OL2000: Code Does Not Work After You Distribute a Visual Basic for Applications Project

You create a Visual Basic for Applications project in Outlook, and copy the underlying VBAProject.otm file to other users' computers so they can use it. But after they start Outlook, the Application_Startup event does not fire, or other macro functionality does not work as expected.

When you start Outlook, the Visual Basic for Applications component is not activated unless you have previously activated one of the Macro commands on the Tools menu.

After distributing the VBAProject.otm file, you must press ALT+F8 to activate the Macros windows, or press ALT+F11 to activate the Visual Basic Editor. You can then close either window, restart Outlook, and then the code functions correctly.

This is a limitation of Outlook Visual Basic for Applications and there are no plans to change this behavior.

Visual Basic for Applications projects in Outlook are not designed to be distributable to large numbers of users. If you need to distribute an Outlook solution that uses application-level events and features of the Outlook object model, you should consider creating an Outlook COM Add-in. For additional information about how to create a COM add-in for Outlook, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

For additional information about working with the VBAProject.otm file, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: For additional information about available resources and answersto commonly asked questions about Microsoft Outlook 2000 solutions, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: