The Healing Process
The healing process is started by sharing your thoughts. Release your pain by sharing your experiences of Lotus Notes with me and the others here using the form below. Constructive criticism is of course encouraged (maybe we can stumble over some good ideas that IBM actually want to adopt?!?), but i know some good old fashion bitchin goes a long way to making me feel better, so feel free. Just keep it clean…..ish. Post your error messages, stories of woe (or successes) both will provide either hope or solace.
Now….. You ready?….. Vent away.
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I was about to leave on holiday, but I as im leaving my office my boss asks me why i haven’t replied to his urgent mail and where’s the report he asked for. I looked like a total tool. I had to go back to my desk -restart the computer (wait 5 minuts for LN to load) and push “send and receive”, wait for the mail to come through and then start working on stuff for another hour- managed to hit the traffic on the way out, and was in a rush throughout the day to make the plane. THANKS LOTUS NOTES!
Mark, how is it Lotus Notes Fault, when you did not replicate your mail file? Sounds like you need to set your replication frequency faster.
On the one hand, ReallyGuys is probably correct about the replication frequency. On the other hand, your boss sounds like an *******. At my company, we assume that anything urgent (as in, time-critical) cannot be left to the vagaries of Notes delivery and that an out-of-band notification (phone call, walk-up, IM) is recommended to ensure that the message was received. Sounds like you have two afflictions, Notes and a bad boss.
Mail should be sent and received automatically with no user input. Like Outlook, mail should send when you hit send, not sit in the Outbox for however long it feels like until the program decides to “replicate” again. I can’t tell you the last time I have needed to physically hit the “Send & Receive” button in Outlook. What kind of ridiculous program allows you to exit with mail sitting in the Outbox without so much as a warning? Lotus Notes needs to just fade into oblivion, where it belongs.
I’m so happy I could cry.
After 6 long years of Notesism, my office **FINALLY** converted over to Outlook (Exchange 2010). Not fully, but close enough (at least for where they count, as an email client).
My heart goes out to all of you long suffering people, even those with Stockholm Syndrome who are suffering but don’t know it [*cough* petetm *cough*].
I hate Notes. The worst productivity sucker in our organization. And, on this website, I’m told that if I don’t appreciate this memory sucking, bloated behomth of a program, I’m must be at the “bottom of the food chain” and not smart enough to appreciate all the wonderful things Notes can do for me. Well, as my company’s VP for Research, with a Ph.D. in Physiology, I’m not at the bottom of the food chain. And, Siggi, I can’t “loose” (sic) hope – it’s already lost. I AM smart enough to know that Notes is a piece of sh%$. DIE NOTES DIE.
Excellent, I can add another moron with a Ph.D to my list. Do you know how many “Ph.Ds” I met that can’t figure out how to put gas in their car?
BTW, you AREN’T smart enough to know that NOBODY cares what credentials you have.
Q-man,
It is refreshing to see that I’m not the only one who despises this piece of software. First, let me begin by stating that I am not an engineer, a computer scientist, or a geek. I’m just a 35 year old professional that happens to travel a lot, and is forced to use LotusNotes. I can’t speak with any authority on technical issues, but I do recognize a clunky, poorly designed program when I see one. And this one is probably among the worst. Salutations,
– J.
What do you know? So you have a Ph.D–what I’ve learned from this site is that the only qualification which matters is that you’re Notes CertifiedTM. If you don’t have an official Notes CertificationTM, then you’re an ignorant, incompetent nabob. Come back when you have a real qualification!
/sarcasm
I hate Notes. The worst productivity sucker in our organization. And, on this website, I’m told that if I don’t appreciate this memory sucking, bloated behomth of a program, I’m must be at the “bottom of the food chain” and not smart enough to appreciate all the wonderful things Notes can do for me. Well, as my company’s VP for Research, with a Ph.D. in Physiology, I’m not at the bottom of the food chain. And, Siggi, I can’t “loose” (sic) hope – it’s already lost. I AM smart enough to know that Notes is a piece of sh%$. DIE NOTES DIE.
Using Lotus Notes is like death by a thousand cuts followed by receiving a battering ram to the gonads. There are the endless annoyances detailed here so thoroughly, followed by that one giant clusterfuck moment that pushes you over the edge and makes you reach for the cyanide capsules.
And this……
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16055310
Bwahaha.
What you get when you use instant messaging program that stores all the messages (for SOX compliance), allows attachments, quoting, formatting, inserting tables and pictures, allows sending instant messages to a group of people and responding to a group of people?
Yes, Steve, you get email by any other name.
Yawn!
What is all this stuff anyway about email love this/hate this? Surely we have better things to do with our time?
Email is for the tired and aged. The email argument will be dead in a few years anyway as far more relevant technology comes into standard practice.
What will you love/hate then?
Both M$ and IBM have got equivalent Cloud offerings, both have equivalent social media offerings. It’s time to grow up and get with it.
My son has not emailed me in over 6 years. But I often hear from him via a social media medium.
Check this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15856116
Glad to see you are not growing as bitter and twisted as the rest of us Steve.
Interesting to note though that you have given up defending Notes as a mail client.
While instant messaging and social media is growing rapidly, the death of email is a little premature I feel.
Mind you, if there was one thing on this earth what would hasten its demise it is certainly Lotus Notes. If this piece of unadulterated sh*t were the only mail client available people would long ago have dumped their mailboxes and gone twitter wholesale.
For all you MS fan boys, check out number 7 !!
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10things/10-technologies-that-are-just-plain-broken/2896?tag=nl.e101
As a Lotus Notes fanboy, check out the top rated comment of that link you just posted
About Jack Wallen –
A writer for more than 12 years, Jack’s primary focus is on the Linux operating system and its effects on the open source and non-open source communities
I wonder if Jack Wallen has ever used Notes. And the 1st commenter in that article said it best: “Not that I’m a Microsoft fan, but having worked in enterprise environments with both Lotus Notes/Domino and Outlook/Exchange, I’ll take Outlook/Exchange over the former any day.”
I’ll have respect for the Lotus developers the day they figure out how to get Undo in Sametime.
You know I didn’t think anything crashed more that Microsoft’s software but I was wrong. Notes will crash when it’s just sitting idle or when I’m reading an email.
In comparison Outlook rocks!
I hate this thing. It ruins my day. I actually did write one blog completely dedicated for Effing lotus notes.
http://vijithforever.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-hate-you-lotus-notes.html
Notes 6.5? Yep, I hate old software too.
Dear IHateLotusNotes Guy:
Please make updates more frequent! How am I supposed to get my hate and schadenfreude on?
+1 to this suggestion.
Migrate it to a facebook page or something
I strongly second this! We need our catharsis. Actually, this is a support group, it’s therapeutic. We need all the help we can get to stay sane while we’re stuck with Bloatus Nads.
Lotus’s user interface is really not friendly, slow and not easy to use, but don’t use it only as a mail system, it’s not his main function, focus more on application, such workflow and OA, Lotus is a semi-finished products which gave you some space to design the platform as you wish.
When typing or pasting a URL as humans normally do Notes will mark the text as a misspelled word. Only if you insert the hyperlink the Notes way (click the link icon first, [good like finding that btw]) will the text not be marked as misspelled. Try it with a all-caps word like DVD. However once you spell check or copy and paste that text then all is forgotten.
It’s nice to know I’m not alone. The interface and stability of Lotus Notes are just not up to par with enterprise quality software. I see a few people praise that it does everything. Honestly, I prefer packages that do one thing well. It allows the developers to be focused and effective and the gives the users the most options to switch away from things they dislike.
