CPAO
The Calendar Printing Assistant for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 is the first external product to come out of my group. There are some nice writeups finally hitting the web:
https://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2006/08/15/701836.aspx
https://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/community/article_calendar_krieger.mspx
https://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/programs/outlook/cpa.mspx
Comments
Anonymous
March 07, 2007
Hi Ben,Nice work on CPAO, very tidy piece of work. One question: I need a 24 hour day calendar or probably 2 x overlapping 13 or 14 hour day calendars to help schedule shift work. But I only seem to be a able to get an 8 til 5 calendar.Am I missing something in the UI or is this a limitation.I see in the embedded XML of a calx file the StartHour and EndHour attributes, how would I / could I edit these, as the files seem to have binary content as well which precludes using notepad :).Any help would be much appreciatedCheers SimonAnonymous
March 08, 2007
Thanks Simon. I can't take any credit since I joined the team as work was finishing up, but I did talk to some of the main people on the project to get you an answer. Please note that this is not a supported scenario and we don't advertise or encourage this type of thing."The calx files (and catx files that define the templates that get embedded when you add views to calx files) are actually zip containers and if you extract the underlying files you can in fact edit the xml contents in notepad (carefully) and then zip them back up again to make changes beyond the customization offered by the UI. Note file-level customizations, although possible, are not a supported scenario in this version and most of our testing was done with the included set of templates.""In this particular case, the customer can simply modify the Start and End Hour attributes for both the TimeScale and TimeSlot in the template markup to cover the duration as he wants but the timeslot would be useless if it is cramped up with 24 hours in one page. He can make it a 2-page template (with 12 hours timeslot each) by just duplicating the first page and remove the duplicate banner calendars on the second page as he likes."Anonymous
March 11, 2007
You're a Legend! Thanks for taking the time to look into this for me. Unzips nicely. I will give it a whirl in the coming week. You have potentially changed CPOA from a teasingly close but unworkable solution to one with real application for me :).Anonymous
June 26, 2007
How would one remove the Background (day of the week) numbers or make them smaller or align them differently? I have an employee that is color blind and everything blends together. We want to remove the overlay or move the day of the month (1-28) so that there is no color blending for him.Anonymous
June 26, 2007
The comment has been removedAnonymous
August 21, 2007
Where are the *.catx files located? I cannot seem to find them anywhere. I have looked through the application data directories, but the CPAO/templates directory is empty. Even a file name search for Month_MonthOverview.catx turned up empty.Anonymous
November 28, 2007
It'd be great if I could get ANY of these to display appointment details anywhere on the page.Anonymous
February 01, 2008
I've posted on Microsoft's site but also thought you might be able to provide some insight. CPAO is a very nice product, but is causing me a bit of frustration. When connected to Exchange, CPAO is importing shared calendar appointments twice (note just single appointments, recurring appointments are only importing once). This causes a big annoyance as the majority of appointments are being listed twice right next to eachother.I've take a lot of time to work with the .catx templates and it definitely appears to be the way that CPAO imports the data and not to do with the templates.Like I said, I've posted the issue to Microsoft but was hoping you could possibly provide some insight.Thanks,JohannAnonymous
February 01, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
March 26, 2008
I have looked through the catx files, and have located the code I would need to chnage in order to satisfy a customer, who was happy with the printing that occured in Outlook 2000. They are now on Outlook 2007 and very unhappy with the format of the CPAO templates. I have modifed the catx in notepad, and then loaded it back in, and I keep getting corruption errors. Even when I just make a simple change to say font size. I am thinking it is due to the zip and unzip step you mention above. How exactly are you performing this zip/unzip step? What application are you using for it?Anonymous
March 26, 2008
We are currently using Info-ZIP v2.31 in our development process.http://www.info-zip.org/Anonymous
March 27, 2008
Thanks BenThat product worked for us. RobertAnonymous
April 29, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 04, 2008
