Category: Lotus Notes

  • Windows XP SP3 blocks uninstall of software

    As previously reported, Windows XP with Service Pack 3 has a nasty tendency to cause people to be unable to uninstall software such as Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8.   What I didn’t know, was that it doesn’t confine itself to blocking uninstall of these programs, but that it also blocks the uninstall…

  • Lotus Notes: Resolve "Type mismatch" error

    I recently had a user call inn to report that whenever she tried to delete an invitation to a meeting, she got this error:     The invitation in question would get an X beside it, and delete when she refreshed her screen. The solution is luckily simpler than the error message could lead us…

  • Lotus Notes: Notes automatically deletes email

    A while back, a user called in, telling me that he had lost a lot of important email. All of the emails he lost were roughly three months old, and he’d lost all of his emails that were older than three months.   The cause of this problem was that the user had set a…

  • Lotus Notes: Resolving "You are not authorized to use the server" errors

    The error message “You are not authorized to use the server” is caused by the user being entered into the Deny list. When this error message is displayed, the administrator of the Deny list will have to change the permissions of the user in question.   Edit: A commenter commented that I’d got it wrong,…

  • Lotus Notes: Resolving "File truncated – file may have been damaged" errors

    The error message “File truncated – file may have been damaged” is most often seen server-side, but every once in a while it will turn up on client computers, especially where Notes is installed on a network share (not a good idea) and synchronised to the local machine through offline folders. I have to say,…

  • Lotus Notes: "Invalid or non-existent document"

    As I have noted earlier, Lotus Notes is not famous for having easily understandable error-messages, quite the opposite in fact. However, when you think a bit about it; some messages are clearer than others. An example of this is the “Invalid or non-existent document” error.   The problem in this case is that an entry…

  • Lotus Notes – Resolving "Illegal Circular USE" errors

    A client of mine called me up, saying she had a problem with Lotus Notes. She had recently upgraded from Lotus Notes version 5 to Lotus Notes version 6, and now got a lot of error messages every time she opened just about anything, really. The error message she received said: “Illegal circular USE: DocumentConversions”.…

  • Resolving "An Error Was Encountered While Opening A Window" errors

    Lotus Notes has a plethora of more or less (usually the latter) legible and understandable error messages. One of them I encountered the other day. The situation is as follows: a client of mine told me Notes had crashed, and she was now unable to restart Notes due to a rather cryptic error message: “An…

  • Sametime: Resolving "There was an error opening a chat session…" errors

    I recently encountered the following error message when trying to initiate a chat session with a colleague.     Apparently, the error “0x80000005” means “The element is non-existent”. What happens is that when I tried to initialize a chat with my colleague, the Sametime client tries to open a Sametime channel to this user. It…

  • Lotus Notes 8 – ‘A Runtime Error has occurred. Do you wish to Debug?’

    I’ve had a few cases of users running into this error message in Lotus Notes 8.0.1:     The problem is tied to the embedded version of IBM’s instant messaging system Sametime, and has been reliably reproduced in any of the following conditions:   Initiating a chat session Clicking the telephone icon Receiving a chat…

  • Syncronising Lotus Notes Calendar with Google Calendar

    At work, I use IBM’s Lotus Notes as my primary email and calendar client. It works well enough, but there are some issues. My main problem with it though, is that syncronising calendar data with Google Calendar is nigh on impossible, at least out of the box.   Finding this annoying, I talked to a…