iAcces 2007 creating relationship after linking contacts from Outl

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Rick - 23 Jun 2006 19:00 GMT

I tried to link contact information from outlook 2007 with an Acees 2007
database.
This operation seems to go well and in Acces a new table is created with a
primairy index field called Normalized Subject. However if I establish a
relationship between this new table and an existing one using the field
Normalized Subject as foreign key in the existing table the relationship ends
up being undefined with no way to change this status. Who can help me out ?

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Rick Wiering

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John Nurick - 25 Jun 2006 08:03 GMT

Hi Rick,

I haven't installed the Office 2007 beta yet, but what you describe is
about what I'd expect. The changes to the Outlook object model don't
seem to include providing an accessible primary key for each object in a
folder.

Also, the only mentions I can find of a "Normalized Subject" column
refer to stripping any "RE:", "FWD:" etc off the the subject line of an
email message. This allows - in fact almost guarantees - duplicate
values. Without a unique index, if you have a foreign key in another
table related to this column, only indeterminate relationships will be
possible.

>I tried to link contact information from outlook 2007 with an Acees 2007
>database.
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>Normalized Subject as foreign key in the existing table the relationship ends
>up being undefined with no way to change this status. Who can help me out ?

--
John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

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Rick - 28 Jun 2006 20:03 GMT

Hi John,
Thanks for responding, at least it explains whats happening.
However, if linking info between Acces and Outlook doesn´t give you the
possibility to use this data in combination with other data whats the added
value of "linking". I suppose that outlook should give a primairy key or that
you could define one yourself. Could this be a suggestion for improving the
products?

Regards

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Rick Wiering

> Hi Rick,
>
[quoted text clipped - 22 lines]
>
> Please respond in the newgroup and not by email.

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John Nurick - 28 Jun 2006 21:05 GMT

>Hi John,
>Thanks for responding, at least it explains whats happening.
>However, if linking info between Acces and Outlook doesn´t give you the
>possibility to use this data in combination with other data whats the added
>value of "linking".

I've never been quite sure about that myself<g>.

>I suppose that outlook should give a primairy key

Items in Outlook folders do have unique IDs. Unfortunately (a) they're
not - as far as I know - exposed when you link from Access and (b) even
if they were, they can be longer than 255 characters and therefore
cannot be indexed by Jet (unless something is changing with Office
2007).

>or that
>you could define one yourself.

Outlook has no mechanism equivalent to a database's unique index, hence
no way of preventing duplicate values in a user-defined "field". Also,
there'd be no way of maintaining relational integrity between items in
Outlook folders and records in Access tables.

--
John Nurick [Microsoft Access MVP]

Please respond in the newgroup and not by email.

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