Hi again,I've seen what I think it's a bug in CPAO, related to lost appointments.Specifically, I'm not able to see some of the weekly recurring appointments that were created in april. They are displayed in CPAO until june 16th, and after that date they simply don't appear. The same items are shown in Outlook.Did you know about this bug? Was it fixed in SP1? How?Thanks in advance,Ignacio Renuncio.-Anonymous
May 05, 2008
If you are seeing the missing appointments in shared calendar folder only then it is a known bug we are working on and being escalated for a hotfix releaseAnonymous
May 06, 2008
Yes, that's exactly what's happening, the lost appointments are in a personal calendar that is shared through Outlook Delegates.But it seems that the owner does not suffer this bug when he opens his own calendar. However, when their workmates open it, the lose some recurring appointments.Do you know of a way to circumvent this? Perhaps deleting and creating those appointments again? Modifying them? Could you please explain me the exact reason of the bug (I'm a programmer)? If I understand WHAT is happening and WHY it's happening, I could find a way of circumvent or minimize the bug effects.And PLEASE!!!!! I desperately need information about the CALX format, or the XML schema. I'm changing things by hand, using trial-and-error, but don't know which elements and atributes are allowed (and where). This way, each change is a real pain. Is there any information available??Yours faithfully,Ignacio Renuncio.-Anonymous
May 10, 2008
Unfortunately the bug is really in our MAPI codes when looking up the shared calendar items we only request for the current day range and as a result if the recurring item start date is not in the range we are not getting the instances outside the range. We already have the fix and is working on release it as hotfixes. The schema is not part of the CALX and I understand your pain to do the hand code without knowing the supported element and attributes. I'll check with my group to see what we can do. Can you tell what exactly you want to change in the template?Anonymous
May 15, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 17, 2008
The Hotfixes testing and customer verification have been completed. We are in the Office release process and hopefully it won't be long. The elements you specified can be changed but I want to visualize what is the expected result would be. My email address is dany@microsoft.com and if you can send me the detail and I'll try to modify the template for you.Anonymous
May 20, 2008
Hello,I downloaded the Outlook Printing assistant so solve a particular problem with Outlook printing, namely this:When printing from the Calendar and selecting "Three-fold Style", one can opt for printing the ToDo-bar in one of the panes. This would be perfect if it wasn't for the ToDo-bar getting truncated. Only about a third of my taks fit in a column and the style doesn't add any pages to make room for the remaining ones. If one opts for using two panes for the ToDo-bar, the same view is duplicated in both.I was hoping the Assistant could help me with this, but I don't find any templates where the ToDo bar is included. Do you have any ideas on how to sort this out?Anonymous
May 27, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 28, 2008
My printed output gets truncated on the right margin. For example, the last day (Saturday) column in the mini calendar in the header is missing (as well as any text in the calendar proper within the same area)Any ideas how to adjust? Thanks.Anonymous
May 30, 2008
Thee following error message appears on attempted printing from CPAO:Windows cannot print due to a problem with the current printer setup. Try one or more of the following.*Check the printer by printing a test page from Windows.*Make sure the printer is turned on and online.*Reinstall the printer driver.This occurs in Remote Desktop sessions, where the printer is a redirected one. The printer is on and online. The document that generated the error message is shown in the printer cue with a status of Spooling. Despite this, a printer test page can be printed.This happens unpredictably, but when after it does, the only way I have found to cure it is to delete that user's profile and for the user to logon again, which creates a new profile.Any ideas on what the root cause is, and how to correct for it short of deleting the user profile? Thanks.Anonymous
June 20, 2008
I am getting the same printing error in Citrix. Any thoughts?Anonymous
July 09, 2008
Is there some documentation available for the schemas?Anonymous
July 23, 2008
Is the hotfix for missing reoccuring appointments out yet?Anonymous
August 22, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
August 31, 2008
Has anyone figured out how to manually drop the end times from displaying? Turning them on and off in the application settings makes no difference. Is there a conditional formatting that can be used for this?Anonymous
September 01, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 01, 2008