“User” is a four letter word, regardless of the software. The IT people I work with are being inundated with calls in a shop that uses Exchange/Outlook, Office 2010 and Windows 7. People can’t find the attachments they saved from email. The can’t navigate IE without their old Favorites. It is Lotus Notes. It is stupid users who don’t know a workflow app from a back hoe, who couldn’t troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag. I love this site because it reinforces how ignorant people can be so hateful, regardless of the software. Thanks!
Correction: It is NOT Lotus Notes. They are not using Lotus Notes. It is the stupid users.
HAHAHAHA, true Freudian slip…lol!
No, no, you were right the first time.
Interesting.
All this time I thought it was the Keystone-Kops-like Lotus developers who were responsible for
* the lack of undo in Sametime (like, why would anyone need undo in an app which manipulates text)
* Notes asking me which instance of a repeating meeting I want to open in response to me clicking the Open button on a pop-up which reminded me of an upcoming meeting (like, gee, I dunno.. perhaps the instance you JUST REMINDED ME ABOUT?!?!?)
* having to click and drag RIGHT TO LEFT in order to “un-highlight” text previously highlighted (once again, they seem allergic to the concept of “undo”)
* lack of “search” when VIEWing a text attachment (if people want to search their text, let ‘em copy and paste it into Notepad, by cracky! it was good enough for my great-grandpappy, it’s good enough for them!)
* and so on
I’m glad to know it was me being a stupid user all along.
You know, I think I’ve got it figured out. All the Notes fanboys are correct, and Notes is perfect and flawless in every way. It just the Notes developers who are totally worthless, and that’s why Notes applications suck so much! It’s not the platform, it’s the programmers!
@DBJ – you are right.
A Notes application can be as good or as bad as the developer makes it. However most of the complaints on this site are email-related which is out of the box.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why does a sametime window pop-up in front of everything every time? Does Lotus think it’s more important what I’m currently doing? Well, it thinks wrong.
I completely agree.
There is something called Preferences. check that option.
I am facing a problem with Notes 8.5.2. I am unable to receive chat window from anyone unless I initiate it and chat with them. Please help me to find out the feature which will fix/disable if available.
I have done a clean installation of Notes Client 8.5.2 and the Fix released by IBM but it still does not work.
if the user is using old version then there is an issue. inform your admin.
Lotus Notes is the single worst, archaic, piece of **** software I have ever used, and I have used a lot of software in my 15 years as an IT technician.
I could spend all day carrying on about its faults, but here’s one lovely gem when it attempts to computer my mail archive size.
The first few icons in a “memo” are Up, Down, Up, Down, Down, Up, Up, Up, Plus, Minus, Plus, Minus, unclickable dot, binoculars, preview document links
In “mail” mode they are Down, Up, Down Up, Down, Up, Up, Plus, Minus, Plus, Minus, Copy selected as table, binoculars
That’s because this is “Enterprise level” software.
It’s called a customizable tool bar. Is it really that hard to figure out!?!?! WOW !!
A toolbar should not require any “figuring out” – it should be plainly obvious at all times. Something Notes never is.
How can I make a question mark appear has my status on Sametime ? I saw it happening once and it’s cool. How to make it happen ?
Thank you
Why the hell does my Inbox close when I hit ESC key on sametime chat history?
Found it finally. Who would thought that a chat window was considered notification in IBM :-\
How on earth can anyone defend this POS software?
Just confuse why such a big company like IBM made software like this….???
Useless
Feeling a little annoyed with LN, i changed my screen saver (the one where you can make words float around the screen) to read “Lotus Scrotes, a load of old bol***ks in a box”, but when i returned from lunch i found my pc had been borrowed for an important board meeting witht some ibm guys…oops!
I HATE THIS STUPID SOFTWARE
I HAVE NO IDEA WHY ON EARTH WOULD ANY ORGANIZATION USE IT!!! MAYBE JUST TO MAKE EMPLOYEES SUFFER?
WTF is: “save and delete”?
Right click on an attachment opens up the following menu:
Save
Delete
Save and delete
It is like … I want my coffee
Hot
Cold
Hot and Cold
it saves the attachment to the file system and removes it from the email message. It’s presumably there to save space in the mail file.
Save and delete is save the attachment and then delete the email.
Save and Delete means
“save attachment to disk and then delete it from the email message to save space in your email file”
“Save and Delete” is one of my favorite options in Notes. It allows me to Save an attachment to a folder on my computer or on the network, and Delete the attachment from the original email at the same time. This helps me keep the size of my Inbox manageable (the company only allows users to have 400MB on the server).
There is also Send and File… WTF is that. Did something happen to the “Sent” folder? Am I going to lose all of my sent emails?
It seems like you are newer used Lotus client before. You are victim of M$ or Apple software and the main aim of these vendors to make a “stupid monkey” from you. Sad but true to see a lot of same “monkey” around me.
mate, are you thick? This means you can choose to save (without deleting), delete (without saving) or save and delete. It’s f’ing obvious.
Brlliant, this is the funniest thing i have heard in a very long time.. I have been developing applications with this for many years, but this comment is hilarious, will keep me laughing for weeks!!
Oh, come on. You save the file to disk and free up space in the mailbox by deleting it from the mail message.
Delete=no space required (No Coffee)
Save=more space required (Coffee Here, Coffee There)
Save and Delete=Coffee, but just over there
It’s a great option for managing your inbox size. It means, “save” the attachment and then “delete” it from your inbox, leaving the email in your inbox. You will see a message “delete…..” message in place of the attachment. I use this feature every day to keep my inbox size under control.
few people would want that. trust me. they are right.
The same replicas I’ve just heard from users who are just switched from lotus to M$ Outlook.
Very accurate assessment of useless IBM products, they have not done research and development for two decades, VM, P Series, all one single point of failure memory, industries slowest response times, morons.
The Healing Process
Notes 5 July 2007 3,702 Comments
The healing process is started by sharing your thoughts. Release your pain by sharing your experiences of Lotus Notes with me and the others here using the form below. Constructive criticism is of course encouraged (maybe we can stumble over some good ideas that IBM actually want to adopt?!?), but i know some good old fashion bitchin goes a long way to making me feel better, so feel free. Just keep it clean…..ish. Post your error messages, stories of woe (or successes) both will provide either hope or solace.
Now….. You ready?….. Vent away.
3,702 Responses on “The Healing Process”
Shawn says:
November 23, 2011 at 11:36 am
Another day, another new LN gem discovered.
Lets say someone emails you (on LN, unfortunately) a URL or sharepoint link. You’d like to copy that link and paste it to a word doc, or a sametime conversation. How would you go about it? Right click the hyperlink and click ‘Copy as Document Link’, correct? Well, try that, then paste it in another location and see what happens.
I’ll save you the anticipation. Copying a URL from notes and then pasting it back into any Lotus app (either a new memo in Notes or a Sametime convo) will create a hyperlink back to the original email where you copied the URL from.
Huh? Why the F*** would I or ANYONE want to link to the SOURCE document of a link? How could that possibly be useful to anyone? What does anyone do with a link…other than follow it to the location it points to? Does anyone, ANYONE, care which email (oh sorry, “memo”) the stupid URL originated from?!? Why call it ‘Copy as Document Link’ and place it right under ‘Copy’ in the right click menu, if it’s not actually going to copy the damn link?
