ODBC connection to outlook

[Irwin]

I created custom forms in outlook to collect
helpdesk/support data. I need to develop reports for
this data and the best way I can think of is to use other
programs like ACCESS or Visual Foxpro or Crystal Report
to generate the report.

However, I couldn't find the ODBC for outlook in my data
Data Sources. Do I need to install this first, and is it
a third party product?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Unless you write your own code you won't be able to do what you want. An
automatic link using an ODBC connection won't send over any custom fields at
all and will only work with a subset of the standard fields in an Outlook
item. Also, the field names you get are not always the same as the names
used in Outlook.

See http://www.outlookcode.com/d/database.htm for more information.

 

[Irwin]

Thanks for your reply.

I was going to make a helpdesk application in outlook
thinking that it will be easy to get reporting and access
the database. But it may not look so easy.

Is this the same case with Exchange?

 

[Ken Slovak - [MVP - Outlook]]

Exchange would be the same thing except there is no automatic linking from
Access to Exchange mailboxes other than by using Outlook in the middle. You
can certainly connect to Exchange using ADO code assuming you have the
correct profile information and permissions to log into the various
mailboxes.