This drops all inactive connections on the server. After you do that and do a regular Show Users, you will see no one or only the currently active users who are actually on the system right now. It should wipe out all the old connections, but if you do it and still see a connection with anything but 0 next to it, it's a bad or phantom session and is indicative of other problems.

How do you convert Word files to Notes format?

There is a product called Hyper*Ink (formerly called Lexstyle Publisher) from CoExtant (formerly Pantano Genesis) which can batch convert formatted Word document into hyperlinked Notes documents. Contact them at [email] sales@coextant.com.

Notes:Import Document from Pembroke International also will do this, but cannot automatically generate multiple linked Notes documents for each chapter of a Word document.

Can Notes be attacked by Viruses?

Here is a useful posting by [email] Christopher Feller:

"...Notes is an entirely different paradigm. One of the reasons viruses and attacks on internet-based systems happen so frequently, is that the initiators are anonymous. They don't have to worry about retribution or punishment. However, you don't attack a Notes server anonymously like a Firewall or FTP server. You can't even begin to touch a Notes server unless someone has created an ID for you. And as soon as an ID exists, there's an electronic trail to follow, I don't care what fields you delete.
Someone creates an anonymous mail-bomb? Fine. I'll just trace through all the servers listed in the RouteServers field to find where the initial mail came from. Then I'll check the RouteTimes/PostedDate and compare that to the Notes Log to see when it was routed through that server. Then I'll check to see who was logged in and bust them.
Worried about attacks on your N&A? Don't give anyone greater than reader access, and control the certifier tightly. Don't let just anyone create replicas/copies on the server. Also, place a mail-paste macro that does an @DocumentDelete in the N&A. (This will keep anyone from routing anything nasty to the N&A by using Mail-In database documents or by setting the mail database destination of a user in the main or secondary N&A book to be the N&A itself.) Finally, mark all documents in the
N&A as read and check the database for unread documents on a periodic basis from the local workspace. If anything new or changed is there (even if it doesn't show up in a view) you'll find it by pressing that Tab key. (For those people who are worried about a disgruntled employee making design changes to documents or forms, inherit the N&A design from an "approved" template nightly and run a nightly background macro to check for documents that have mysterious or "non-approved" form names). Oh, and don't forget to setup statistics and event reporting!

My point is simply this: due to the way Notes was designed, access is always "granted", not implicit. So, no matter what, there's always a record of activity somewhere and there always a way to deny that access.

If you have your security set up sensibly, your logging turned up to the max, and train your users to look at buttons before pressing them (highlight the button and choose Edit->Button) then you really don't have much to worry about. If you ever do encounter anything strange, you'll be able to trace it with the information contained in the offending document. Don't let panic mongers scare you away from Notes!"

How do I change or turn off the new mail tune?
To turn off the new mail tune, in the local notes.ini file, add the line:

NewMailTune=

To use a different tune, specify an appropriate .wav file after the "=".

What can be done to speed up Notes TCP/IP?

In notes.ini, make sure the following are set:

TCP_Single_Message=1
TCP=16384

The Single_Message should be automatically in all versions after 3.0. The larger TCP size will increase network performance by 40%.

Can @UserName be used in Selective Replication formulas?

@UserName will not work in selective replication formulas. Separate selective replication formulas are needed for each individual who needs to see a subset of data in a database.
It is a nightmare to maintain these separate formulas. When possible, use reader names to provide subsets of data to remote users.

Why aren't laptop user's database designs being updated?

Check that the Server is given at least designer access to the Local database. A frequent error occurs like this. The database ACL is set up this way:

Default {Editor}
LocalDomainServers {Manager}
OtherDomainServers {Editor}
Admin {Manager}

Since the Server is usually in the group LocalDomainServers, it has manager
access when being evaluated against the Server's N&A Book. The problem occurs
when the Laptop user makes a replica of the DB. On the laptop, the user has a
local N&A book which is used to resolve Group Names when evaluating the ACL
when it replicates with the Server. The Server is usually not a member of the
group LocalDomainServers in that private N&A book, therefore no design changes
are passed when the replication occurs.

How do I set up searching for numbers and punctuation with FT Search?

If you are using the default.stp file, it ignores numbers. You can create a special stp file for use with this database that includes numbers. Just remove the line:

  [0-9]+

and all numbers will index.

If you are looking for numbers in a Number field, numeric fields have to be searched for by specifying this formula in the search window (or by using a Form to search which generates this formula):

  ([SearchField]=value)

Punctuation and other special marks, except for '&', "/", ":", and "." are NOT included in the index so there is no way to search for them. You can never find "C++" no matter how you arrange your query since it isn't "text" and it is not included in the index. You'll have to use the non-indexed search function by holding down <shift> as you click on the flashlight icon. This will bring up the regular search dialog box. Type C++ in there and let it search all documents. When finished, select "Show only selected" under the View menu and you'll see all the documents that contain "C++" in them. Keep in mind the words won't be hilighted like in the FTS, but at least you can identify all the documents.

Is Notes Year 2000 Ready?

From Lotus' Knowledgebase Article#147238:

Lotus Notes is ready for the year 2000. In fact, support for the year 2000 has been part of the Notes architecture from the very beginning of its development. Therefore, all Notes releases, beginning with Release 1.0, fully support all year 2000 date functions, and no human intervention is necessary for Notes to continue functioning correctly when we move into the year 2000.

When discussing the impact of year 2000 dates in Lotus Notes, there are three areas of Notes date functionality to consider. These are:

1. Date entry.
2. Date calculations.
3. Notes server time synchronization.

Below are descriptions of each of these areas and explanations of how Notes handles each:

1. Date entry.

Since Release 1.0 of Notes, it has been possible to enter dates for the year 2000 and beyond simply by typing all four digits of the year. For example, "1 1 2000".

For all Notes releases prior to Release 4.5, if only two digits are typed in for the year, Notes assumes that the user means the date within the base century 1900. For example:

If the date entered is "1 1 20", Notes releases prior to Release 4.5 will internally store the year as "1920".

Beginning in Notes Release 4.5, if only two digits are typed in for the year and the two digits are a value between 50 and 99, then Notes will assume that the year is within the base century 1900. If the two digit year value entered is between 00 and 49, then Notes will assume that the century is base 2000. For example:

If the date entered is "1 1 97", Notes will internally store the year as "1997". If the date entered is "1 1 00", Notes will internally store the year as "2000".

This new feature in Notes Release 4.5 will allow data entry to be more intuitive for users as we move into the next millennium.

The only place where Notes does not make this assumption is with the @Date function. If you enter an @Date formula with a year as two digits, Notes assumes you mean the literal year that is entered. For example, @Date(94;3;16) will evaluate as 03 16 0094, when you probably intended @Date(1994;3;16) which will evaluate as 03 16 94. This is true in all Notes releases, including Notes Release 4.5.

2. Date calculations.

All calculations using pre- and post-year 2000 dates in Notes will execute correctly. Notes' internal TIMEDATE structure stores the dates in such a way that they can be manipulated in formulas in anyway, regardless of the year or any other part of the date.

Notes internally supports up to the year 32767 on 16-bit operating systems (limited by a 15-bit year quantity in our TIME structure), and the year 41247 on 32-bit operating systems (limited by a 24-bit Julian date quantity in our TIMEDATE structure), so it is well prepared not only for the year 2000 but for many millenniums beyond that.

3. Notes server time synchronization.

When a Notes server is started for the first time, it picks up the time from the operating system it is running on and then keeps its own time from then on until the server is brought down again. The Notes server already knows how to manage the year 2000, so it will automatically roll its time from December 31, 1999 at 11:59:59 PM to January 1, 2000 at 12:00:00 AM. The Notes server also knows how to work with leap years and daylight savings time, so both of these will also be handled correctly during the year 2000.

What keyboard shortcuts are available in Notes?

Note that these shortcuts are for Windows machines. They may be different for Macs, OS/2, or Unix systems.

From a form:
[TAB] Next unread document.
[SHIFT]+[TAB] Previous unread document.
[ENTER] Next document.
[BACKSPACE] Previous document.
[Shift]+[F9] Replaces a user-entered formula in an editable text field with its returned value.
[ALT]+[1] Click the 1st action button, 2 for second, and so on.
[CTRL]+Compose Document Suppresses inheritance when creating new document.

From a view:
[RIGHT ARROW] Hortizontal Scroll Bar.
[INS] Toggles "read" and "unread" marks.
[ALT]+[number N] Click the Nth action button.
[F3] Displays or moves highlight to next selected document.
[Shift+F3] Displays or moves highlight to previous selected document.
[F9] Update current view.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[F9] Update all views in database.
[Shift+Gray Plus] Expand an entire view (Expand All).
[Shift+Gray Minus] Collapse an entire view (Collapse All).
key on the keypad Expands all descendants of the currently selected document.