Quote:"Is CPAO a forgotten product at this point? Lack of print customization in Outlook prompted the CPAO but it's only left customers with slightly less choices of how to print.CPAO's got much potential but without allowing theme/style editing this is really just a waste of time. Reluctance to even let anyone see the schema 2 years after it hit the scene is puzzling."Hi Samuel,Please escalate your concern through the Office Supports. Unfortunately Office has decided not to put further investment to CPAO for the next version but if you have any requests please feel free to speak up and we continue to provide the support using the current release.Thanks,-DanAnonymous
September 01, 2008
QUOTE:Is the hotfix for missing reoccuring appointments out yet?Hi John,Yes, the hotfix is out and here is the link:Hotfix Server Location http://hotfix/search.aspx?search=955598Package Name office-kb955598-fullfile-x86-glb.exeThanks,-DanAnonymous
September 17, 2008
Hi Guys,I have a strange problem when using the Month Overview template. It correctly draws the time boxes for calender events but doesn't show their titles (I end up with nicely shaded but empty boxes). Events marked as all day events do have their titles shown.Any ideas?Kind Regards,Anonymous
September 18, 2008
Solved it!The Month Overview template doesn't show event titles. A quick edit of the template to include the following within the <Appointment> tag and a change to the <Bar> width to "5" solved the problem:<Content Orientation="Fill" Margin="2,0,2,0" VerticalAlignment="Center" HorizontalAlignment="Center" Separator="116" SeparatorFontFamily="WingDings" FontSize="8pt" TextWrapping="NoWrap"><ContentElement Source="Subject" FontWeight="Bold"/></Content>RobAnonymous
October 10, 2008
Tried the hotfix for the missing appointments thing. Now there is a problem where my additional calendar does not show up in the list, it does however still show up in Outlook. Got any ideas?Thanks,MarkAnonymous
November 18, 2008
Hi,I am modifying the templates in the calx file and I am stumped on an issue. My goal is to have a week view with the days listed as Mon-Wed in the first column and Thurs-Sun in the second AND have all day events listed without their start/end time at the top of the day.We have successfully got the days to list in the columns newspaper style by setting up separate WeekDayCalendar sections for each column. But when I try to configure the all day events, I have problems. When I add a definition for AllDayAppointment with a SpanningDayPlaceHolder, it works fine for Mon-Wed. It does not work for Thurs-Sun. On those days, I get odd behavior. Thursday and Friday still list the times by the all day event. Sunday lists the all day events twice. Any suggestions?I would be happy to share the calx file. Thanks,LauraAnonymous
November 21, 2008
Hi Laura,If you can share out the catx file maybe I can help.Thanks,-DanAnonymous
November 26, 2008
I read a lot of nice things about CPAO, but were able to use it yet still!!! After downloading it, I got this error message when I tried to open it."Cannot connect to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Please restart Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Calendar Printing Assistant. Original MicrosoftOffice Outlook 2007 error message: Object reference not set to an instance of an object."Any idea how to fix?Anonymous
November 26, 2008
Thanks Irene for using our product. There are several common cases CPAO cannot access to the Outlook data.Multiple Outlook instances are running. Please check your Tasks Manager to see if this is the case. End all the Outlook processes and restart Outlook first, then CPAO can usually fix the problemIf you have multiple Outlook profiles and start CPAO without Outlook client running then the Outlook "Choose Profile" dialog is on the background and sometimes user doesn't aware of that and this error message will just come up after timing out. Your exchange server is down or extremely slow. You have stale CPAO Addin dlls being registered. If this is your first time install most likely it is not the case. However, please run "Repair" of CPAO through the Control Panel Add/Remove Program sometimes can help. Please check the above and let me know. Hope this help.-DanAnonymous
November 28, 2008
Thanks for responding.#1. I tried to launch with only one Outlook 2007 opened as well as Outlook being closed, both gave me the same message.#2. I only have one Outlook profile and I never got a "Choose Profile" dialog.#3. Uh... I'm feeling kind of stupid. Do I have to use Exchange Server to use CPAO?#4. Being not very tech savvy, I don't really know what Addin dlls is, but I did restarted Outlook and CPAO, run diagnostics and repair, installed Vista SP1, reinstalled CPAO, but I am still getting the same error message.What does "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." mean because that's part of the error message I'm getting. I'm hoping that if I have that solved,then CPAO will connect to Outlook.Anonymous
