Customizing To-Do bar, Outlook bar, Navigation pane,
Inspector & Explorer toolbars with Delphi forms and shortcuts

Outlook is a featured application for Add-in Express

In view of Outlook being the most popular business application for the majority of Office developers, Add-in Express offers several advanced Outlook-specific features, namely: 

• Advanced Outlook View and Form Regions that you can use to embed your VCL forms into Outlook windows, Outlook bar, To-Do bar, Reading pane and Navigation pane.
• Separate of Outlook Explorer and Inspector windows that allows you to customize the main Outlook windows and all forms such as Outlook mail forms, contact forms, task forms, etc.
• Outlook context-sensitivity binds toolbars and ribbons to certain Outlook windows, folders or context.
• Option and property pages embed Delphi forms into the main Options and Folder Properties dialogs.
• Navigation pane shortcuts that you can use to create your own set of shortcuts to the Navigation Pane.
• Integrated Outlook-specific events make Outlook development more comfortable than using stand-alone Outlook components.

Advanced Outlook View and Form Regions

A particularly well-liked feature provided by Add-in Express is Advanced Outlook View and Form Regions specialy designed for advanced customization of the Outlook GUI. Using these regions you can embed any your VCL forms practically into all Outlook windows:

The main Outlook window on the picture has three additional panes, My Links, Alerts and Sales Report, that are typical VCL forms embedded by Add-in Express using Advanced Outlook Regions. Now Add-in Express supports embedding Delphi VCL forms into the following Outlook windows and panes, and enables you to:

• Replace the content of the main Outlook window (Outlook Explorer) with your form. This is an analog of the home page of Outlook folders but there is no need to use HTML and JavaScript.
• Embed one or several forms over the Outlook Reading pane and view pane.
• Add a custom form to the To-Do bar, Outlook Navigation pane and Outlook bar.
• Embed a custom form around the content of any Inspector windows such as mail windows, task forms, appointments, journal items, contact forms, etc.

On the following page your can find all types of Advanced Outlook Regions.

Explorer and Inspector toolbars and ribbons

The Outlook GUI is based on two window types: the Explorer window shows the content of folders, the Inspector window displays a specified item. Add-in Express allows customizing toolbars and ribbons for both window types with separate toolbar and ribbon components. These components take into consideration all specificities of behavior, navigation and synchronization between Outlook windows. Please note that by using the Add-in Express components you free yourself from the necessity to track context and do constant reconnects when switching between Outlook windows. Every time you refer to your toolbars, you can be sure they exist in the current active context whether it is the current active Explorer or one of several opened Inspectors.

As for the Ribbon UI on the Outlook 2007 Inspector window, Add-in Express supports customizing ribbons for all contexts and ribbons published by Outlook 2007 such as OUTLOOKMAILREAD, OUTLOOKMAILCOMPOSE, OUTLOOKAPPOINTMENT, OUTLOOKTASK, TabSetTextBoxTools, TabSetEquationTools, TabSetDiagramTools, etc. Please note, you don't code ribbons and context, you specify them via the corresponding properties of Add-in Express components.

Outlook context-sensitivity

Another in-demand feature of Add-in Express is the ability to bind your toolbars and menus or the specified controls to certain Outlook folders. Outlook-specific components publish special properties that bind the component (a toolbar or a toolbar control) to the Outlook folders specified by their names or by their content. The picture below shows that a toolbar will be shown for all mail and task folders. Please note, in the same manner you can organize different sets of controls on one toolbar or different sets of toolbars for different Outlook folders. No coding is required, simply use the appropriate properties of toolbar and control components.

Other Outlook-specific features

Outlook option and property pages

You can use Add-in Express to add custom tabs to the main Options dialog of Outlook as well as to the Properties dialog of some particular folders. No coding is required either. Also, you can use an Add-in Express template to create a form for the option page and choose the form in the corresponding property of the add-in module.

Navigation Pane shortcuts

Add-in Express has a special component for customizing the Navigation Pane with your custom groups of shortcuts. The component provides a visual designer for shortcut groups and shortcuts and makes all work with shortcuts easy and no-coding.

Outlook-specific events and event helpers

A lot of Outlook-specific events are available through a special event helper component without manual creating of event sinks, helpers or components. All Outlook events that are directly accessible from the Outlook events component are listed below.

Outlook Application events

• AdvancedSearchComplete
• AdvancedSearchStopped
• AttachmentContextMenuDisplay
• BeforeFolderSharingDialog
• BeforeOptionPageAdd
• ContextMenuClose
• FolderContextMenuDisplay
• ItemContextMenuDisplay
• ItemLoad
• ItemSend
• MAPILogonComplete
• NewMail
• NewMailEx
• OfficeColorSchemeChanged
• OptionPagesAdd
• Quit
• Reminder
• ShortcutContextMenuDisplay
• Startup
• StoreContextMenuDisplay
• ViewContextMenuDisplay

Outlook Explorer events

• ExplorerActivate
• ExplorerAddCommandBars
• ExplorerFolderSwitch
• ExplorerBeforeItemCopy
• ExplorerBeforeItemCut
• ExplorerBeforeItemPaste
• ExplorerBeforeMaximize
• ExplorerBeforeMinimize
• ExplorerBeforeMove
• ExplorerBeforeSize
• ExplorerBeforeViewSwitch
• ExplorerSelectionChange
• ExplorerViewSwitch
• NewExplorer

Outlook Inspector events

• InspectorActivate
• InspectorAddCommandBars
• InspectorBeforeMaximize
• InspectorBeforeMinimize
• InspectorBeforeMove
• InspectorBeforeSize
• InspectorClose
• InspectorDeactivate
• PageChange
• NewInspector