Using the Form Region XML Manifest to Define a Form Region

To run a form region, you must register it in the Windows registry and specify the message class and other necessary information that Microsoft Outlook needs to display the form region. The form region XML schema allows you to specify information related to the functionality, behavior, and other innate properties of the form region. Typically, you would specify XML that follows this schema in a form region manifest XML file, and then register this file in the Windows registry so as to use the form region to display items of the corresponding message class.

For example, if you are designing a form region for items of the message class IPM.Contact, you can specify a form region manifest XML file, contoso.xml, that defines characteristics of the form region. When you register the form region in the Windows registry, under the current user key, you can add the key IPM.Contact, add a value of the type String, and specify the name of the form region, ContosoAdjoining, as the name of the key, and the form region manifest XML file, c:\Form Regions\contoso.xml, as the data of the key. For more information, see Specifying Form Regions in the Windows Registry.

You can specify the functionality, behavior, and other innate properties of a form region through elements in the form region XML schema. Some of the more commonly used elements are listed as follows. For more information on the form region XML schema, see the Microsoft Outlook 2010 XML Schema Reference in the MSDN Library.