Lotus Notes. The gift that keeps on giving.
Reply
Amanda says:
November 22, 2011 at 12:06 am
It does this all the time. Why? No idea.
(Yeah I know it’s not exactly Notes, but it’s a part of it nonetheless.)
Reply
crapa diem says:
November 21, 2011 at 10:36 am
Company upgraded to 8.5. I’ve been complaining about 7. I see the HotBot search is gone. That’s the only upside to the new version.
Hey IBM little hint for you
Gradients != Good application
Reply
Shawn says:
November 18, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Tired of having my system act sluggish (and listening to my motherboard fan running full speed) whenever I have Notes running, I opened up task manager and see…this.
What the what?!? I didn’t even have a single Sametime window open at the time! F***ing Bloatus Notes.
Reply
Matt says:
November 17, 2011 at 7:08 am
Dear Lotus Notes,
What I want for Christmas is for you to work. This would bring much peace to me and my family. It would also be a sign of goodwill toward men, something for which you are not known.
Thank you for your thoughtfulness this Christmas season. I would have sent this request by e-mail but, well, you know.
…
Wishing you were Outlook,
Matt
Reply
Norman Coffman says:
November 16, 2011 at 2:14 am
Thank you for your great info! I was looking out on Google and have been seeking several days now. Now I will get back to perform last but not least. LOL!
Reply
BKL says:
November 15, 2011 at 11:37 pm
Does anyone know how to create a hyperlink in an email, to a file on a shared network drive? everytime i try it just trys to bring the file up in internet explorer, with http:// prefixing the directory which of course doesnt work…
any special way of typing this in the value of the hyperlink?
Reply
Falaendor says:
November 15, 2011 at 9:57 am
Does anyone else still use Notes 4.6 or am i on another planet as well as being stuck in the late 90′s. Nooooooooo
Reply
Eldad says:
November 14, 2011 at 11:58 pm
I think Lotus acronym realy is:
L – Lame
O – Outdated
T – Troubling
U – Useless
S – Software
Absolutely true buddy! Awesome exploration!
Oops, just accidentally pasted content copied from a webpage into a new mail message. Might as well go get a drink and take a break. Four minutes! It locked up for four minutes! This is a modern 8 core system and it spent four minutes doing what? What could it possibly be doing that takes that long?
What version of Notes are you using? I just copied content from several different web sites and pasted into a new Notes message with out any real delay… I tried about 6 different web sites with out issue. I’m using Lotus Notes 8.5.3
What a WONDERFUL early Christmas present!! What’s that you say? What did I get? A shiny new tablet? No. iPhone? Huh-uh. A big ol’ 60″ HDTV? Nope, even better than all of those combined!!
After over a decade in the depths of the hell that is Lotus Notes, I’ve just received word that the company for whom I work is *finally* switching to Exchange Server / Outlook. In fact they’ve already begun the roll-out, and they’re expecting to finish it by June (it’s a Fortune 500 company with hundreds of locations and several thousand users, so I guess it’s going to take a little while). Finally, the chains will be off and I’ll be free!!! Free to sing, free to dance, free to live! Picture Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music twirling around in that field with the daisies and all… That’s me right now dude! (minus the dress of course, ’cause that would just be weird)
Accepted: Meeting about X
Fri 02/12/2011 9:30 – 10:00
Meeting room y
This entry was created in a different time zone. The time in that time zone is: Fri 02/12/2011 9:30 – 10:00
Awesome.
maybe the you or the sender have Daylight saving time disabled???
Lotus Notes has this strange ‘feature’ whereby it automatically attaches the original attachment when you reply to an email. Hundreds upon Thousands of Megabytes are eaten up.
I can’t think of a single instance when the original attachment needs to be sent back in a reply.
Select “Reply without attachments.” (Notes 7) or “Reply with history only.” (Notes 8).
Not true at all. You have to pick the proper option (include attachments or not)
This is actually useful. You can reply with the original attachment, then Edit the attachment before sending it. Of course, we don’t want this to be the default behavior. In Notes 8.5, the default is to leave out the attachments when you reply. Nice.
Mine only include the attachment when I tell it too…
On my version 8.5.x – The reply option is at the top of the list, and whilst it is just as easy to select ‘reply without attachment’ most *ahem* ‘users’ will simply select the top option of reply, and therefore include the non-required original attachment.
Often is the case when applications need to be developed for ‘lowest common denominator’ to prevent issues derived from user inability. I get the impression that Notes believes that all its users are decently techie – when in fact many are less than techie…they’re just using email.
I do not love neither Outlook or Lotus Notes, but Lotus Notes is definitely the better of the two. I like the user interface and all the extra functions. Also integration with IBM Sametime and IBM Connections are wonderful.
Here I must disagree. The Notes interface is so different from everything else! Customizing the interface (i.e. adding buttons to the toolbars) confusing and difficult. For instance, try adding the “Edit-Paste-Special” button to the toolbar. Why do I have a Replicate button AND a Refresh button? Etc, etc. I’m not going to rehash previous posts…
Because Replicate and Refresh are different things.
When we move back to Outlook I will miss some of the features of Notes…I will not miss the numerous bugs, slowness and features lacking.
I am just not necessarily confident if I am putting up this particular query in the proper place, however I’ve recently been wanting to start working for an organization as a possible IT consultant. I’ve worked on my own for several yrs, but the work is just not steady enough for me personally. I’ve got a lead for a position and wanted to do some reasearch on the company before I contacted them. I found a couple of testimonials, but was interested if anyone here has had any experience with them or had anything to say. The company is: LTJ Management, LLC at 900 Congress Ave., Suite L-150, Austin, TX 78701 – (512) 895-9500. Thanks for your help
Do they use Notes? If so, avoid.
Lotus Notes: Why must you feel you need to re-map the keys on a Mac? Why do you CONSTANTLY take control of the active application? Why can’t your software be intuitive? I freakin’ HATE your software. It sucks. It sucks so much, for 3 years of working the help desk at another Mac shop, a lot of my calls were “Do you know how to migrate from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange?”. At that time I thought to myself “Who the heck calls their software ‘Notes’ if it’s a messaging/calendaring software company?”
I HATE YOU LOTUS NOTES. DIE.
It started out as a document management software and mail was bolted on as an application.
Maybe you should read this… It might help you understand where Notes is coming from…
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-NDHistory/
*Reposting*
If you are having issues with Notes feel free to drop me an email and I’ll be happy to try and help you address the issue. I will try to reply as soon as I can but please remember I do have a real job too. If I get a lot of bogus emails I will just cut off the email address.
sdp1793-noteshelp at yahoo
Steve,
I hate Notes with a passion but it keeps my belly full and kids feed.
I have 2 issues one is for a MAC user. Anytime they forward e-mails it shows the test vertically. The other is random crashes and they all have 4gb of ram and new PC. One more…I have another user that gets a pop up when he clicks the enter button to move on to the next e-mail.It looks like a search box like in google chrome and show the most recent e-mails. Help me please!!!
Lotus Notes is surprisingly easy to decompile. Really easy. Although I have full access I still cannot make heads or tails of 99% of it. It’s to large and bloated. But here are some highlights: Lotus is more of an eclispe add-on that it is a stand alone application. It uses apache. It’s security is a joke. There was a byte to hex function that neither accepted a byte nor returned a hexidecimal conversion of the input. I’ll be submitting the code over at thedailywtf[dot]com
the Security in Lotus Notes is a joke? oh really… can you please expand on that? I’d be happy to send you a notes database with all my personal info and see if you can get the info out of it… Hell I’ll even give you a copy of my Notes ID file…
It’s a joke because Notes is so difficult to use, you get employees auto-forwarding their messages to their home email addresses on Hotmail or Gmail. “But that’s against company policy!” yadda yadda but it happens, and it happens *because* Notes has **** usability.
