Once we’re done customizing our form, it’s time to publish it! To do this, click the Tools menu, choose Forms, and click Publish Form. You’ll see a save dialog come up (it’s pictured on the right).

Normally, the Look In location (where Outlook will save your form) will say Outlook Folders. We should change this to Personal Forms Library as it’s the default location used by many of the form dialog boxes. Then, type in the display name for your form; Outlook will automatically copy this text to the Form Name field. Once this information is filled out, click Publish to save it. Then we can close out of our customized form. If we’re prompted to save it, choose not to save your changes as we’ve already published it.

 

Now it’s time to tell Outlook to use this form to create items. Here’s the steps to follow if you just want to use the form for one entry:

 

1. Open the folder for that entry type. (For example, if you have created a custom calendar form, open the calendar folder.)
2. Click the Tools menu and click Choose Form.
3. Pick the location that your form is in.
4. Choose your form and click Open.

 

You can now enter your data like you normally would and click Save and Close to save the item. Here’s an example of a customized contacts form:

 

 

You can see in the background that Daffy Duck looks like all the other contacts. But when we open this contact up, the contact looks quite different from our default contact form. (You can see the name of the form at the top of the contact window in the blue bar.)

 

If you want to tell Outlook to use this form for all items in a folder, just right-click on the folder that you want to change. For example, if we had customized a contacts form we would right-click on the Contacts folder. Then, click Properties. On the main screen, you’ll see an option for forms:

 

 

Just use the drop-down menu in this section to choose your form. If you don’t see your form in the list, click Forms to browse to it.

 

Then click Apply and OK, and you’re all set!