From the Workspace:
[`] "Scan for unread mail" from the desktop.
[TAB] "Scan for unread" from the desktop.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+Double-Click on Database Shows all views of database (including the hidden ones).
[SHIFT]+Select Databases and then Double-Click Opens up the current view of all the databases into one mixed view.
[SHIFT]+View\ShowServerNames Display the filenames of the databases on the desktop.

[Shift+F9] Updates unread count on current work page.

From anywhere:
[CTRL]+[TAB] Cycles through open Notes windows.
[ALT]+[ENTER] Toggles the Properties Box.
[CTRL]+[M] Create mail Memo.
[ALT]+[F9] Minimize Notes.
[CTRL]+[F9] Restore open Notes windows to non-minimized.
[F5] Log you off of your Notes server, but does not exit Notes.
[F1] Displays context-sensitive Help.

How do you get rid of dead mail messages on the server?
Add the server database called MAIL.BOX to the Notes desktop, and open the database. Select the view for showing dead messages. You can then resend the mail messages or delete them

What do you do about forgotten passwords?

There are a couple of methods to deal with this depending on how secure you'd like user accounts to be:
1) Keep a backup of the user ID with a known password in a secure location. However, any encryption keys that the user adds will be lost if this backup file is used when the user forgets his/her password.
2) Don't keep backups and warn the user about what it means to lose a password (all your encrypted files won't be accessible any more, etc.). This also guarantees that the user is the only one who could have sent a mail message (useful in court cases) or done something to a database.
3) Separate the ID file storage and the password knowledge between two different people. This is a safer position than (1). However, if the two people work together, security in Notes can still be compromised.

If you are running 4.1, there is a new feature that will help you use method (1). You can set up an escrow account and when you register a new user, the new ID is sent (mailed) automatically to the escrow agent. This way, you keep backup copies of every ID you make.

There is no way to recover encryption keys from a user ID with a forgotten password!

Why isn't my @DbLookup background macro running properly?

For any @DbLookup or @DbColumn that is run from a backgound macro, you need to put the ReplicaID of the database where the macro is being run into the ACL of the database which is being used for the source of the lookup.

A background macro is executed by $Chronos which doesn't have an ID by itself. That's why it uses the replica ID of the database containing the macro for authentication.

How do you run the Compact process on a schedule?

Here is an example program document you can use. Make sure the Notes directory is in your system PATH.

Basics
Program name: $COMPACT.EXE
Command line: -S 5
Server to run on: ServerName/Domain
Comments: Compact databases with more than 5 percent whitespace.

Schedule
Enabled/disabled: ENABLED
Run at times: 10:10 PM each day
Repeat interval of: 0 minutes
Days of week: Wed, Sat

How do you update a Stored Form in old documents?

First, delete the stored form in these documents by using this technique.
Then, run Tools\RefreshFields on all the affected documents.

How do you fix documents with bad ReaderNames fields?

If you access the database locally on the server, you can reset all the bad ReaderNames fields by using an agent. ReaderNames fields are only enforced when you access the database from the server. This also applies to AuthorNames.

How do you specify a new location for the desktop.dsk file?

You can add a line to the NOTES.INI file telling Notes where to find the DESKTOP.DSK file. By default it looks in the Notes Data Directory. E.g., the following line :

  DESKTOP=C:\NEWDIR\DESKTOP.DSK

will look for the desktop.dsk file in c:\newdir.

What would change the list of servers I see in the Database Open dialog?

The databases which are listed in the File-Open dialog are all the servers which are in the same Network as your home server. So either you have changed your home server or your administrator has changed some of the servers which were in your network.

How do you periodically export a view to a text file?
This can be done with a Notes add-on called ZMerge. An evaluation version is available from Granite Software.

How do you change a user's name in a user ID?
Have the user do a Mail/User ID/Request New Name and type in the new name they want. The request comes to you, who then certifies the new name, they get it back and accept it. They can do a normal Tools/UserID/Change Name function but that will wipe out any certificates they hold and you have to recertify them.

Why do users get notified of new mail even though they don't have any?
The database compaction process on the server will cause the new mail flag to be set incorrectly. Turn this off and the false new mail signals should stop.

If the new mail notification indicator stays on, the NewMailSeqNum=X variable in the Notes.ini file also may have gotten out of sync with the server. Shut down Notes, erase the "X" part of the variable and then restart Notes.

What TCP/IP port does Notes use?

Port 1352

What can be done to optimize database performance?

1. Don't have too many views - each time you change/add a document Notes will need to update every appropriate view.

2. Keep views simple - more columns means more calculation. It gets worse if the columns are sorted and worse still if the columns are categorized.

3. Don't use @Today or @Now in selection formulas - the views will never be up to date and the server will be forever recalculating them. If you need to use today's date in a selection formula then have a background macro running each day to set an environment variable in the server's notes.ini and reference this.

4. If you want to display compound information in a view column from multiple fields then calculate it in a hidden document field. The column should then reference this single field rather than carrying out the calculation.

5. To avoid the @DBColumns/@DBLookups used to generate keyword lists, etc.,
being generated at read time use something like:

@If(@IsDocBeingLoaded & !@IsNewDoc; @Unavailable; @DbColumn(""; ""; "By _Category (Main View)"))

for the formula. Editing documents will take just as long but document readers will notice a big improvement. The example above is from a keyword format formula.

6. Use column numbers not field names for lookups

7. If you are doing lots of lookups to multiple columns in a single view then append all of the data in a single column with a unique delimiter string and do a single lookup. The value returned can then be parsed with @Left/@Right/@Mid or @Explode to give you the separate field values.

8. Put 64 Mb of RAM in the server and push the buffer pool sizes to their limits. This is documented in the Knowledge Base.

An IBM Redbook is also available: Performance Considerations for Domino Applications.

A developerWorks article is also available: Troubleshooting Application Performance

How do you make a list of all groups a person is in?

Create view in the NAB with a selection formula of "Select (Form = "Group").
Add the field 'Members' in first column.
In the propeties box for the first column, select sorting type 'categorized' and select 'show multiple values as separate entries'.
In the second column, put the field 'ListName'.

This is not recursive, so it won't show a person in a nested group.

An alternative way (from chowell@epd.renold.com) is to:
1) Load the Name & Address Book D/Base and select the "Groups" view
2) Enable the Search Bar (View, Search Bar) - the NAB has to be full text indexed
3) Key in the name of the person you are seeking - the Groups of which they are a member are identified in the view
or use the search string:

  FIELD Members contains "username or groupname"

so you avoid false hits on the ListOwner and LocalAdmin fields.

And another way using the Notes API from agorlenko@manu.com but this only works on R5+:

Declare Function NSFBuildNamesList Lib "NNOTES" Alias "NSFBuildNamesList" _
( Byval S As String, Byval F As Long, hNL As Long) As Integer

Declare Function OSLockObject Lib "NNOTES" Alias "OSLockObject" _
( Byval H As Long) As Long

Declare Sub OSUnlockObject Lib "NNOTES" Alias "OSUnlockObject" _
( Byval H As Long)

Declare Function OSMemFree Lib "NNOTES" Alias "OSMemFree" _
( Byval Handle As Long) As Integer

Declare Function ReadInteger Lib "MSVCRT" Alias "memcpy" _
( N As Integer, Byval P As Long, Byval B As Long) As Long

Declare Function ReadString Lib "MSVCRT" Alias "memcpy" _
( Byval S As String, Byval P As Long, Byval B As Long) As Long

Sub Initialize
        Dim session As New NotesSession
 
        Dim x As String
        Dim m As String
        Dim p As Integer
        Dim I As Integer
        Dim n As Integer
        Dim hNL As Long
        Dim GroupCount List As Integer
        Dim a As String
        Dim abook As NotesDatabase
        Dim aview As NotesView
        Dim doc As NotesDocument
        On Error Goto oops
        Set abook = session.GetDatabase("", "names.nsf")
        Set aview = abook.GetView("People")
        Set doc = aview.GetFirstDocument
        Do Until doc Is Nothing
 
 
                a = doc.FullName(0) 
 
         ' Get Names List handle (fails on R4)
 
                'On Error Resume Next
                NSFBuildNamesList a$, 0, hNL
                'On Error Goto 0
                If hNL = 0 Then
                        Print "Failed"
                        Exit Sub
                End If
 
  ' Get memory pointer
                Dim pNL As Long
                pNL = OSLockObject(hNL)
 
  ' Get number of entries, skip to first entry
                ReadInteger n%, pNL, 2
                pNL = pNL + 14
 
  ' Read the entries
                For i% = 1 To n%
                        x$ = String$(256, " ")
                        ReadString x$, pNL, 256
                        p% = Instr(x$, Chr$(0))
                        pNL = pNL + p%
                        If Not p% = 0 Then x$ = Left$(x$, p% - 1)

  ' each group is listed in x$ in this loop

                Next
 
  ' Discard the Names List
                OSUnlockObject hNL
                OSMemFree hNL
                'Exit Do
                Set doc=aview.GetNextDocument(doc)
        Loop

Exit Sub

How do you remove Stored Forms from documents?

