintForm) dialog box replaces the standard Print dialog box. The Print (PrintForm) dialog box allows you to select print options such as background color and scaling, and allows you to preview and print the form exactly as it appears on the screen.

Note  The XPrint add-in does not affect how Outlook prints a form when you click Print in print preview. It also has no effect if you print an item by using the Print or Print Preview command in the main Outlook window (known as the Outlook explorer in programming documentation).

Using the XPrint control

You can also provide customized WYSIWYG printing with the XPrint control. The XPrint control is useful when the printing functionality provided by the add-in is not exactly what you need, or when you have custom forms that are not based on Message or Post forms. You add the XPrint control to the form, and then modify the properties of the control to change the user interface and behavior of preview and print.

You can add the XPrint control to custom Outlook forms that you send to other users or that you publish in a forms library (so other users can create custom Outlook items based on those forms). Before other users can open these forms, however, they must also install the XPrint add-in and control.

If the XPrint add-in is also present on the form, you can override the default behavior of the add-in by using the XPrint control. You set the properties of the control to the desired behavior, and then call the PrintForm method to print the form.

If the control is present on the form, but the add-in is not loaded or the form is not based on a Message or Post form, then the standard Outlook Print dialog box is displayed when you click Print (File menu). In this case, if you want to use the control to manage printing, the PrintForm method of the control must be called by program code (such as form script or Automation code) to produce a WYSIWYG printout.