have not infrequently been asked "Can I use phonebook forms in regular notepads".
There is a tool for using regular forms in regular notepads. Tools > View Item by Form. But too often that is less than satisfying. If you have that form dialog open, you can't touch your outline.
What those who asked had wanted was like in the phonebook, where you can access your outline, and columns, and the form at the same time.
Was working on a list in a notepad, and very much wanted to edit some data in a phonebook like form... and... so I did!
here's how you do it too:
open (right click) a phonebook combo view in your notepad. select the form you desire (Phonebook > Change phonebook forms *or* control + Alt + 1-9 hotkey) you can resize the view and move things around so the form is maximized. If you find the place in-between the phonebook form and your notepad you can move that left and right. You can make the form bigger (maximize it) by dragging the horizontal bar between form and phonebook lines. (you can even change the size of the text vs. fields of the form by dragging the black line in middle).
Run the EM "Hijack!" tool.
now, for any item you want to edit/view with the form, just press Winkey + Control + H (or left shift + control + rightclick mouse). *presto* the item is being edited by the phonebook form, in real time, as well as by the live item and item columns.
see more & screenshot of this at :
http://forums.eccomagic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1200440983 kind of cool.