Create a macro with the following code:

SELECT $TITLE="Form Name";
FIELD $TITLE:=@DeleteField;
FIELD $INFO:=@DeleteField;
FIELD $WINDOWTITLE:=@DeleteField;
FIELD $BODY:=@DeleteField;
FIELD FORM:="Form Name";

Once the macro is run, perform Tools, Refresh Fields to update the documents with the new form attributes.

Why do new documents not show up in views after a recent server crash?

Running UPDALL -R should fix these views. However, this doesn't work all the time.

When a server crashes, views that were marked for re-indexing and were queued for UPDATE tend to not be re-indexed. That can be a lot of views. Apparently they think they're indexed and don't mark themselves to be indexed again.

Tell anyone who thinks something hasn't been updated to do a SHIFT-F9 while in the view that seems affected (not from their workspace).

How do you turn off Notes crash dumps (notes.rip files)?

Disable Quincy (the crash dump program) by renaming the executable, QNC.EXE in the Notes directory. You can also uninstall Quincy using the command line "qnc -u".

Can I set the default ACL on the N&A Book to Reader?
Notes has been designed to have the default ACL set to Author with no create or delete privileges. Without this, people cannot edit the items in their person document like phone number, location, signature, picture, etc. They also cannot delete the ID file from the N&A book after installation. And worst of all, they cannot edit any groups that they have been given ownership of. You should make the default ACL set to Author (with both delete and create turned off).

Can you keep multiple versions of Notes on the same system?

Yes. On an install of a new version, you should:
1) Put the \Notes directory in your PATH.
2) For major revisions (3.x -> 4.x -> 5.x, etc.), keep a separate copy of the \Notes\Data directory because the Notes internal database format changes between each version; new major versions will upgrade old database versions to the latest which can then no longer be read by the old versions. You can point to the appropriate data directory by editing your notes.ini file; you will only need one per major revision (NoteData.3, NoteData.4, etc.)
3) After the install, move the notes.ini file into the \Notes directory.
4) Before installing a new version, rename the directory of the old version to something else (e.g., \Notes to \Notes.463).
5) Install into the same non-renamed directory (e.g., \Notes), but before doing this, copy your desktop.dsk file into this directory so it can be upgraded if needed.

To use a specific version:
1) Make sure you are not running anything from \Notes (e.g., Notes Single Logon which is nsl.exe, the mail check in R5, the Notes client, etc.)
2) Rename the current \Notes directory to whatever version (e.g., \Notes to \Notes.463) it was.
3) Rename the directory with the version you want to \Notes (e.g., \Notes.50 to \Notes).
4) Start Notes.

You have to keep the same directory structure because in later versions of Notes, there is information in the registry related to OLE automation. If you use separate directories for each version, OLE automation may not function correctly.

With the caveat about OLE automation, you can run multiple versions simultaneously if you:
1) do not put the \Notes directory in your PATH
2) run the nlnotes.exe (or the appropriate executable for your platform be replacing the first character in the filename) instead of running notes.exe
From Olivér Zsigmond (Oliver_Zsigmond@lotus.com) comes this tip on how to run the R5 server locally with multiple clients:

Rename dirs of your existing versions of Notes R3, R4.x as described above.
Move your NOTES.INI into the appropriate NOTES.EXE dir.
Modify the Directory line in NOTES.INI to show the appropriate DATA dir.

Install Domino R5 to \lotus\domino
Install Notes R5 All Clients to \lotus\notes

Both directories will have their own NOTES.INI file and DATA dir.

Start Domino server and complete the setup.
Start any of the Notes clients (R3,R4 or R5) from its directory and you can use the local R5 server. You can stop the client and start any other one without stopping the server. The new rules are that you can start only one client and you can't start the client from \lotus\domino because if you stop this client, it will stop the Domino server as well.
Because of Windows Logo requirements, the \data directory structure in R6 is more confusing. There are some files in \lotus\notes\data underneath where you installed the main \lotus\notes executables, but there are also NSF files and the notes.ini file in "\winnt\profiles\<username>\local settings\application data\lotus\notes\data". You can change to a similiar structure as R3/R4/R5 by moving the files and then changing the Directory attribute in the notes.ini to point to the new directory.

In the registry, you should update the DATADIR value in the "HKEY_USERS\<userid>\Software\Lotus\Notes\Installer" key to point to the data directory you used so that the installer knows how to uninstall and update your current files.
In addition, the following two keys should point to the data directory:
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lotus\Notes\6.0\DataPath"
"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Lotus\Notes\DataPath"

Note that this will probably break R6's roaming user support. Installing multiple versions of Notes is something usually done by developers, so this should be a reasonable caveat.
Mike Kemp (MikeJKemp@aol.com) uses this technique for running multiple simultaneous versions on NT/Win2K:

So I could respond quickly to user's 'phone queries I had my desktop 'admin' workstation set up so I could run several Notes clients concurrently.� The OS had to be NT (or W2K) - definitely not W9x.� The set up is along the same lines as in your article, with the difference that the start-up shortcut preferences point to the appropriate nlnotes.exe (rather than the more usual notes.exe) similar to this:

for R4.5 client :-� C:\NotesR45\nlnotes.exe =D:\NotesR45\Data\notes.ini

for R4.6 client :-� C:\NotesR46\nlnotes.exe =D:\NotesR46\Data\notes.ini

for R5.x client (my main admin tool):- C:\R5Client\Notes.exe =D:\R5Client\Data\notes.ini.

and even (as an experiment):- C:\NotesR33\_lnotes.exe =D:\Notes33\Data\notes.ini.

Note that the R5 shortcut pointed to the Notes.exe and MUST be started first.

With this structure in place I could <Alt>+<Tab> between the various clients at will and so be able to 'talk my callers' through a problem quite rapidly.� I could also check the operation of a database development intended for the environment.

The only drawback was the occasional entire machine 'lock-up' if I tried to use the Admin console in more than one client at a time - but this did not affect the servers.

I have not had the opportunity yet to try out this procedure involving ND6.

What programs will back up Notes databases without needing a Notes server shutdown?

Cheyenne ArcServe has a Notes agent which lets it back up open databases. The agent requires a "work area" of the size of your largest Notes database because it creates a replica of a database into a separate directory before backing up that database.
Tivoli TSM (formerly IBM's ADSM) will back up open files and can back up databases incrementally.
Veritas's Backup Exec with the Open File Option (they also have a Domino agent).
Quadratec's Time Navigator can do full and incremental backups
Unix's tar (and ports of it to other platforms like NT and OS/2) will back up open files.

How do you minimize Notes rollout cost?
If your application is just an information publication application, look at the Notes to Web publishing programs and the Domino support built into Notes 4.5. This approach will also allow your Notes information to be published to all Internet/Intranet users. More information on these programs can be found here.

If you just want to use the Notes applications which are bundled with Notes Express (now known as Notes Mail), using Notes Express from Lotus will let you deploy Notes for approximately $50 per seat in quantities. Any custom applications that use the Lotus API directly can also be run from Notes Express.

If you wish to develop custom applications, but not allow most users to develop applications, Notes Desktop is a run-time version which available for $79 per seat in quantities.

Finally, if your users will always be using web browsers and POP3 clients, user licenses are only $30.

The latest pricing information is here.

How do you get rid of all the deletion stubs in a database?

All document deletion stubs in a database can be purged by selecting File/Database/Information/Replication and setting the cutoff date ahead two days. Once this is done, the deletion stubs are purged immediately.

NOTE: Depending upon the Notes platform, it may also be necessary to set the purge interval to one day as well as setting the cutoff date ahead. This is not required for all Notes platforms.

How do make a local replica which has no documents?

This is used if a user only wants to compose new documents on the local replica, but the user does not want to replicate a copy of the entire database locally.

Enter a selective replication formula which is never true:

1) Create a new replica and select initialize at first replication
2) Go to your new stub and enter the following selective replication formula:

 SELECT @False

(This will only work if you absolutly don't need anything from the original database, if you need some documents to perform lookups against, than you should only select those documents)
3) Replicate the stub, select receive from server only.
4) Clear the selective replication formula in the local database.

How do you get Notes to rebuild corrupted views?

From the server window, run:

load updall dbname -C
load updall dbname -R

Dbname is optional. If omitted it will operate on all db's.
-C builds indexes for all views that have not already been built.
-R rebuilds indexes for all views that have already been built.

Who can I call to find my local reseller and licensing information?

You can call Lotus at 1-800-782-7876 in the United States.

Can you check for mail without leaving Notes running?

These are freeware utilities that let you do this in Windows.

CMS Mail Monitor
This program shows the mail sender and lets you enter a selection formula for which mail will trigger popups. It is available [ftp] here.

Alert!
There is also a non-free Professional version which is able to monitor any database on any server you like and shows the number of unreads of each database in a window. The demo version is available [ftp] here.