Security is a HOLISTIC practice. Just having strong encryption on a database file isn’t sufficient.
Looking though the _decompiled_ code I found a function something like getEncryptionAlgorithm() (due to the bloat I cannot find it now). I expected this to return a function to some SHA256 thing – nope this returns a hard-coded string.
Don’t try to defend it, we have the source code.
Maybe I should I be looking for GPL violations?
Steve, your response reminds me of that old exchange:
“Why you ignorant, fat, ugly, dishonest, low-life scum you!”
“Hey! Who you callin’ fat?”
For real, I can tell most of these people that hate it and say it is not secure, have never really used it. Security is the strongest part of Lotus Notes. Plus I agree with everyone about the email being terrible. For those of you that ever really used Lotus Notes should know that e-mail was thrown in as an after thought, it was never the primary product. IBM hopes everyone goes to another software for there email and use there software for groupware as it was always intended for. I personally think, G-Mail or all web based email is the way to go. If any of you really knew the background of LN you would understand it allot better. Exchange people think they are winning and IBM is laughing because they don’t care about the email portion, all it causes is more work for there support people. Why not just support the applications that companies have to have and it will cause almost the same money without the headache. Just another FYI, if Lotus is so horrible, why did Bill Gates hire the inventor of it to run the show at Microsoft? Simple answer, he thought he would write them a groupware app worth having.
If you do a search for the _decompiled_ code on google you’ll find quite a few sites written in Chinese. Very secure indeed, I’m sure our friends in China are just verifying that security for IBM. Why don’t you send your Note’s ID file to them.
What a riot!!
A poster below is defending Lotus Notes by invoking the name of Ray Ozzie -who came up with this pre-internet collaborative kludge- and justifying the product because MSFT then hired the guy!!
Ozzie was lucky to get out of Cambridge with his own hat, and not a minute too soon.
This trainwreck application was engineered as an IBM OS/2 product, then ported to Windows after Gates dumped OS/2 development work and, boy it shows.
I earned a handsome living tweaking that three-legged porch dog into actually doing something- no, anything- useful for clients.
I still have the world’s largest collection of SmartSuite table coasters. Was given them by the handfuls at every devcon so Lotus could claim higher install base number, I reckon.
Lotus Notes has no reason to exist, except to pay off the tab Bill Manzi ran up for IBM to pay off this boondoggle. I feel sorry for IBM being the last to catch the porcupine.
So, no. Don’t even try to invoke ‘One Shot’ Ozzie as a reason to use Notes. It just stinks.
Now, while I am at it, can I complain about the disappearance of Lotus Agenda and Lotus Improv.
Jim Manzi!
Sheesh. Thinking of that guy from Seattle, too much!
I do not think you have a clue as to how Notes security works.
Any idiot can encrypt a file. Also any idiot can do a google search for “java decompiler” download the first exe file they come across and then drag random Notes files into that and see what sticks. (Just ask the Chinese, they are way ahead of me in this area.) Not only would I argue that this **** is insecure for the users but also for the company/employees who may have to deal with ramifications of the multiple GPL violations which I suspect are present. Open source is more secure as more eyes are better than a single company. But Notes has the worst of both worlds: not open source yet the source code is available to anyone (Chinese websites host it).
found these beauty’s in the decompiled code:
“# Password preference page name
str.securitypreference.security=Password”
“localProperties.put(“password”, paramString2);”
“localArrayList.add(“password”);”
“paramHashtable.put(“password”, str);”
“protected static final String PASSWORD_KEY_DEFAULT = “PASSWORD”;”
“adjustField(localHashtable2, “custom_password_key”, “PASSWORD”, “”, new String[] { “PASSWORD” });”
I’m not saying these lines of code show an insecurity in themselves, but how many times should I expect the hard-coded string “password” to show up? Hundreds of times??
Just because you can decompile it does not mean it is not secure.
Have to agree with Steve…hate Notes all you want but security is really not something you can find fault with – especially if you’re comparing it with Microsoft…just sayin!
am using IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.When some one Ping me, minimise chat window will maximise automatically. how to keep that minimise only, Is there any setting for that.
You can find this setting under Preferences->Chat->Notifications.
Yep there is, if you still havn’t figured it out
.
Go to a sametime window…
go to file->preferences->Notifications-> press one-on-one chat and untick the box saying “Bring chat window to front”
The IBM Sametime forum has these instructions.
1. In Lotus Notes select File > Preferences
2. Expand Sametime
3. Select Notifications
4. Select the One-on-one chat Event
5. Clear the Bring chat window to front option
6. Click OK
If there is I don’t know it, but I wish I did…
Yes there is. Preferences / Sametime / Notifications
Another day, another new LN gem discovered.
Lets say someone emails you (on LN, unfortunately) a URL or sharepoint link. You’d like to copy that link and paste it to a word doc, or a sametime conversation. How would you go about it? Right click the hyperlink and click ‘Copy as Document Link’, correct? Well, try that, then paste it in another location and see what happens.
I’ll save you the anticipation. Copying a URL from notes and then pasting it back into any Lotus app (either a new memo in Notes or a Sametime convo) will create a hyperlink back to the original email where you copied the URL from.
Huh? Why the F*** would I or ANYONE want to link to the SOURCE document of a link? How could that possibly be useful to anyone? What does anyone do with a link…other than follow it to the location it points to? Does anyone, ANYONE, care which email (oh sorry, “memo”) the stupid URL originated from?!? Why call it ‘Copy as Document Link’ and place it right under ‘Copy’ in the right click menu, if it’s not actually going to copy the damn link?
Lotus Notes. The gift that keeps on giving.
We would not bother to explain. There is so much more to Notes and clearly you are not bright enough to understand. Use you imagination anf you might find thousands of reason why you want to do it.
Riiight. Which is why LN is the only software which offers this absurd menu option. Thanks for the reply, real helpful.
So, what you are saying is “I don’t know how to use this software.”
Here is one example of why Copy as Document Link makes sense…
Your company has a CRM application based on Lotus Notes and I need to send a co-worker a link to a document in that application so I right click and select “Copy as Document Link” and then paste that link into an email to my co-worker now my co-worker just has to click the link to open the document… btw, you can can also copy a view or even a database as a link.
Why would you select copy document as link as opposed to selecting Copy.
What happens in my company’s CRM software is NOT based on LN/Domino? What happens if I want to copy the attachment and paste it into another email (sorry, “memo”) that I’ve been drafting up to send to someone who DOESN’T use LN (lucky *******), or is not even on the same mail server as me? Why is LN the only mail software which offers this inane option?
Drag your mouse to highlight the entire hyper-link and then right-click on it and select Copy.
Document links (or doclinks) are a Notes feature that predates hyperlinks.
Both you LFN experts missed his point, which is that it’s bloody difficult to copy a URL from an email to… well, anything else, because YOU CAN’T EASILY COPY THE URL.
Clear now?
Not being able to copy the URL really annoyed me too. The best workaround I found was to create a reply/forward of the email and then you can right click on the link, click hotspot properties and then see the URL there. You can then close out the reply/forward that you don’t need. Seems like they thought only the person sending the message would care what the URL was.