November 29, 2008
Thanks for trying Irene.Sometimes Outlook instance is still running even though you have closed the client. If you have rebooted your machine and still seeing the problem then it is not this case.Don't worry, Exchange is a mail server that Outlook connects to. If you have no problem sending and receiving email then this is not the case either. Another simple way to check please go to "Tools" menu and click on "Trust Center" while you are in the Outlook Calendar folder and click on "Add-ins" and see if "Calendar Printing Assistant" is being list as "Active", "Inactive" or "Disabled". We'll work on the next step depends on it's state. Thanks,-DanAnonymous
December 02, 2008
Aha! Calendar Printing Assistant is not even on the "Add-ins" list.Anonymous
December 02, 2008
That's very interesting. I assume your CPAO was downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/results.aspx?pocId=&freetext=cpao&DisplayLang=enPlease try the following:Shut down Outlook client. Make sure this is no Outlook.exe running, then uninstall the current copy of CPAO you have.Restart your PC (usually not required but just to be safe) Install the original CPAO (not the SP1) from the download site I mentioned above. Please make sure Outlook is not running. Start your Outlook client then wait until it has connected to your mail server properly (again, just for safety sake) Start CPAO now. Let me know.Thanks,-DanAnonymous
December 02, 2008
Okay.I shut down Outlook, then I opened Task Manager and made sure Outlook is not running. I uninstalled CPAO.I restarted my C. I installed CPAO and not SP1 from the link you provided directly (by the way, that's where I downloaded the one I uninstalled) and I opened Task Manager to make sure Outlook is not running before I install CPAO. I started Outlook and sent myself a test email. I started CPAO and I got the same error message. I looked in the Trust Center and Calendar Printing Assistant is not on the Add-Ins available list.Anonymous
December 02, 2008
Hmm... can you try this as well?Run the registry editor "regedit"Check if you have this entry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftOfficeOutlookAddinsCPAOOutlookAddin.Connect If yes, please check the value data for LoadBehavior is "3" or not. Thanks,-DanAnonymous
December 02, 2008
No. I don't have CPAOOutlookAddin.Connect.Anonymous
December 05, 2008
Sorry Irene for the late reply. Please try this: Go to your program files -> Microsoft Office -> Office12 folder and check if you have the CPAO dlls there. If there is a cpaoaddin.dll then do step 2Make sure Outlook and CPAO are not running, then run a CMD window as administrator and type: regsvr32 "%ProgramFiles%Microsoft OfficeOffice12cpaoaddin.dll"Restart Outlook and CPAOLet me know.-DanAnonymous
December 09, 2008
It's working now. This is so exciting. Thank you so much.Anonymous
December 09, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 09, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 10, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
December 10, 2008
CPAO supports all versions of Office 2007 as long as they have the OGA coverage. I'm sorry if there was some workarounds applied during your Office 2007 installation causing the OGA validation failed silently during the CPAO setup.Suggestion: can you click on the "Validate Office" button on this page and see what you get?http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/Thanks,-DanAnonymous
December 10, 2008
I did and it said Validation Successful.Anonymous
December 10, 2008
Good. Can you try to uninstall and reinstall CPAO again. I hope this validation process did some magic update to the OGA value that CPAO looks for. If not, then I'll look for another approach.-DanAnonymous
December 11, 2008
Thee following error message appears on attempted printing from CPAO:Windows cannot print due to a problem with the current printer setup. Try one or more of the following.*Check the printer by printing a test page from Windows.*Make sure the printer is turned on and online.*Reinstall the printer driver.This only occurs with one printer within our Organization... XEROX PHASER 8560DNany advice....Anonymous
December 11, 2008
I should add to my above post....This printer works fine from any other MS Office applications only when printing with CPA and to this particular printer. We currently run MS Office 2007.-We've tried to update the server printer drivers-We've tried to remove all locally installed drivers on the desktop and re-map the Network Printer-We've tried to use the net use command to override server based drivers-We've tried to re-install the applicationAny help would be appriated!Anonymous
December 11, 2008
Hi Paul,I do remember a few printing bugs in particular happened to Xerox printers and one of it was quite similar to yours saying CPAO failed to print on Xerox Phaser 8400DX PS printer when running in Vista. The bug was outside the team's capability to fix and has passed to external to follow up with Xerox. looks like it is a known issue if your model shares the same driver and Xerox didn't fix it.Hope this helps.-DanAnonymous