Mail Monitor
This is not a freeware utility. It is available from Rein&McBride.

NotesAlarm
This is freeware, but only runs on Win95. It is available from Polo Sardinaloil's web page.

WinBiff
This is shareware and is available from the WinBiff home page.

Notify for Notes
Checks for new mail, alarms, and allows you to create new messages. From AW Soft.

How do you manage ACL information across an organization?

Notes R4 allows you to set a database's properties so that ACL's are consistent across all replicas.
Notes R5 has built in tools for updating the ACL's across multiple databases.

Percussion Software has a product called Server Admin Plus that will also let you manage and audit ACL information.

Candle also has a system administration tool.

IVES Technologies has a product called ACL Reporter Updater which is a platform independent administration tool that provides security management for enterprise-wide Lotus Notes/Domino networks.

Can fields be added to the N&A Book?

There's no problem with adding fields and views, but don't change anything that is pre-existing. Do all your work in a template, and be very careful with the management of that template. There are two dangers:
(a) losing your modified template due to inadvertant replication from a newly installed server that has a standard NAMES.NTF that is newer than your custome version, and
(b) having two different templates for the NAB on different servers such that $DESIGN on each server re-inherits conflicting designs every night causing a "Design Storm" that can bring your whole network down.

Do not name it NAMES.NTF, or it may be overwritten by a software upgrade. Make sure that the template name is not the default (StdNotesAddressBoook). You can either make it a replica of the original NAMES.NTF, or a copy.

If it is a replica, be sure to remove the original, be sure to let it replicate to all servers, and be especially sure that any time a new Notes version is loaded that you merge any changes in the new version's NAMES.NTF into your template and then delete that NAMES.NTF from your server before you allow the upgraded server to replicate with any other server.

If it is a copy instead of a replica, it is best that you uncheck the setting that allows replication of the template name for your NAB and make sure that only one server in your organization is set up to inherit the NAB design from your modified template.
Just for insurance it might be a good idea to use the ACL or selective replication to insure that your main hub server never accepts NAB design changes from any other server.

For Notes R4 and R5, the preferred way of adding fields to the NAB is to use subforms.

How do you make the infobox reappear if it doesn't show up?

From Lawrence Wagner (lwagn2@dwp.ci.la.ca.us):

METHOD #1:

Using the keyboard:

1. Select File, Database Properties.
2. Hold down the ALT key and press the spacebar.
3. If a menu appears, select Move. If not, type the letter "m".
4. Use the arrow keys (i.e., the up arrow) on the keyboard to move the InfoBox back onto the screen. You should eventually see a dotted line in the form of a rectangle. Once you do, press ENTER. The InfoBox will reappear on the screen.

METHOD #2:

The NOTES.INI variable that is responsible for the position of the InfoBox on the screen is:

Win32InfoboxPos=

If you cannot find the InfoBox, modifying the values in the NOTES.INI to will also make it reappear. The values in this parameter refer to x, y coordinate locations. By changing these to numbers that fit within the pixel resolution (for example, 800x600), the InfoBox will reappear. Examples:

Win32InfoboxPos=441 79

Win32InfoboxPos=333 261

How do you put a Notes Database on a CD?

From Glenn.Thibert@thehartford.com:

The following steps are necessary to put a database onto a CD or other read-only media:

1. Select the database and choose Design - Views and make sure that all views are unhidden (i.e. do not have parentheses around their names). It is important to temporarily unhide the hidden views so that the view indexes for these views can be created (see Step 2 below).

2. Open the database and press CTRL+SHIFT+F9. This key combination will rebuild all of the views in the database. This includes both open and hidden views, as well as server-based or local databases. It is important to build the view indexes before copying the database to the CD or other read-only media as, if they are not created and stored in the NSF file prior to adding it
to the read-only media, Notes will attempt to create them and will not be able to because it cannot write to the media.

Note: If a view is not built, pressing CTRL+SHIFT+F9 will cause Notes to build the view. If the view is already built, pressing CTRL+SHIFT+F9 will cause Notes to update the view, not rebuild it.

3. Create the full-text index for the database if you intend for the database to be queried using Notes' full-text indexing capabilities. You can do this using the File - Full Text Search - Create Index command. This index must be created prior to putting the database on the read-only media for the same reason described for view indexes in Step 2 above.

Note: Most CD mounting software conforms to the ISO 9660 standard which does not allow for periods in directory names. When creating full-text indexes in Notes, it by default creates a directory with the extension .FT (period - FT) which is against the ISO 9660 regulations. For example, if your database is called DATABASE.NSF, then Notes will create a subdirectory called \DATABASE.FT underneath the directory which contains the file DATABASE.NSF.

To workaround this issue, do the following

a. Create another directory which has the same name as the database, but with no extension (i.e. \DATABASE instead of DATABASE.FT). This new directory name must be the same as the database name.

b. Copy all of the files created for the full-text index from the original directory into the new directory.

c. Delete the full-text index files from the old directory name (the name with the .FT extension) and remove the directory from the system.

Notes will now see the new directory and use the full-text index files inside of it. It does not require the .FT extension to be on the directory name. The .FT is only used as a naming convention when creating the directory for full-text indexes so that those directory names wouldn't show up along with the other directory names in the File - Open Database dialog box.

4. Do an operating system level copy (such as using the DOS or OS/2 COPY command) of the .NSF file from the writeable media which you are currently using onto the media which will be used to press the CD or other read-only media. Be sure that you do an operating system level copy during this step and not a File - Database - Copy from within Notes as using Notes to copy the
database will remove the view indexes.

Also, be aware that Notes databases on a CD can only be viewed by the same major version of Notes that the Notes database was indexed with. The view index and full text index are improved with each major version, i.e., R5 can't read R4 DB on CD, etc. To work around this with old CDs you may still want to view, you can copy the .nsf file to your local system, follow the procedure above, then copy all the files onto a new CDR because CDRW drives are so inexpensive now.

What is involved in deploying Notes to International users?

From a posting by [email] Kevin Urbanek:

"There are some questions you will need to answer before a decision can be made. First the legal stuff. Legally, a NA ID file can not leave the US or Canada (unless the US State Dept grants you an exception). NA Notes servers can talk to Non-NA Notes servers just fine with one exception, encrypion keys (all keys would need to be International for them to be used worldwide). Note that not all countries allow encrypted data or have rules/laws governing encryption.

Some questions:
1. Do your applications and/or users use encryption regurally? BTW: make sure to check out encryption laws in the different countries (France,Russia South Korea and others have laws governing encryption and the keys)
2. Do your users travel internationally? (i.e a NA Notes ID travels to Europe)

If you want to keep your NA setup that you currently have, when you setup the International users/servers, you will need to create a new Organizational certifier that is International. Even though you can create an International ID from a NA certifier, this International ID still carries enough of the NA encryption info (I do not know exactly what part) to make it illegal to export. So, you would end up with 2 Organizational certifiers, which means you need to cross certify the organizations. You can still use one Domain if you wanted. Depending on number of users, you may want to look at 2 Domains, one NA and one International.

If you answered "Yes" to the above questions, then you might want to think about migrating to World Wide Security (International version) or appy to the US State Dept. for an exemption. If you look to migrating, make sure you plan the migration of IDs and also review the Notes applications you have for encyption and sections. If you keep the naming conventions you have in place, Reader and Author names should not be a problem."

How do you create a database that is usable as an address book for name lookup?
You only need to have the views ($Users), ($PeopleGroupsFlat), and ($PeopleGroupsHier) in your database. You also need the ($NamesFieldLookup) view if you want people to be able to begin typing the name in the To: field and have Notes find it automatically in the address books and fill in the rest.

In the person form, you must include the following fields:

  FirstName (Type: Text)
  LastName (Type: Text)
  FullName (Type: Names)
  MailAdress (Type: Text)
  Type (Type: Text) with default value "Person"

Then add the database to the notes.ini file as a cascaded address book.

How do you move databases onto a different drive without the user knowing about it?

You can use a directory link to put all the databases into what the user sees as a subdirectory in the Notes client. In the Notes data directory, create a file named <subdir>.dir where <subdir> is the name of your subdirectory. The first line in the file is a directory name which can include a drive letter (e.g., "e:\data2"). Lines after the first line are hierarchical names for people that can go through this directory link ("e.g., */MyCompany") so you can use directory links as a security tool.

You can also use a database link. To do this, move the database to your new directory. In the Notes directory where the database used to be, create a file with the same filename as the old database. In this file, put the path to the new location of the database (e.g., "e:\data\db.nsf"). When Notes accesses this file, it will automatically look for the database using the path you specify.

If you are using OS/2, you can install the Toronto Virtual File System (TVFS) from one of the many OS/2 ftp archives. This file system allows you to merge directories and files into a "virtual" directory that you can then use for the Notes data directory.

Note that all of these methods will slow down file access a little, but the slowdown should be negligible.

