XP Look-and-feel for VB6 Outlook Property Page?

Question

I am writing a PropertyPage for Outlook using VB6. This is implemented as a VB6 OCX.

When running in a newer version of Outlook (like 2007) on XP (or newer), my dialog looks weird because it doesn't have XP look and feel. Is there a way to do this?

Preferably without adding a manifest file for Outlook.exe.

Answer 1

I don't think you can do it in VB6 ... those controls are going to look like what they look like. You can, however, create your property pages with Visual Studio .NET and Visual Basic .NET and get the XP, 2007 and Vista look and feel. It's a bit of a change from what you're doing, but you're really behind the times developing with VB6 anyway. More details on how to do that are here and the office developer center.

Answer 2

Not that I know of using VB6

If you can use .NET instead - one way is WPF. I saw earlier an example on code-project. Here's the link

Edit: And another tool to assist here

Answer 3

I think you're right to avoid using a manifest. Unfortunately the standard well-known hacks to support XP themes from VB6 rely on manifests. This MSDN article on developer solutions for Outlook 2007 warns that providing your own manifest for Outlook 2007 might cause it to hang.