It does this all the time. Why? No idea.
(Yeah I know it’s not exactly Notes, but it’s a part of it nonetheless.)
So it didn’t attach, jolly good. Let me try that again.
Company upgraded to 8.5. I’ve been complaining about 7. I see the HotBot search is gone. That’s the only upside to the new version.
Hey IBM little hint for you
Gradients != Good application
Tired of having my system act sluggish (and listening to my motherboard fan running full speed) whenever I have Notes running, I opened up task manager and see…this.
What the what?!? I didn’t even have a single Sametime window open at the time! F***ing Bloatus Notes.
Switch to Ubuntu or Sled, it will solve the problems. Windows is generally slow and in effective.
You want me to switch my entire OS, from my admin restricted corporate PC, to make up for LN’s ****** performance? You’re saying the IBM hasn’t figured out how to make LN perform efficiently on the world’s most used OS even after 8+ major version releases?
It might be this documented bug…
LO40109: SAMETIME80W.EXE DOES NOT UNLOAD AFTER EXITING UIM CLIENT
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg1LO40109
Sometimes Notes likes to stick around. Every time I close notes I run killnotes.exe after it to make sure it is gone. This is some really crappy software that would be made a little more tolerable by letting us use whatever email clients we want, and not just in POP or IMAP mode. I’m talking about plugins. Not like IBM would ever think to do something like that.
Dear Lotus Notes,
What I want for Christmas is for you to work. This would bring much peace to me and my family. It would also be a sign of goodwill toward men, something for which you are not known.
Thank you for your thoughtfulness this Christmas season. I would have sent this request by e-mail but, well, you know.
…
Wishing you were Outlook,
Matt
Thank you for your great info! I was looking out on Google and have been seeking several days now. Now I will get back to perform last but not least. LOL!
Does anyone know how to create a hyperlink in an email, to a file on a shared network drive? everytime i try it just trys to bring the file up in internet explorer, with http:// prefixing the directory which of course doesnt work…
any special way of typing this in the value of the hyperlink?
Try one of file://path/to/file or file://///path/to/file
Are you using this format: \\servername\…?
Create a shortcut to the file/directory and drag-and-drop it into the email.
Does anyone else still use Notes 4.6 or am i on another planet as well as being stuck in the late 90′s. Nooooooooo
You may not be from another planet, but you are from another century. Upgrade.
I think Lotus acronym realy is:
L – Lame
O – Outdated
T – Troubling
U – Useless
S – Software
Think of a bad email software. Now multiply it by a 1000. You are close to how bad Lutus is … but not there yet!
No!
In the world of Domino administrators it goes like this:
L = Lots
O = Of
T = Trouble,
U = Usually
S = Serious
**** you IBM. **** you.
How can I make a question mark appear has my status on Sametime ? I saw it happening once and it’s cool. How to make it happen ?
Thank you
Intel i5. 8 GB RAM. SSD disk. Everything blazing fast. Except? … Right, the yellow horror.
Shouldn’t there be a law or something against this kind of soft? A law that prohibits IBM from steeling its’ customers’ employees’ productivity?
Can you create enterprise applications in Outlook? Email is simply one application in Notes. You need multiple applications from Microsoft (IIS, Exchange/Outlook, SQL Server, AD) to match Notes/Domino in functionality.
Can you create “enterprise” applications in Notes? It seems to me the only thing Notes creates is frustration.
Yes… I’ve created several
We have really sophisticated (custom built) order entry application in Notes at my company. Booking orders as well as fill ins, style, size, color grid order format, price lists, credit card processing, even custom product and it all integrates with our back end Oracle JDEdwards system. Notes allows for working off line which the sales reps love. It’s actually really quite nice. Just remember that Notes is a helluva lot more than just email.
Akbar for enterprise applications Outlook need not have any features , there are separate tools like Sharepoint etc
I think that was the point he was making.
Enterprise applications? 99.5% of users don’t care at all about that. Functional email and calendar? If only lotus did either of those correctly.
Only users that worth nothing for the company they are working for would not care about Enterprise Applications. If you only need e-mail and claendar you are most probably at the bottom of the food chain. When you start to understand the use of Notes, you might have progressed substantially. Don’t loose hope yet, you can still make it.
wow… 99.5% What study did you get that from? I have been a software consultant doing Lotus Notes and Domino Development for over 15 years and 99.5% really does not reflect my experience at almost all of client sites. There are a few that I’ve been that only use notes for email and your number might be closer to right at one of those locations…
Can you do it in Notes? My company abandoned that idea within the first year of use. ASP/Access was more stable, flexible, and easier to program.
I have developed several and it is way easier than ASP development.
Yes it’s called Sharepoint – check out http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/Pages/default.aspx
that is his point… to match the development abilities of Notes with MS you have to BUY additional products.
Notes sucks so bad it is worth buying the additional products. Spend a little more on software, gain a lot more on productivity and ROI.
From what I’ve observed, you can’t create enterprise applications in Scrotes, either. Email and calendaring certainly both suck tremendously, and those were actually coded by Lotus/IBM!
To be clear, IBM should be looking at these elements as flagship products, ways of upselling clients into using Notes as a platform and not just as a shared PIM/email client. For most users, however, the experience is so bad that any initiative to expand the use of Notes will be met with significant resistance.
Akbar, you have missed the point. Again. Many users, like myself, don’t need to create new applications as part of our day-to-day work. What we do need to do is send and receive e-mail and manage our Calendars, and Notes is a terrible application for doing this.
Kill Me .. Kill Me … Kill Me …
we’ve just moved to Outlook… it’s like getting out of an abusive relationship and immediately hooking up with a way hotter, much more interesting, loaded bloke
lol! I can only dream of it. For me it would be like getting out of prison and not having to be gang raped in the shower on a daily basis
Heyguys! I’m french and i’ve just found an IT job. Thanks god there’s not a shadow of Lotus note or domino in it!
I’m currently using the Sametime 8.0.2 embedded in Notes Release 8.5.1 FP2. In my Sametime chat windows as well as the chat history, I am getting image placeholders instead of the actual images. I tried deleting cache.ndk and clearing out my IE cache, but still no avail. Anyone have any ideas?
I have been desperately looking for an shortcut to the Capture Screenshot feature in Sametime – is there one? This would save me quite some time … Thanks!
while in a conversation Press Alt+t then press n then press p
“Press Alt+t then press n then press p” is so obvious really…. when every other application in the civilized world uses alt-print screen!!! It’s stupid **** like this that makes people hate notes with a passion!
Alt-Print Screen?
Look up the free Gadwin screen capture program. Easy, flexible, free. What more could you want!
I work for a big company. We have to use Lotus Notes.
Can you remember the poor guy at the first chapter from Quake 2, when the guy whimpers: “kill me”, “kill me”….
Since I use Lotus Notes, I can understand him!
My colleague always pretends to add attachments… Well, after receiving his mails there is none. However, after seeing this page I believe that it´s not his mistake. Thank you.
No, he is stupid. Look for a new friend.
Did you look all the way at the bottom? Or at random spots sometimes. Not there? Have him pull up the email from his sent folder. No attachment, then he is an idiot.
I too, am an IBM employee (however I would never call myself an IBMer, but that is another argument).
On a daily basis, I am ashamed/confused/dumb-founded/mocked (the list is endless) by the very existence of Lotus Notes (it makes me shudder, just typing that name).