How do you unhide a database design?
There are a lot of ways to do this in Notes 3.x, but here are a few:

1) If you have multiple servers, copy the database from one server to another. This will unhide the design in the new copy. The database will still show as hidden, so change the name to a template file(ntf) and create a new database from this template. This will insure the database is truly unhidden.

2) Make the locked database a design template. Create a new database. New database inherits design from template. Refresh design from template.

3) Modify a byte in the .nsf file; this is typically done to hack an application that was sold, so this technique will not be described here.

Lotus provides a database Hide Design tool (implemented in Notes 4.x and 5.x) that secures the database design more thoroughly. It is not possible to unhide a database design in these later versions of Notes without the original unhidden template; i.e., you can't unhide it by modifying a few bytes in the .nsf file. In addition, if the original design included LotusScript files from the file system when an agent or design element was saved, you'll need these files in the right directories to modify the corresponding agent or design element.

How do you prevent groups from being expanded when sending mail?

The group expansion only happens for groups in your personal NAB. You can do the following to disable this expansion when sending mail:

Modify your memo form to include a hidden field named "ExpandPersonalGroups" with Text type and Computed when Composed with a value of "0". This will cause personal groups to NOT be expanded. Changing the value to "1" will cause the groups to expand.

The other solution is to use group alias names, but this technique only works in R3.x. For example, if you have a group named Managers make it Mgrs;Managers instead. Aliases are not expanded. That way, if you want it to NOT expand send the memo to Managers. If you DO want it to expand them, send it to Mgrs.

Why does the Notes SMTP gateway reply to the wrong address of incoming Internet mail?
Unix has traditionally had a From field and a separate Reply-To field. Notes only has a From field. Because of this, the Notes SMTP gateway uses only the From field from the Unix mail headers of incoming mail instead of using the Reply-To field.

How do you generate the Notes equivalent of the Unix all group?
Create a macro in the public N&A book that updates the group document all using a @dbcolumn on the People view of the N&A book. This macro can be run as a background macro daily. The lookup part of the macro looks like:

PeopleList := @DbColumn("";"";"People";1);
Field Members := PeopleList;

How do you shut the server down for backups?

If you are running Notes as an NT service, look at this FAQ instead.

You can use the following command to tell the Notes server to shut down:
notes server -quit
After your backup is complete, issue this command to restart the Notes server:
notes server

What Netware address does a Notes server use?

When using SPX, the server advertises with a SAP (Service Advertising Protocol) address of hex 039B.

How do I add additional N&A books to the address lookup dialog?
In your notes.ini file, you should modify the line that reads "Names=NAMES.NSF" to read "Names=NAMES.NSF,MYNAMES.NSF". This will cause Notes to look up names in both the NAMES and MYNAMES N&A books.

Are there any large-scale deployment guidelines?
For large-scale Notes deployment, standards should be defined for:
Notes network topology & replication strategy
Hardware and software configurations
Hardware and software installation guidelines
User, group, and server naming scheme
Notes mail integration strategy
Notes & non-Notes data integration strategy
Server management guidelines
Operations guidelines
Security and ACL guidelines
Application design guidelines
Application implementation guidelines
Training guidelines
Support guidelines
Staffing requirements
Group naming standards
ACL standards
Database location standards
Establishing test, development and production environments
Name and Address Book control
Centralization or distributed ID creation
Replication strategy

How can you have multiple users on one workstation?

Each user has to have a separate notes.ini file and desktop.dsk file. There is a freeware utility called SmartSwitcher that does all this for you and provides a nice user interface. It can be picked up by clicking [ftp] here. This only works for Notes 3.x

A few settings (like workspace textured background) are not preserved for Notes 4.x users in SmartSwitcher. There is a commercial utility named MultiUser Logon Utility from Rein&McBride that does handle Notes 4.x.

Another commercial utility that reads the ID files from a database is SwitchID from Sollazzo Consulting.

You can also use location documents in Notes 4.x and higher. Important caveats: 1) users share the same desktop so one user can rearrange icons/bookmarks and totally confuse the other users, 2) they will get false "you have new mail" indications, and 3) the user ID files for all the users will be in one location.

Here are some tips from Laurence Wagner (lwagn2@dwp.ci.la.ca.us) on how to do this:

Do a normal install for the first user, then do the following:
1. Change the User Preferences
Select File / Tools / User Preferences from the menu.
In the Navigator panel, with icons labeled "Basics, International, Mail, and Ports", click on Basics.
There are four check boxes to the immediate right of the Basics icon. Select the box labeled "Prompt for location".
Now when Notes is re-started, it will prompt the user to select a named location document. The original location documents given with Notes are named for a variety of network connections that these users will not need to use, but do not delete them.

2. Copying the Notes ID files to the Workstation
Get these files from your Notes admin. These can go to the Notes\Data directory or a network drive, as long as it will be available to your users. Once on the workstation, each person should log in and reset their password from the default value. This can be done after the location documents are created for each person.

3. Add an action button, labeled "Make Location Doc", to the People view of the LADWP Name and Address Book. Switch to the user's ID file before you run this. The code for the button is as follows:

Sub Click(Source As Button)
  Dim session As New Notessession
  Dim notesdirectory As String
  notesdirectory = session.GetEnvironmentString( "Directory", True)
  Dim keyfilename As String
  keyfilename = session.GetEnvironmentString( "KeyFilename" , True)
  Dim whois As String, realwho As String
  Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace
  Dim doc As NotesUIDocument
  Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument
  Set uidoc = workspace.EditDocument(False)
  Dim item As NotesItem
  Dim first As String, last As String, mailserver As String, mailfile As String
  Dim mailserver1 As String, mailfile1 As String
  Dim short As String
  Dim short1 As String
  Dim udir As String
  Dim full As String
  Dim ppass As String
  Dim thisdb As NotesDatabase

  whois = session.CommonUserName
  realwho = session.UserName
  Set thisdb = session.CurrentDatabase
  Set uidoc = workspace.EditDocument(False)
  first = uidoc.FieldGetText("FirstName")
  last = uidoc.FieldGetText("LastName")
  short = uidoc.FieldGetText("ShortName")
  mailfile = uidoc.FieldGetText("MailFile")
  spaceposition = Instr(1,mailfile, "\")
  short = Mid( mailfile, spaceposition + 1)
  mailfile1 = "mail\\" + short
  mailserver = uidoc.FieldGetText("MailServer")
  If first <> "" Then
    full = first + " " + last
  Else
    full = last
  End If
  Call uidoc.Close
  Print "got Person data"

'  Build new rec
'
  Set uidoc = workspace.ComposeDocument ( "", "names.nsf", "Location" )
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("Name",full)
  udir = notesdirectory
  short1 = keyfilename
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("Userid", udir + "\" + short1)
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("Domain","LADWP")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("DST","1")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("Enabled","0")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("NameLookupPref","2")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("ExhaustiveNameLookup","1")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("Images","0")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("LocationType","0")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("MailFile", mailfile)
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("MailServer", mailserver)
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("Source","*")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("TimeZone","8")
  Call uidoc.FieldSetText("WebRetriever","Netscape Navigator")
  Call uidoc.Save
  Call uidoc.Close
'
'     Add the mail database to the workspace
'
  If whois = full Then
    spaceposition = Instr(1, mailserver, "/")
    If spaceposition = 0 Then
      spaceposition = 30
    End If
    mailserver1 = Left$( mailserver, spaceposition - 1)
    Call workspace.AddDatabase( mailserver1 , mailfile1 )
    Messagebox "the mail database for: " & full & Chr(10)  & " has been added to the workspace, and " & Chr(10) & "Location
Document added to Address Book"
  Else
    Messagebox "Location Document for: " & full & " added to Personal Address Book"
  End If
End Sub

A company called DNI Systems makes a workstation sharing solution called Notes Profiler. It accomodates roaming users.

Note that this is no longer necessary as of Notes 6.01. Notes 6.01 supports roaming users so their Notes desktops go with them to each machine. It also supports multiuser installs of the Notes client on a single machine so each logged on user doesn't have to install their own separate copy of Notes and waste disk space.

Can you have specific notes.ini files per user?

You can modify your Notes startup icon to use this as the command line:

  <path>notes.exe =<path>notes.ini

This uses the specified notes.ini file. You can then place this with a user's personal data files on a file server.

How do you change how long logs are kept in log.nsf?

There is a LOG= setting in the NOTES.INI. You specify
LOG=<logfile name>,<logging enable>, 0,<days to keep documents>,<document size>

Do not set document size too large or the server will not be able to compact the log database very well.

How do you set up remote users with a local replica of a new database?

Create a mail message to the remote users with
1) a copy of the database as an attachment
2) a database doclink

Also in this mail message, add some instructions on how to detach the attachment and where to place it (in the Notes data directory). After the attachment has been detached, the instructions should ask the user to click on the doclink. This will search for the database replica locally and open it; it will also place the database on the replication workspace page.
If the attachment is large, you should warn remote users that you are sending it to them so they don't think that the replication is hung.

