Outlook: Custom Contact Item

[jkb17]

hello.

I've been called in to look at a program that is a vba macro to outlook 2000. This macro will change the contact class of a specifically selected contact. The 3 types of contact classes are custom and are as follows:

IPM.Contact.Consultant
IPM.Contact.Investor
IPM.Contact.Main Contact

Problem appears that when a contact is changed from one class to the other it is not merely a switch from .Consultant to .Investor type. Rather, the code appears to create a blank contact and propagate\move all default properties and user properties over to new item.

Is there any easy way of just changing the class rather than performing this: create new, copy data, delete old, save new?

Also, outlook appears to just crash at certain points during the code's execution. It will generate a dr. watson's error and behaves erratically?

again, I'm the one that's inherting this code from somewhere else. I would like to konw if there's any solution out or if it would even be in my best interest to convert the macro to COM Add-In.

thanks in advance

Jim