My day has been brightened however to find such a shining light of a site. I have passed this on to my colleagues with whom I have regular conversations just like the ones you see on this page. I hope that I (and they) will contribute in the future…
Keep strong comrades – fight the good fight.
Need even more ram if possible..
Totally agreed!
Lotus Notes sucks. I am on Notes 8.5 and a few weeks ago, I was put in Mail Jail but there’s no way to fix it without jumping through a bunch of stupid hoops. I need to set up my own archive, which if you’re going to throw people into Mail Jail, you should have as part of a standard set up. What idiotic company would set up their IT system that employs such logic…oh right, IBM: I Be Moron.
POP QUIZ.
I thought I’d try something new. I have a question I’d like you to think about for a bit and I’ll post the answer later.
Presumably, you know that you can highlight text (yellow, blue, or pink). OK, fine (although why such a limited spectrum is a mystery…but I digress).
So, you’ve highlighted some text and realized you highlighted the wrong text. So the pop quiz question is: How do you un-highlight that text?
Answer before you try it. I’m looking for what you think the action(s) SHOULD be. Once you have guessed, then go ahead and try your guess. When that proves incorrect (and it will), try again.
Note: No response from Notes pros, please. And no fair searching help or the internet. This is an acid test of Notes’ (un)inuitiveness.
LMAO! I got a chuckle out of trying this out. Thankfully, it was like a little game…I didn’t have to discover this in the middle of actual work, otherwise I would have been tearing my (remaining) hair out.
Ctrl+Z does nothing (other than undo your last typed letter). Sooo, to unhighlight the text, you have to hold left mouse click and swipe the marker/cursor RIGHT to LEFT (drag left to right to highlight, other way to unhighlight). Further proof that LN devs were either high during development, or think their little LN quirks are real cute…or both.
The ultimate icing-on-the-cake factoid about this dazzlingly stupid design is that they dorked up the related help text. I did a search for “highlight” and got the info shown in the attached picture. For both highlighting and un-highlighting, it says “right to left”.
If you don’t like the way notes richtext editor works in you email then just use word as your message editor…
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.notes85.help.doc/mail_word_process_t.html
Let’s see…
“The only Notes menus that remain are the File and Help menus”
“If a recipient has the word processor you used to create a mail message, Notes shows the message using the word processor.” What if they don’t want that?
“Otherwise, it is shown using the Notes editor. If you use word processor features not available in the Notes editor, they display differently.” Lovely.
“You cannot attach a file to a message using a word processor.” And of course no one ever sends attachments.
Guys !!! Do you think Lotus Notes is that bad. Think once again, there are lot of good functionalities, features available. Its just the matter of awareness. If you have any technical queries do let me know.
Yes, I think Lotus Notes is that bad. Next question.
For those who visited
http://www.notesdesignblog.com
The tagline is
“Fighting for truth, justice, and a kick-butt user experience.”
I think that hints at the whole design philosophy of BLOATS.
The user is kicked in the nethers for sure.
Note (pun intended) that Zapnotes or Killnotes is a THIRD PARTY program, OFFERED AND RECOMMENDED BY IBM!!!!!!! to KILL NOTES PROCESSES. It is available from the Developerworks site.
Amazing isn’t it.
Lotus Notes tends to crash when I attempt the most trivial things.. Oops! Looks like you dragged that menu bar the wrong way or something. Lotus Notes has encountered an error! Do you want to submit an error report? Nope? You sure? Well alright then, I’ll just automatically submit them from now on without asking, and thus taking an extra 10 minutes to fully close.
*Spend 20 minutes opening up lotus notes again*
Twice recently I’ve been bit by accidentally clicking the [Restore All] button in the Trash folder. Both times I’ve had to then wade through all my folders seeking out emails I’d already deleted so I could delete them again.
There’s a few posts upthread that mention this, and the Lotus-Lovers responded that ‘Windows does the same thing.’
No, actually, Windows doesn’t do the same thing. Windows ASKS if you really want to do that. LN, of course, does not.
It is a general rule of thumb for software designers to not surprise the user in a bad way, to always THINK (which is, in fact, IBM’s old motto) about the effect of any given action.
8 major versions, 22 years of development, 1+ gig install footprint, and LN is STILL a mis-begotten POS. Those of you who seem to love it mystify me… It really doesn’t deserve your love.
I cannot believe what I just have read. Are you just joking, or did you really hit the restore button twice recently ? How do you feel about this ? You delete a mail just to restore it ? Why did you delete it in first place ? If one selects to restore all, why should Notes confirm it once more ? Notes normally assumes that its users are mature enought to make a responsible selection. I only ask my kids twice whether they are sure. You are funny though, must be entertaining to have a discussion in real life with you.
You know what Siggi? This answer is just bad. Why does LN ask me if I want save or send or discard or whatever my unfinished mail once I press ESC key? According to your answer it should just accept my command because I hit the key. If it’s to prevent mistakes then why can’t this work for “restore all” as well?
That you don’t believe it must be due to not understanding what I wrote.
I **accidentally** clicked [Restore All].
Here’s the cute bit. If you click [Empty Trash], then it **does** ask if you’re sure. If you click [Restore All] it does not.
Sheer design stupidity. I mean, **more** sheer design stupidity.
Openx modules
I work for an ad agency that heavily relies on Lotus Notes. I like to call it louts goats. Its always goating up my computer, causing crashes, not allowing my machine to restart, etc. I just got the Songify app and spoke “Lotus Goats. Goating it up with the Lotus Goats.” into it and generated this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMWm9bywL1o
Kinda amazing, I hope you all like it and shed one tear for the goats.
I just spent a non-negligible amount of time adding specific colours from our corporate palette to the “custom colours” of the palette selection tool in Notes.
Then Notes crashed. The email I had been working on was saved (I manually save them as drafts before making drastic changes. Call it a lesson learnt the hard way.) so that was fine. But. The palette I had set up has disappeared!! Why? Why Lotus? Why do I have to use the colours you choose instead of my own? Not enough memory? Not enough forethought? Do try and learn you have users out there trying to get work done.
wondering if there are IT consultants here who have an idea how expensive it would be to move an organization of 10,000 people from LN to Outlook? Backend is Exchange.
Better use Notes as Outlook.
You are ignorant and posting ****. Ervery user cries if something not working but if all running well, now words.
Eat a ****, Lotus fanboy. Bet you’re an old time Bloatus Notes dev…no one else would defend this piece of **** excuse for software.
Wow, I didn’t even know that Notes had a grammar checker!
Another helpful LN error message. LN was just “sitting” there running on my machine. I was not even using it. This helpful message popped up.
What am I supposed to do with it. All I can do is close the dialog box. I am guessing LN is going to crash. I have no clue as to why, nor do I have a clue as to how to fix it.
Your a POS and should be banned from using this site!
I’ve not seen this before but may be it is related to this known bug…
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=0&q1=MSTR74CSKX&uid=swg1LO42460&loc=en_US&cs=utf-8&cc=us&lang=en
Looking for a bit of advice.
I can’t search my inbox and the search box tells me it is not indexed. I hit “Shift+F9″ and the client locks for 5 minutes while chugging away reporting “rebuilding index” in the status bar. Then it stops with the message:
“Adding entry will cause text list to exceed 64K. Entry not added”
Which entry? Which text list? Why do I care?
More to the point, my inbox is still not indexed. How do I fix this?
I assume you are talking about full text searching… Shift + F9 is the wrong index.