How do you refresh Private View designs on clients?

Delete the database icon from the user's workspace and re-add it. Deleting the database will cause all the Private Views to be removed. When the user re-opens the database, new Private Views (with the updated design) will be created.

You can do this via a macro that is sent to users via email:

@Command([WindowWorkspace]);
@Command([FileOpenDatabase];........);
@Command([FileCloseWindow]);
@PostedCommand([EditClear]);
@PostedCommand([FileOpenDatabase];.......)

Why is a user not getting the proper roles?

From Barry Wand (bwand@us.ibm.com):

The user is in an ACL as a member of a Group that has Editor access to a database and has been included in a Role that is authorized to modify a field in a Controlled Access Section. The user is also listed explicitly with Designer access. The user still cannot edit that field although other people in the same group can.

Explicit ACL entries always override Group document entries. If your Group entry has the Role assigned but your explicit entry does not then you do not have the Role assigned to you. In this case you have Designer access but without the Role assigned. You will need to adjust the ACL to assign that Role to your explicit entry also.

How do you move a Domino server to new hardware?

From colin.brown@advanticastoner.com:

The following procedure can be used when you need to move an existing Domino server to new hardware (i.e. when upgrading to a new server) without any disruption to your users. The procedure is based on a number of postings to notes.net and our own recent experience moving a R5.05 Domino server to new hardware. The basic idea is simple: install the same version of the server on the new box (but don't configure it), then move the data directory & ini file from the old machine.

1. If possible, obtain the install media for the release of Domino currently running on the server you want to move - lets call it DEV1. If this is unavailable, upgrade DEV1 to the version you DO have available. It is vital that you install the release of Domino currently running on the old machine on the new hardware. If you only have the install media for 5.07, and DEV1 is currently running 5.05, you must upgrade DEV1 to 5.07 prior to the move.

Note: It is preferable to avoid upgrading the server prior to moving it, if possible - that way you can be sure that any problems encountered after the move are not due to problems with the upgrade.

2. If the server is one of several in a Notes Domain, replicate the Domino Directory (names.nsf) with another server in the domain to ensure an up to date copy.

3. Disable replication and access to the old server (to ensure we get a frozen snapshot of the server and its data). Replication and access via Notes clients can be disabled by simply taking the Domino server down. On an NT box, as an extra precaution you can remove any shares and stop the netlogon service (this must be restarted before data can be copied to the new box).

4. Do a full backup of the old server.

5. Install Domino on the new hardware, but don't configure it.

6. Copy the data directory and the notes.ini file from the old server to the new box, replacing the data directory & ini file created during the Domino install on the new machine (if you stopped the netlogon service in step 3. you'll need to restart it so you can connect to the new server). (Note: If you have any 3rd party Domino software installed on your server, you may also need some DLLs from the program directory; it safest to just reinstall the 3rd party software)

7. If the path of the data directory on the new machine is different to the old, you need to modify the directory= line in the notes.ini file to specify the correct location of the data directory on the new machine.

8. Disconnect the old box from the network.

9. Update the DNS to resolve the server name "DEV1" to the IP address of the new server (the NT server name doesn't need to be the same as the old machine). (Note: If you're using NetBIOS for name resolution, you also have to purge the NetBIOS cache or the other machines will not find the new machine)

10. Bring the new server up, test Notes and the DNS change

11. Do a full backup of the new server

12. If you need to reconnect the old machine to the network, make sure you trash the Domino server installation prior to reconnection to prevent conflicts with the new server.

13. You're done - your server should now run happily on the new hardware with no disruption to your users.

What encryption is used by Notes?

From stharris@sd.synetics.com:

- 630 bit RSA key for Notes protocols
- 1024 bit RSA key in the web protocols (SSL and S/MIME)
- 128 bit encryption (SSL and S/MIME)
- 64 bit encryption in the Notes protocols (mail, doc encryption, session encryption, etc)

Technote 179624 - "Overview of Recent Changes in U.S. Export Regulations and Implications to
Lotus and Its Customers"

Technote 179031 -"U.S. Government Relaxed Export Restrictions"

Milestones in Notes/Domino security

Notes from Support: Notes Encryption - Locks for a Digital World

Notes and Domino security: Past, present, and future

Look for 128-bit Notes/Domino Encryption in future Releases.

Why is my Notes client having trouble replicating over satellite links?
There is a lot more latency on satellite links. Craig Wiseman suggested these parameters for your TCP/IP adapter that connects to your satellite modem:

TCP RECEIVE WINDOW : 224360
WINDOWS SCALING : YES
TIME STAMPING : NO
SELECTIVE AKS : YES
PATH MTU DISCOVERY : YES
BLACK HOLE DETECTION : NO
MAX DUPLICATE AKS : 3
TTL : 64
MTU : 900

You can use DrTCP to make these changes.

Helpful Non-Notes Books

You can order any of these books from Amazon Books, who will give you a 20% discount on them. All you have to do is click on the ISBN number of the book in the tables below.

Search Amazon for more books:

Title	Author	Publisher	ISBN	Reviews
Enterprise.Com	Jeff Papows	Perseus Books	0738200646	Ken Yee
Javascript : The Definitive Guide	David Flanagan	O'Reilly & Associates	1565923928
Java Servlet Programming	Jason Hunter, William Crawford, Paula Ferguson	O'Reilly & Associates	156592391X
Dynamic HTML : The Definitive Reference	Danny Goodman	O'Reilly & Associates	1565924940

Reviews are still needed.
If you've read a good Notes book lately, [email]

let the FAQ maintainer know how you liked it.

Lotus Notes Magazines

The View, (800)810-1800 or (617)969-6666, $295/yr. Click [email] here to send a mail message to The View.

Lotus Notes & Domino Advisor, (800)336-6060 or (619)483-9851, $69/yr. Click [email] here to send a mail message to the Lotus Notes Advisor.

Lotus eBusiness Magazine (an on-line magazine)

Lotus Solutions Now! is a free publication on Lotus products published by Lotus.

Virtual Workgroups, (800)-227-1234, $40/yr. Not strictly a Notes magazine, but a good number of their articles describe how companies are using Notes.

netConnect, 011-44-171-221-7178, $225/yr for the printed version. This is a UK Groupware magazine with some articles on Lotus Notes. You can also [email] email them for additional info.

Group Computing, (415)348-0579, free to qualified individuals. This is a magazine that covers Notes and other groupware tools (including web based tools). [email] Contact them for more information.

Rupert's Lotus Business Week (Formerly Lotus eNews), free. A weekly email newsletter covering the business issues behind Lotus mail, groupware and web products. To subscribe, send email to [email] rupert.b@virgin.net.

Domino Power Magazine is a free monthly journal with weekly tips and daily Notes and Domino-related news.

Books for Notes 3.x

You can order any of these books from Amazon Books, who will give you a 20% discount on them. All you have to do is click on the ISBN number of the book in the tables below.

Search Amazon for more books:

Title	Author	Publisher	ISBN	Reviews
Developing Lotus Notes Applications	Carolyn Kraut	Wiley Professional Computing	0471008613
Lotus Notes Answers: Certified Tech Support	Polly Russel Kornblith	Osborne McGraw-Hill	0078820456
Creating Lotus Notes Applications	Lisa Pyle	QUE Books	1565295560	Mikko Eerola
Mastering Lotus Notes	Kevin, Kenyon, Kyle Brown	Sybex	0782113028
Lotus Notes Application Development	R. Larson-Hughes and H. Skalle	Prentice-Hall	0131614991
Lotus Notes Developers Guide	E. Rayl	Sams Publishing	0672305003	David Gotz
Lotus Notes 3.0/3.1 for Dummies	Stephen Londergan and Pat Freeland	IDG Books	1568842120
Lotus Notes, A Practical Guide	Simon Collin	Butterworth-Heinem Ltd.	0750621095
10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes for Windows	Kate Barnes	Alpha Books	1567611761
Database Development in Lotus Notes: Logical Operations	Susan Reber	Ziff Davis	1562762834
Easy Lotus Notes For Windows	Andrew Bryce Shafran	Que	1565297695
Lotus Notes: The Complete Reference	Barbara Bolin and Benjamin Ordonez	McGraw-Hill	007882205X
Lotus Notes Application Development Handbook	Erica Kerwien	IDG Books	156843089
Lotus Notes for Web Workgroups	Bob Dale and Barbara Opyt	Onword Press	1566901103
The Lotus Notes Idea Book	Jeff Kovel	Addison-Wesley	0201407876
Lotus Notes in The Enterprise	Bill Kreisle and Dan Schulz	M&T Books	1558514562
Lotus Notes : Release 3 (Quick Reference Guide)	Larry Rosenbaum		1562432052
Lotus Notes Application Development Handbook	Erica Kerwien		1568843089
Lotus Notes for Novices	Allen W. Sim		0345393856
Lotus Notes Network Design	John P. Lamb, Peter W. Lew		0070361606
Lotus Notes Plain & Simple	Rupert Clayton		0782117538
Mission-Critical Lotus Notes	David S. Marshak		0134726715
PC Learning Labs Teaches Lotus Notes 3.0	Adam A. Wilcox		1562761382
Programming the Lotus Notes API	Carolyn Kraut, Mitch Allen		0471117765
Lotus Notes in Action	Peter Lloyd, Roger Whitehead		3540199616
Using Lotus Notes	Mark Schulman		1565296389
Help! Lotus Notes 3.0	John Helliwell		1562761609
Lotus Notes 3 Revealed!	David Gewirtz		1559584335
Lotus Notes : An Introduction to Programming	Tony Pompii, John Jelliwell		0131507230
Lotus Notes at Work	David Dejean, Sally Blanning Dejean		0135403944
The Lotus Notes Certification Study Guide	Joe Salemi		0079129269
Lotus Notes Release 3 in the Os/2 Environment	Tony Walsh		047113127X
Lotus Notes System Administrator's Handbook	Nicolas Behrmann		1558514872
Understanding and Leveraging Lotus Notes	Marshak		9994594753

Reviews are still needed.
If you've read a good Notes book lately, [email]

let the FAQ maintainer know how you liked it.

