Working with standard forms is great if you want to build a solution that is directly related to one of the Outlook 2007 item types. However, you might need an Outlook 2007 form that isn’t based on an item type at all. For example, you might want to create a form that allows users to report their work hours or initiate a purchase order. Although you could base these examples on a standard form, they could just as easily require a completely new form that you need to create.

The good news is that creating a completely new form is easier than it sounds. In fact, Outlook 2007 doesn’t really permit you to create forms completely from scratch, although you can certainly achieve the same effect. You have two ways to create a form that doesn’t contain any built-in form elements:

You’ll learn how to add pages to forms in the next section. First let’s look at how to break down a standard form to a blank form by removing built-in interface controls.

The following steps show how to turn a standard post form (a form that is used to post a note into a folder) into a blank form:

The form now looks similar to the form shown earlier in Figure 28-7, but with some changes. The figure shows a modified (blank) Compose area for this form, but you can also modify the Read area (via Edit Read Page). Of course, you’ll also want to make these pages do something, but for now, you at least have a blank form to work with. To have this blank form available as a template, click the Microsoft Office Button, choose File, Save As, and then select Outlook Template in the Save As Type drop-down list.