F9 updates the view index for the current view
Shift + F9 updates the view indexes for all the views in the database.
just click on the Not Indexed link
One of things I like about Notes is the level of integration between applications – the comparison seems to be about email/calendar only. As an independant consultant time tracking is critical and having the ability to open my calendar, selecting a calendar entry and then press the timesheet button and voila there is my timesheet entry created with hours, description etc copied from calendar into my timesheet. I cannot do this in Outlook, would need MS to do some custom development. Really easy in Notes (took about half an hour to create this) and I am not a software developer just a lowly PM using Notes 8.
I work for the company that is responsible for LN. We have to use LN. We have no choice.
You’d probably guess that we have administrators who are trained to set LN up properly. Well, you’d guess wrong.
Every application for the last decade has auto-save enabled as a standard feature. But, oh no, Mr Notes 8.5 likes to think that we’ve got nothing better to do with our time than tweak millions of settings. I’m not an IT geek. I just want to send emails, sort out my calendar and have an address book. (it would be even better if it would sync painlessly with my Blackberry, but hey, I realise that’s too much to hope).
I’ve just found out the hard way that our administrators have helpfully decided that we don’t need auto-save. If you want it, you have to go into the preferences menu and turn it on. My machine has just crashed (which I’m not blaming on LN). I’ve just lost three emails that I was drafting and an hour of my work (which I am blaming on LN and the thoughtless administrators who are responsible for the vanilla installation of LN).
I’m not going to apologise for LN because I’m not responsible for it and because I want an apology from the people who are. No. I don’t want an apology. I demand an apology from the twisted, evil sadists who designed LN.
The best autosave is pressing CTRL-S. In every applicaton.
Do not rely on computers. They crash without any notice.
I know persons who has been writing their document for many hours, then Word hanged and everything was gone.
Why?
Because they did rely on computer. Not on theirself.
If you use Blackberry Desktop software version 5 it works just fine with LN. Have not had any experience with integration with BES and LN though. I do have issues between Outlook and BB DTM5. There are some Outlook calendar entries that corrupt my BB calendar. Found some of them but there are a few more to go.
I feel your pain… auto save should be enabled by default! I can’t believe your admins have not turned it on for everyone… It can be enabled with a policy setting…
“I demand an apology from the twisted, evil sadists who designed LN.” Sure, send your note off to Ray Ozzy. I am sure he could not care less.
Well, i can see that its proper to blame the software for something, that is basically a matter of Corporate decision and policy. Most of the preferences can be set by policies, so that you don’t have to think about it, but don’t blame the software, for something internal IBM IT og corporate management have dicided.
Why did you not enable Auto Save, could have saved you tons of time. People who try to blame other things for their own stupidity and failure should be banned from this planet.
Why won’t this POS software let me change an item I created in my calendar?
I am a junior sys engineer for a company who decides to save money in the ‘IT department.’ So EOL of laptops are 5 years, and yes we use Lotus the trouble making lizard. Its now 6PM I’ve been waiting for notes to finish its initial setup (Its taken over an hour) and now the progress bar went down from 98% to 90%. In the time I was waiting I made a short movie parody of Kill bill. Except its Kill Lotus. Yes I five finger pressure point death’d that *****.
Can see you are a junior engineer. This way you never will become senior.
Does anyone know why Lotus Notes 8.5 will sometimes crash if I hit Control + Backspace at the same time while typing out an email?
ihatelotusnotes.com seems compromized. It will occasionally redirect to a malware site.
No, no, the links to IBM’s Lotus Notes sites are there deliberately.
You might want to use your mouse and click on something rather than ‘asking’ for it…if that fails check your network cable.
HI everyone
I am a technician and i’ve just been assigned to a site 3 days a week. DA DA DUM!!! They use LN
So, I’ve inherited this site running Domino 8.5 and Notes Client 8.5 and oh boy are there problems. Too many to Vent about now but, rest assured, I will be posting here very soon for the collective wisdom which is so obviously needed to attempt to administer this nightmare.
I’m really glad i stumbled upon this site, and i really really really hope there is some light at the end of the tunnel for me.
If you are prepared to make a good job of it, you will train in Lotus Notes and understand the product. It will make your life easier and yourself much happier.
I know this is supposed to be an expression of hate but there is also a lot of users that know their sh*t about this crappy software as well.
I just want to know if any one knows how to change an existing calendar entry type?
Use the Copy into New… feature from the calendar view. When you make a calendar entry, the initial type selection determines the form used for the event. Changing it after the fact would likely lead to missing items in critical fields. Easiest way is just copy the existing calendar event into a new type of the one you wanted using the Copy Into feature. Then delete the old one.
Short of getting in under the hood and directly manipulating the calendar database, I don’t believe that is possible.
Yes, edit the claendar entry en change the type.
I’m a new LN user (8.0.1). Italicized text looks awful, and the highlighting looks more like you blasted your e-mail with the spray can from MS Paint, circa 1992. Just fugly. The program looks like it should be running on a 386.
Most of what I’m learning about this software has me thinking their slogan must be, “Lotus Notes… Let’s do it the hard way.”
I’ve noticed the italics issue myself. In previous versions, the italicized text ran too close to the following text. In the current version, it leaves too much space. [shrug]
I’ve long thought LN had the worst WYSIWYG editor I’ve ever used. I suspect that comes from their decision to implement the edit window using RTF “under the hood.” The problem with that is that manipulating RTF text is tricky. Yet another bad choice and poor implementation by LN.
Sorry, is that the best you can do. The italic text looks funny therefore LN sucks… Sigh
The italics don’t look “funny.” They look awful. Italics are a pretty basic fetaure, and yeah, I think it says a lot when software can’t even clear that hurdle. “best you can do?” Grow up.
Hang on, isn’t the program’s way to render text part of the program? And if that rendering sucks, doesn’t that reflect on the program?
The point is not that Notes can’t do italics, the point is that everyone else can – it’s a solved problem and has been solved since the first days of wysiwyg.
The fact that Notes can’t do even the most basic graphics rendering simply adds the build up of frustration you feel everytime you are forced to open the program. Notes sucks in gazillion of ways, this is just one.
If the rest of the software worked, this might get overlooked, but it doesn’t.
I spent an hour on Friday trying to get Notes to update a meeting invitation sent by a colleague. Notes told me it couldn’t update until I deleted the schedule, so I did. It then told me I couldn’t update because the schedule was deleted!
I asked helpdesk who said “Get the originator to resend”, he did, but Notes said “Error importing document’.
I asked helpdesk again who said, “Notes sucks, enter it by hand”
So yes, “the italic text looks funny so Notes sucks”. Also, the address book doesn’t work so notes sucks, the calendar doesn’t work so notes sucks, the editor doesn’t work so notes sucks, the spellchecker doesn’t work so notes sucks, the help doesn’t work so notes sucks, the search doesn’t work so notes sucks, the sort doesn’t work so notes sucks, the multi-select doesn’t work so notes sucks, the undo doesn’t work so notes sucks.
Do you get my point? Do you want me to go on?
Handling of All Day Events and Anniversaries in LN is ridiculous.
“Start” of such events at 4am is “solution” appropriate for secondary school exercise or sw pieces from 1980′s.
Consequences are for those who need to sync LN over different platforms (mobiles, google, other calendar/todo/time management apps,…) terrible.
Cherry on the cake is the alarm/reminder – if set “1 day before”, it will wake you up at 4am…(if synced with mobile phone)
To avoid it, I had to open each repeating All Day Event and Anniversary and to update alarm notification time to anything else then x days.