Computer Based Training

The following companies make Lotus Notes CBT courseware:
Self Test Software (770) 971-8940
Lotus (800)782-7876
CBT Systems
ReCor
Professor 3T (end-user training)

Headlight.com resells a few Notes courses

TLCC's R5 Developer courses including web development, Java, LotusScript and JavaScript (free demo course available)
TLCC's User courses for Release 5 and 6 (free demo course available)
Get re-certified as a Release 6 CLP with TLCC's Update course
TLCC's Notes Domino 6 courses
TLCC's Domino Admin 6 courses cover setup of Domino and find tuning the Domino infrastructure
Learn WebSphere and Java development with TLCC's WebSphere curriculum
TLCC has Notes/Domino 7 courses for developers and administrators; they cover using DB2 with Domino

Flash Cards
A demo of Bad Dog Bad!'s Flash Cards program is available [ftp] here.

Lotus Education Helpline
The Lotus Education Helpline has an Exam Guide for Lotus Notes; the number is (800)346-6409. Lotus Fax Support also has sample exam questions at 617-253-9150.

Notes Utilities

John Buckman's Lotus Notes Phone Dialer
[ftp] Alert! New Document Notifier
PutNote and GetNote

[ftp] The LNOTES-L Archive
[ftp] OS/2 Netware Requester Software
[ftp] Lotus Internet Cookbook (.NSF format)
[ftp] Notes Database Templates from Lotus
[ftp] Lotus Notes Mobile Survival Kit

How do I publish Notes databases as Web pages?
There are a few companies that make Lotus Notes to Web page conversion programs. These programs allow anyone who has a Notes database to publish equivalent Web pages with very little work.

Lotus Internotes Web Publisher (derived from the Corporate Software product below) The InterNotes development team also has their own Web site here which has previews of features in future versions of the Web Publisher and discussions among users. Lotus Notes V4 IWP has the ability to publish and take input from forms directly, but requires the Notes server to be run on the machine used as the web server. For Notes V4.5, Lotus will be including Domino as a web server built into Notes, but this will also require a machine running Notes for the web server.

The Shelby Group's T.I.L.E. (The original Notes document library is also available here.)

Corporate Software's Web Link

There is also a program called FormGate written as a CGI script that allows filled out Web forms to be submitted into a Notes database. Note that The Shelby Group's T.I.L.E. program also supports this functionality and has hired the author of FormGate, so the functionality of T.I.L.E.'s interface will be a superset of both eventually.

Dogwood Software has a product called Site Publisher which works w/ R5.

Where can I get a Web browser gateway for Notes?
The browser gateways present the familiar Lotus Notes interface for users wishing to access Web pages on the Internet. Unfortunately, there are limitations to how HTML maps to Notes documents (e.g., Notes doesn't have doclinks into the middle of a document).

[ftp] Chris Davey's Public Domain WWW Gateway
Lotus Notes 4.x

Where can I get a Usenet News(NNTP) gateway?
There are several companies that make Lotus Notes newsreaders. These newsreaders allow users to browse newsgroups and post articles using the Lotus Notes interface. Generally, an NNTP host must be provided for the Usenet News gateways.

Lotus InterNotes News (now included with Notes 4.6)
Jsoft Technologies Notes<->Usenet Gateway
[ftp] Mike Watson's one-way Notenews Gateway for OS/2

Is there a gateway between Notes and HP OpenMail?

HP makes one. More info is available from this web site: http://www.pwd.hp.com

Who sells Notes SMTP Gateways?
Lotus sells an SMTP gateway, but the latest 1.1 version should be used (1.0 had a lot of quirks). The 1.1 version still has numerous bugs. More is known about the Lotus SMTP gateway than the other products below.

TenFour Systems from Sweden sells the TFS Gateway.

Information Electronics has a product called PostalUnion which has a centralized post office that can be interfaced to various mail systems. They have Notes and SMTP modules.

How do I keep the Lotus Mail Exchange Facility from duplicating a user in the N&A Book?
The Directory Exchange feature will copy the cc:Mail users into the Notes N&A Book. However, it will not generate a Lotus Notes fully qualified name. Edit the user document in the Notes N&A Book so it uses the fully qualified Notes name. Then, add the Notes user.
If you get a duplicate and you delete the user name in the N&A Book, the deletion will get propagated back into the cc:Mail user list. This is a bad thing to do.

LNotes-L

NOTE: this mailing list is dead as of 4/15/2007

The LNotes-L mailing list is maintained by [email] Joe Ashkar. It is a Listserver based email list for Notes programmers and administrators.

Contacting the Administrator
The administrator is Joe Ashkar ( [email] lnotes-l@ashcom.net). Email him w/ any administration problems.

Subscribing
Send a message to [email] listproc@ozzie.notesnic.net. In the body of the letter, enter SUBSCRIBE LNOTES-L <your-name>. You will then be automatically added to the list.
To subscribe an address other than the one you are sending from, send a message to [email] lnotes-l-mgr@ozzie.notesnic.net. In the body of the letter, enter SUBSCRIBE LNOTES-L ADDRESS. Replace ADDRESS with the address to send messages to. Approval generally occurrs within one day.

Unsubscribing
Send a message to [email] listproc@ozzie.notesnic.net. In the body of the letter, enter SIGNOFF LNOTES-L. You will then be deleted from the list.
To unsubscribe an address other than the one you are sending from, send a message to [email] lnotes-l-mgr@ozzie.notesnic.net. In the body of the letter, enter UNSUBSCRIBE LNOTES-L ADDRESS. Replace ADDRESS with the address you wish to unsubscribe. Approval generally occurrs within one day.

Sending Mail to the Mailing List
Address your message to
[email] lnotes-l@ozzie.notesnic.net. Write your message and send it. It will be automatically distributed to the members of the list.
Please make sure that you don't use Return Receipt Requested or Carbon Copy back to the list!

Temporarily Shutting Off Mail Delivery
If you don't want to receive messages for an extended period of time (e.g., you go on vacation), but want to reserve your place in the queue, send a message to [email] listproc@ozzie.notesnic.net with a body of SET LNOTES-L MAIL POSTPONE. When you return, send a message to [email] listproc@ozzie.notesnic.net with a body of SET LNOTES-L MAIL ACK.

Getting All Messages from a Specific Day
Send a message to [email] listproc@ozzie.notesnic.net with a body of GET LNOTES-L <yymmdd>.

Searching for a Specific Topic
Send a message to [email] listproc@ozzie.notesnic.net with a body of SEARCH LNOTES-L <topic>.

Threaded Archives
Turtle's Weightless Dog site archives the list.
Connectria archives the list.

DominoLinux

DominoLinux is an open, unmoderated Internet mailing list about running the Lotus Domino Server on Linux.

Domino for Linux is an important development for the Domino community. Lotus's impending release of Domino for the popular Open Source platform is sure to introduce many people to Linux, as well as give existing Linux users access to a robust and scalable application server.

DominoLinux will be very focused on using Domino on the Linux operating system, so general questions about Domino and the Lotus Notes client are probably handled on the general Notes/Domino lists such as Domino-L (see http://www.nipltd.com/domino-l.htm) and LNOTES-L.

Archives of the list and other information is available at http://www.nipltd.com/dominolinux.htm

To join DominoLinux, send an email to

  join-dominolinux@lyris.nipltd.com

The content of your email is not important.

Mail to the list itself should be sent to dominolinux@lyris.nipltd.com

For assistance etc. please mail owner-dominolinux@lyris.nipltd.com

Oklahoma State Notes-L

Note: this mailing list is dead as of 4/15/2007

This is a Listserver mailing list that is not quite as popular as LNOTES-L, but it is nearly always operational.

