How to toggle in-cell editing (or other views) in Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook 2003 is a very capable email application with programmatic access to many of its features. The one thing it does lack is simplicity in exposing the volume of libraries and objects available, especially when your objective is something that would otherwise be simple enough to achieve either with the Menus or manually within the system. This article details an example of toggling alternating views to enable and disable in-cell editing within the messages listing.

The easy way would be to add a new "view" that has the options you want to apply and then write a macro that alternates setting THIS VIEW. To do this, follow the instructions below.

[Views]

In the menus, select...

• View
• Arrange By
• Current View
• Define Views...

• Select "Messages"
• "Copy..."
  • Rename the new entry to something like "Messages+Cells" AND ENSURE THE OPTION "All Mail and Post Folders" is SELECTED.
  • "OK"
• "Other Settings"
  • [X] Allow in-cell editing
  • Manipulate any other settings you want to
  • "OK"
• "OK"

[Code]

Next, open the code editor (ALT+F11) and add the following procedure:

Then, with the inbox selected (so it propagates to the other folders) add a button to the toolbar to run the macro, changing the view of the button to whatever you like.

Clicking the button will now toggle the views between the Messages and Messages+Cells views.

Regards,

Shawn K. Hall

About the Author:

Shawn K. Hall is a homeschool dad and a security consultant providing solutions for local businesses in the Tuolumne County, CA area. He owns and operates 12 Point Design, a professional web development company, providing hosting and security solutions in addition to website creations and maintenance. In his "spare time" Mr. Hall is also very active in many online forums where he freely gives of his time and talents to assist struggling web developers.