December 11, 2008
Hi, DanI uninstalled CPAO as suggested and reinstalled after making sure Outlook is not running. Then I opened Outlook and checked to see if CPAO addin is listed in the Trust Center, but it's not, so I closed Outlook. I then run the regsvr32 command again and got the "DllRegisterServer in C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeOffice1cpaoaddin.dll succeeded" message. I opened Outlook and then CPAO and I got the same message that CPAO cannot connect to Outlook 2007.IreneAnonymous
December 12, 2008
Aah... you are running on a 64bit machine? Program Files (x86)?? The registry hive is different and that could be the root of the problem though I'm sure CPAO can run on WOW64 environment. I think we need to redirect our investigation a bit. Can you send email to me at dany@microsoft.com since I want to get some machine data from you for to debug further.-DanAnonymous
December 15, 2008
Like Sean, I am having problems getting CPAO to print from Citrix.It gets to the point of saying printing page 1 of 1 and then I get the rather generic error:'Windows cannot print due to a problem with the current printer setup. Try one or more of the following...' all of which are spurious.I CAN print to the same printer outside of Cirtix from the same PC, I CAN print from Outlook inside of Citrix from the same PC, which leads me to wonder if it is a CPAO issue?Has anyone come across this and have a resolution.CheersSimonAnonymous
March 02, 2009
We are trying to personalize the CPA to display a compact list that has the category symbol as a marker instead of having the same symbol repeat itself for each appointment.We managed to print the category symbols in a list, but the elements are too far apart. If we reduce the RowSize, it cuts bottom of the text.Better yet, we would like to put the background color on each element of the compact list, just like Ignacio Renuncio wrote on April 2008...Has a solution been found? Is there any documentation available?Thanks for any help/suggestions you might have.Anonymous
May 08, 2009
Why doesn't CPAO display color category symbols for shared calendars? Is there a way to get the color category symbols to display for shared calendars?ThanksAnonymous
May 11, 2009
CPAO does show the Outlook category color on shared calendar as well. It uses a standardized symbol (circle)for all categories but with different colors that match with Outlook.Anonymous
May 26, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 17, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 18, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 11, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 11, 2010
RichardJT, I have noticed that the Outlook Calendar Printing Assistant always prefers to print to the default printer assigned in control panel. Have you tried changing the default printer in the Windows Control Panel before hitting the print button in the Calendar Printing Assistant?Anonymous
February 02, 2010
I've been using CPAO for a while and suddenly I have no templates anymore. If I go to C:Program Files (x86)Microsoft OfficeTemplates I can see them all listed, but not in the app itself. I've tried repairing, unistalled/reistalled, but no luck. Any ideas?Anonymous
February 21, 2010
I am trying to modify the WeekList03 template toword wrap all day eventsdrop the end time display appointment details Are there any resources explaining the different styles for calendars? Do you have any suggestions on where to modify the code?Thank you for such a great post with great comments. This is the only site that I have found with useful information for CPAO.Thanks in advance for your help.Anonymous
March 14, 2010
My modification request is to change the default 8a-5p day to 6a-6p. I followed the instuction to unzip & modify the catx templates... saw promising tags labeled STARTHOUR and ENDHOUR... but couldnt get it to work after saving and rezipping.My problems include:CPAO doesnt "see" the modified .catx fileWhen I manually drag the .catx file into CPAO I get an error message "This document does not have valid relationships and parts" I'm close but not there and would appreciate any assistance. Thanks!Anonymous
April 23, 2010
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 01, 2010
I have found a workaround - it is not elegant and I don't like it but that's unsupported software (as in Microsoft has not fixed this much talked about problem) for you.I can't print to my printer but I CAN print to the "Microsoft XPS document writer" printer. I then open the generated .XPS file in the XPS Viewer and then print to my printer. Told you it is not nice and this is going to really annoy my wife who wants to simply click and print, hey having to use CPAO outside of Outlook is already a pain.Hopefully this might help someoneDarren