Subscribing
To subscribe, send a mail message to:
LISTSERV@LISTSERV.OKSTATE.EDU.
Leave the subject line blank, and include on the first line of the message:
SUB NOTES-L first_name last_name

Unsubscribing
To unsubscribe, send the command UNSUBSCRIBE NOTES-L in e-mail to LISTSERV@listserv.okstate.edu.

Posting Articles
Send all articles to NOTES-L@listserv.okstate.edu.

Digest Mode
It is possible to receive the contents of this list as a "digest", a periodic collection of articles from the list traffic. After receiving your subscription confirmation, send the command SET NOTES-L DIGEST to
LISTSERV@listserv.okstate.edu.

Administrative Requests
Send all other list-related commands to LISTSERV@listserv.okstate.edu. For assistance, send the command HELP.
The list owners are: [email] James Alexander and [email] Konrad Brandemuhl.

Archives
This list has a threaded archive accessible by web browsers.

Oklahoma State Domino-L

Subscribing
Send an email message with "subscribe DOMINO-L" in the body to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.OKSTATE.EDU.

Unsubscribing
Send an email message with "signoff DOMINO-L" in the body to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.OKSTATE.EDU.

Sending messages to the list
Send mail to DOMINO-L@LISTSERV.OKSTATE.EDU.

Archives
This list has a threaded archive for access by web browsers.

Portugese Notes Users Mailing List
To subscribe: "lotusnotes-br-subscribe@yahoogrupos.com.br"

David Stephens' Lotus Product/Event News

This is a Lotus support person that puts out great newsletters to keep his customers in touch with various Lotus info:
Send an e-mail to david_stephens@us.ibm.com with the subject line "Subscribe Lotus Product and Event News" (remove the quotes).

LNotes-J
This mailing list for Japanese Notes users. You can subscribe here:
http://www.iij-mc.co.jp/MLOnline/IIJ/98/lnotes-j.html

And there are archives here:
http://www.uisystem.co.jp/

Yahoo LNotes-L Group
This list is a replacement for the recently deceased LNOTES-L mailing list:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lnotes-l-new/

LNotes-L on Yahoo

Subscribing
You can get more info on the web site for this user group:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/lnotes-l-new/

How many users can be placed on a Netware Notes server?
100-120.

How do you configure Notes for OS/2 with 64MB?
Make sure the following variables are set in your notes.ini file:

NIF_POOL_SIZE=524288
NSF_BC_POOL_SIZE=524288
NSF_POOL_SIZE=524288
NSF_BUFFER_POOL_SIZE=12582912

What is the maximum IPX packet size the OS/2 server can accept?

The Netware OS/2 requester can only handle a maximum packet size of 512 bytes. Make sure that the client is not sending bigger packets. A corrupted ID file error message on connection is an indication of chopped off packets.

How do you set up a Digiboard under OS/2?
The following configuration setup is only a guideline. The memory address settings may very. Take the following steps if installing the Digiboard EISA board into a Compaq EISA system:
Set the 1-8 DIP Switchbox to have all switches set to OFF
Set the 1-11 Dip Switch Box to have 1, 3, and 4 set to OFF and the rest ON (This sets Memory Start Address for 0D000h and I/O Port Address for 320h)
Put the Digibaord in an empty slot on the Motherboard
Close the case on the Computer
Place the COMPAQ System Configuration Diskette in a drive
Turn on Computer
Press any key at the "Compaq System Configuration" screen
If an "Autoconfigure" screen appears, select Yes to have the computer autoconfigure the system. If the "Autoconfigure" screen does not appear and a "Welcome" screen does, press ENTER
If you selected Autoconfigure, select OK at the "Configuration" screen. If no "Autoconfigure" screen appeared, select Configure Computer from the Main Menu and press ENTER (this will process for a few minutes)
Select Step 2: Add or Remove boards and press ENTER
Select the slot number for which you entered the DigiBoard and press ENTER
Select Non-COMPAQ board and press ENTER
Place the NON-COMPAQ Option Configuration Files diskette in the drive and press ENTER
Select the Digiboard Digichannel PC/8e (or equivalent) from the Add Configuration (CFG) File screen and press ENTER
Insert the System Configuration diskette in the drive and press ENTER
Press ENTER at the "Add Confirmation" pop-up
Select the slot number for which you entered the DigiBoard and press ENTER
Confirm that the DigiBaord appears in the Slot and press ENTER (Add-Insert)
Press Esc
Press F10
Select Step 3: View or Edit Details and press ENTER
Page Down until you see the DigiBoard information
Highlight the DOS or OS/2 line and press ENTER
Select Available Resources Options and press ENTER
Press ENTER
Press F6 for Edit Resources
Press the plus (+) key until the I/O Port Address equals 320h (or whatever you set the board to in Step 2)
Press F10
Press F10 again
Select Step 5: Save & Exit and press ENTER
Select Save the configuration and restart the computer and press ENTER
If you would like to Install OS/2 at this time, insert the OS/2 Installation diskette at the "Reboot" screen and press ENTER (skip Step 1 of Installing OS/2 2.1). If you do not want to install os/2 at this time, turn the computer off at the "Reboot" screen.
Installing DigiBoard Software:
Go to the OS/2 Full Screen prompt
Type MD DIGI and press ENTER
Type CD DIGI and press ENTER
Insert the Digiboard Diskette in the drive
Type COPY A:\OS2\*.* and press ENTER
Editing the CONFIG.SYS
Go to the OS/2 Full Screen prompt
Type E CONFIG.SYS and press ENTER
Go to the end of the line that says "DEVICE=C:\OS2\MDOS\VWIN.SYS" and press ENTER
Type DEVICE=C:\DIGI\XALL.SYS /n:3 /a:q /b:57600 /d:N8 1 /p:320 /m:D0000
Save the CONFIG.SYS by pressing Alt-F4 and selecting Save

Can other NLMs be run on the same server?
This is not recommended. Notes indexing and maintenance tasks use all CPU time when they are running.

How do you change the new mail sound on a Mac?

You can use ResEdit to change the "New mail Sound" resource in the Notes executable:

1) Make a copy of your Notes program.
2) First convert your gotmail.wav (if you have a .wav file) to a gotmail.snd.
3) Open the gotmail.snd with ResEdit.
4) Open the Notes program with ResEdit.
5) Open the snd resource group of Notes.
6) Find the "New mail Sound" snd resource in Notes, make a note of its resource ID (should be 9000).
7) Delete this resource.
8) Copy the gotmail snd resource from the gotmail.snd file.
9) Paste it into Notes.
10) Rena

Default	{Editor}
LocalDomainServers	{Manager}
OtherDomainServers	{Editor}
Admin	{Manager}

	From a form:
[TAB]	Next unread document.
[SHIFT]+[TAB]	Previous unread document.
[ENTER]	Next document.
[BACKSPACE]	Previous document.
[Shift]+[F9]	Replaces a user-entered formula in an editable text field with its returned value.
[ALT]+[1]	Click the 1st action button, 2 for second, and so on.
[CTRL]+Compose Document	Suppresses inheritance when creating new document.




	From a view:
[RIGHT ARROW]	Hortizontal Scroll Bar.
[INS]	Toggles "read" and "unread" marks.
[ALT]+[number N]	Click the Nth action button.
[F3]	Displays or moves highlight to next selected document.
[Shift+F3]	Displays or moves highlight to previous selected document.
[F9]	Update current view.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[F9]	Update all views in database.
[Shift+Gray Plus]	Expand an entire view (Expand All).
[Shift+Gray Minus]	Collapse an entire view (Collapse All).
key on the keypad	Expands all descendants of the currently selected document.




	From the Workspace:
[`]	"Scan for unread mail" from the desktop.
[TAB]	"Scan for unread" from the desktop.
[CTRL]+[SHIFT]+Double-Click on Database	Shows all views of database (including the hidden ones).
[SHIFT]+Select Databases and then Double-Click	Opens up the current view of all the databases into one mixed view.
[SHIFT]+View\ShowServerNames	Display the filenames of the databases on the desktop.
[Shift+F9]	Updates unread count on current work page.





	From anywhere:
[CTRL]+[TAB]	Cycles through open Notes windows.
[ALT]+[ENTER]	Toggles the Properties Box.
[CTRL]+[M]	Create mail Memo.
[ALT]+[F9]	Minimize Notes.
[CTRL]+[F9]	Restore open Notes windows to non-minimized.
[F5]	Log you off of your Notes server, but does not exit Notes.
[F1]	Displays context-sensitive Help.

Lotus Notes Frequently Asked Questions (Notes 3.x)

A. Administration Tips

B. Books and Magazines

C. Education and Training

D. FTP Archives

E. Internet Gateways

F. Mail Gateways

G. Mailing Lists

H. Notes Platforms

I. Programming Tips

J. Web Sites

And another way using the Notes API from agorlenko@manu.com but this only works on R5+:

Search Amazon for more books:

Lotus Notes Frequently Asked Questions
(Notes 3.x)