STFU && RTFM

A few months ago, I was asked about the possibility to suppress what email addresses an email had been sent to. The case was as follows: we needed to send out an invitation to a list of over 50 recipients, but didn’t necessarily want them to get everyone elses email address.
 
Simply put; there are two ways. The first one is rather obvious, and also rather time consuming. It involves sending a separate email to each recipient. Now, while it would solve our problem, it would take way, way, way too much time.
 
BCC to the rescue! Wikipedia defines BCC as:

In the context of correspondence, blind carbon copy (abbreviated Bcc:) refers to the practice of sending a message to multiple recipients in such a way that conceals individual email addresses from the complete list of recipients

All you need to do, then, is enter the email addresses you want to send the email to, in the BCC field of your email client, then send off the email. That’s it; job done!

In migrating many of our users to Lotus Notes 8, we have recently found that some of them have experienced problems with week numbering, as 2009 has 53 weeks. Week number 53 is shown as week 1. This error carries over to 2010, meaning that week 1 is shown as week 2, and so on. Users using Lotus Notes 6.* and 7.* are not experiencing the problem.
 
This is apparently caused by a setting in the operating system, but can be fixed in Lotus Notes. Here’s how:
 

1. In Lotus Notes, open File -> Preferences, then expand Calendar and To Do, and select Regional Settings like so:
   
2. Then move the radio button from “Use my operating system regional setting” to “Always use the ISO standard” like so:
   
3. Accept the warning that some settings do not take effect until you have restarted Lotus Notes.

That has solved it for me, and for the users that have experienced this problem.

I had a user call in recently, complaining that, even though she’d defined a signature to be added automatically. She got no error message, and had not changed anything about her setup.
 
Though she hadn’t changed anything, a change had been made. All the mailfiles’ design (for those who ran version 8.*) had been upgraded to version 8.5.1. As it turned out, there was a bug in that design, meaning that signature settings did not work for people running client 8.0.2.
 
The solution here is simple, and can be one out of two; either downgrade the mailfile design to version 8.0.2, or upgrade the client to version 8.5.1.

A colleague of mine asked me about an error message a user of his got while in Lotus Notes. The error message stated that
 
Context toolbar not found. Bookmark design needs update.
 
The solution is pretty straight forward, and even indicated by the error message. By deleting the file called Bookmark.nsf and restarting Notes, Notes creates a new Bookmark.nsf file which solved the problem.

My employer uses DME Sync to synchronise email, calendar and contacts from Lotus Notes to mobile phones. A nifty little app, it basically connects to the webmail server, then downloads and uploads the relevant data. This makes for smooth migration from one phone to another, and means the users have the data where they need it, when they need it.
 
I recently pushed the app to a user’s phone, only to have the user tell me the install failed. He said it flashed an error message saying “Invalid or expired certificate”. No matter how many times I repushed the package, he’d get this error.
 
Consulting with one of the admins for the system, I asked the user to check if the date setting was correct. As it turned out, it wasn’t. As soon as the user set the correct time and date, the install went through without a hitch.

A user called in a case, telling us that when she was using Lotus Notes, her computer would run much slower, and the process nlnotes.exe would take up most of the available CPU capacity. Thinking that the problem lay in the fact that she had Notes installed to her server share, we first installed Notes locally, to see if that solved the problem. It didn’t.
 
Still thinking that the problem lay with all of Lotus Notes, I tried maximising the Notes window, as one of our Notes experts had suggested that might help. Unfortunately it didn’t, although to begin with it seemed to. The user reported that all was fine until she logged into Sametime. Consulting with the Notes expert again, it transpired that this is a known issue in the version she was running 6.5.4, which was resolved in version 6.5.6.
 
An upgrade later, all was well again.

As I have mentioned countless times before, Lotus Notes’ error messages are not always the easiest to understand. So, too with this one. A user called me over, complaining that she’d get this error whenever she opened any documents in her own mailfile.
 
After a lot of trial and error, I found that the error lay with the mailfile design. However, replacing it was not enough; you actually have to replace it with a different design, close the mailfile, open ot, then replace it with the correct one again.

I had a user call in telling me she was getting a bizarre error message when trying to send an email in Lotus Notes. The error message said “Collection Container is NULL”.
 
As informative as many of Lotus Notes’ error messages, this one, at least was displayed in English. Believe me, trying to translate error messages back from Norwegian to English is not as simple as it may sound…
 
Browsing the web, I found other people who had had the same problem, related to Category fields, as well as ODBC connections. The suggested solution was as simple as it was effective; restart Lotus Notes.

After upgrading a user to Notes 6.5.4, she got an error saying “Illegal Circular USE:DocumentConversions” when opening her mailfile. She reported that she’d get this problem when opening folders.
 
The key to solving this problem, is knowing that the user has been upgraded from Notes version 5 to Notes version 6.5.4. From one version of Notes to the next, new functionality is implemented using design changes to the mailfile. When a user upgrades from one version to the next, the design need to be upgraded as well.
 
If, after replacing the design, the problem still occurs, you should try refreshing it as well. This has solved the problem for me a couple of times.

If you’ve ever written a website in HTML, you are probably familiar with the MailTo-command, used to automatically start a new email message when the link is clicked. However, you can do so much more with the command. Here are some examples:
 

• Address message to multiple recipients
• Add entry in the “Subject” field
• Add entry in the “Copy To” or “CC” field
• Add entry in the “Blind Copy To” or “BCC” field
• Add entry in the “Body” field

 
Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how exactly we get the code to do this. Here’s how (click the link to see the effect):
 

• Simple MailTo
  • <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld”>
• MailTo with Multiple Recipients
  • <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld,recipient2@server.tld”>
• MailTo with Subject
  • <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld?subject=Comments from website”>
• MailTo with a Copy
  • <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld?cc=recipient2@server.tld”>
• MailTo with a Blind Copy
  • <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld?bcc=recipient2@server.tld”>
• MailTo with message already started in Body
  <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld?body=I am having trouble finding information on “>
• MailTo with multiline message in Body
  • <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld?body=The message’s first paragraph.%0A%0aSecond paragraph.%0A%0AThird Paragraph.”>
  • NOTE: Use “%0A” for a new line, use “%0A%0A” for a new line preceded by a blank line.

 
Of course, you can also combine the effect:
 

• MailTo with Subject, a Recipient, a Copy and a Blind Copy
  • <a href=”mailto:recipient@server.tld?subject=MailTo Comments&cc=recipient2@server.tld&bcc=id@internet.node”>