Publishing Custom Forms in a Shared Mailbox

We have recently migrated from an on-premise Exchange 2010 server to Office 365. With the on-prem environment I had several custom forms published to the Organizational Forms Library. This library is not available in O365, so I have created a Shared Mailbox and published the forms there. A user that has rights to the shared mailbox is able to open and send the default form with no problem.  The issue is with the replies.  The custom form calls a second custom form for the reply.  When the user tries to reply he gets the error "The form you selected cannot be displayed."

The reply works for me because I have the reply form installed in my Personal Forms Library.  Is there a way to get this to work without installing the form for all users in their Personal library?

Thanks,
Joe

July 23rd, 2015 11:35am

Hi,

Based on my research, Outlook uses a "Names File cache" that stores the names of the forms in the Exchange Organizational Forms Library. By default, this cache expires every 24 hours. If a new form in the Organizational Forms Library has not been cached, Outlook displays an error. To work around this issue, we can use the following registry values to control the behavior of the Names File cache:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Outlook\Forms\ClassNamesCache  

DWORD: Timeout (This value can be  used to shorten the Names File cache time out )

Decimal Value (in hours): 1 - 24

 

DWORD: Disabled (This value can be used to disable the Names File cache)

Value: 1

Please let me know if this works.

Regards,

Steve Fan

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July 24th, 2015 2:45am

Steve,

Please note that my original post stated that I am no longer on an Exchange server and that the Organizational Forms Library is not an option.  I need a solution for a shared mailbox in O365.

Thanks,
Joe

July 24th, 2015 9:50am

Hi Joe,

Apologize for my mistake. The "form cannot be displayed" error usually means we need to clear Outlook's forms cache. Please try clearing forms cache on both the user's client and on the client where the shared mailbox is located. To do this, please follow the steps below:

1. Close Outlook.

2. Locate the Forms folder:

C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\FORMS

3. Delete all the frmcache.dat file and folders that are in the Forms folder.

4. Restart Outlook.

Please let me know the result.

Regards,

Steve Fan

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July 26th, 2015 11:06pm

Steve,

Thanks.  I've already tried that with no change.  Any other thoughts?

Joe

July 27th, 2015 8:52am

Hi Joe,

May I know the detailed steps you used to call a second custom form for the reply in the custom form?

Where is the second custom form published? Is it also been published in the shared mailbox?

What if we use the second custom form directly without calling it within the first custom form? Will it work correctly?

Regards,

Steve Fan

Forum Support

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July 28th, 2015 10:40pm

Steve,

In the custom form, under the 'Actions' tab I have specified the second form as the form to use for all replies.  The second form has been published in the shared mailbox.  It works if I open the form directly, but when I try to reply to the original form it fails to open the second form.

Thanks
Joe

July 29th, 2015 8:24am

Hi Joe,

I have involved someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue. We tested this issue in a shared mailbox in our environment and we found that the issue can be reproduced. We got the same error message like you described:

We are not sure if this is the expected behavior or it's a limitation since there is no documentation stating this. Currently, we only have two options to work around the issue:

1. Install the form for all users in their Personal library.

2. Have users manually choose the form instead of calling the form from the first custom form when replying.

Regards,

Steve Fan

Forum Support

Free Windows Admin Tool Kit Click here and download it now
July 31st, 2015 2:16am

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