Impossibility to edit repeating schedule (only option is to delete “All instances” and recreate the new event) is just another ancient “feature” which is impossible to understand in the 2nd decade of 3rd millennium.
We speak about huge solution mainly for enterprise market, not shareware for home users, so this kind of stuff (and MANY others) is not understandable.
Obviously you where never trained on Notes. Get trained, if possible, and you will be able to mange.
Hi
I am trying to import into a Lotus Notes Database using tab file.
Please advise how I can set up my import file , so that for one of the fields the default value is selected automatically.
I.e when creating a document manually , an Employee Name is typed in, their HR number automatically appears in another field called HR No.
I would like to create an import , where the HR Status selects default value.
Please advise , what I need to put in the field
Thanks in advance
D
Well, basically, that’s something your HR solution (Database) should take care of and not the import. The solution is to let the HR Status field have a Default value on creation, which means that when importing data, that same default value would apply.
If you are having issues with Notes feel free to drop me an email and I’ll be happy to try and help you address the issue. I will try to reply as soon as I can but please remember I do have a real job too. If I get a lot of bogus emails I will just cut off the email address.
sdp1793-noteshelp at yahoo
If I install Lotus Notes 8.5.x and select “Lotus Symphoney” options I get the “Open Office” version of ‘word’, ‘excel’ and ‘ppoint’ at no extra charge.
I have tried breaking thier offering of word and excell over the last month by loading old files, saving, reopening, checking macro’s, saving to diffo formats, opening in older/newer formats etc..I have failed! It seems they are all OK and compatible!
I think many orgs could save a packet of $$$’s going this route than forking out $$$’s to M$ for a sim but costly offering.
Steve, you can also download OpenOffice or LibreOffice for free without being saddled with Scrotes, so I’m not sure what your point is.
You can also download the standalone Symphony for free. Based on Open Office but a much better UI.
Working in IT as a Domino admin-er I often get emails from users whose subject might be something like “Lotus Notes” or “question about Lotus Notes”.
Not very useful to backtrack what was the original body of the message if responding later (or needing to save. In Notes all I have to do is hit (which puts the doc into edit mode) which allows me to change the subject field to something more meaningfull and obvious. I can then hit “Save & Close” and the subject of the message now has a meanigful subject. I haven’t found an equivalent function in o/l without resorting to forwarding to message to myself with diffo subject.
Is there an equiv in o/l?
I am using o/l 2003
Thanks
hit (Ctrl+ E) that is
That’s just great that the recipient can edit emails I sent and trick me into updating my copy, so I lose any proof of what I actually sent.
Steve, are you saying that LN – however well intentioned – allows you to change the audit trail in your inbox? That sounds rather dodgy to me.
I believe the appropriate canned fanboy response is “Outlook 2003!? Get a version that’s not eight years out of date!” and then to ignore the actual question. At least that’s what the Notes fanboys do.
Anyway, I don’t know whether Outlook has that function, but I can see where it would be cool. (See what I did there? I acknowledged that it’s possible for Outlook to be improved instead of claiming that it’s already the best thing ever and totally devoid of flaws. I also did not say “B-b-b-but Notes!”
Hey, Steve, since we’re comparing feature sets, if I accidentally drag an email into the wrong folder, what’s the Undo shortcut? Where is the “Run Rules Now” functionality in the Rules component? If I am the recipient of a meeting, how do I forward the meeting to others such that they can respond to the meeting request?
I can do this all day, especially while I’m waiting for my offline replica to sync.
First of all, your are repeating yourself and old features, that you miss in LN, like the “Run rules now” feature. Please come up with new ones, as you say you can do this all day …… i challenge you …. then DO IT and stop talking about it.
Secondly, why would you forward meeting invitations to others, that you are not responsible for!!?? Others have made that invitation, shouldn’t they have the upper hand on who is invited and why!!??
Just click on the subject line and write whatever you’d like. The GUI may indicate it’s not editable, but it is. =)
That LN allows you to edit an email sent to you by someone else is more of a misfeature, especially in a corporate context, and could raise some interesting legal issues in some cases. I’ve used a lot of other email packages (Outlook is not among them, oddly enough), and I don’t believe ANY of them has ever permitted modifying the original sent by someone else. A new copy you make, sure, but never the original.
Actually you can edit a received email in Outlook 2003 — both the subject and body of the email. I do not have a newer version so I cannot say for sure about those. I like this feature and use it. I can understand how it could be used by someone with bad intentions but the email programs I have used allow users to modify what others have sent when replying.
Everything can be misused if you put your mind to it and have the skills. First of all the recipient has a copy of that mail, secondly there would be a change history on that mail showing it was edited after the send time stamp.
Thirdly, many helpdisk and support systems actually manipulate those information, for journaling purposes.
in Outlook 2003, i think you can just open the email, type within the existing Subject field (even though it is grey in colour), then save and close.
In re: NotesIsCool’s “point”:
“Secondly, why would you forward meeting invitations to others, that you are not responsible for!!?? Others have made that invitation, shouldn’t they have the upper hand on who is invited and why!!??”
So, let me get this straight . . . you’re defending and advocating a feature which allows one user to go back and change an email sent by someone else, but you’re objecting to forwarding calendar invitations?
Anyway, the point about forwarding meeting invitations is that you can still forward them, so it’s still possible for an uninvited recipient to show up for the meeting. All this “feature” does is prevent anyone else from adding it to their calendar or responding to the original creator of the meeting. It doesn’t do anything to protect privacy, but it does impede productivity.
In Notes, if I want to toggle a mail in the inbox from read to unread I simply hit the insert button (very useful). In outlook I have to right click on the message and then select from the drop down list “mark as unread”. Is there a k/b shortcut to do the same in Outlook?
Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+U.
You’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel here Steve if you think that Outlook possibly not having a keyboard shortcut for a function somehow excuses LN for sucking so badly.
For long time (forever) “mark as read” has been Ctrl+Enter. Outlook and Outlook Express (and whatever it’s called now) all have it. Outlook Express also had Ctrl+Shift+Enter for “mask as unread” and Ctrl+Shift+A as mark all read.
http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2008/05/17/keyboard-shortcuts.aspx
I didn’t know that, but there’s this thing in the 21st century called a search engine. Or you could read the Help file. I believe the Notes fanboy response for this case is “You need to be properly trained. Also, your stupid.”
Don’t even get me started on keyboard shortcuts in Lotus Notes! There are practically none compared to Outlook. In Outlook you can (from memory, it’s been a while):
ctrl+n = new email
ctrl+f = forward
ctrl+r = reply
ctrl+shift+r = reply all
shift+enter = send
those alone saved me countless tiny pieces of my soul.
In @#$#%^%* Notes all I have is:
ctrl+m = new “memo” (office space anyone?)
ctrl+esc = send
WTF?! This is the first of about a bazillion ways notes is just awful.
And any IT person who starts trying to explain that Notes is great and I just don’t know how to use it(?!)… Don’t touch my stapler is all I’m saying.
Lotus Notes begun to live many years before anyone even thought about Outlook. Do you want your granpda to behave like a child?
Use ‘insert’ for mark or unmark Mail
Reply = Alt+2
Reply to All = Alt+3
Forward = Alt+4
Ctrl+U in Outlook
Lotus notes looks like ****,even open source mail servers and clients look better.
somehow corporates feel lotus notes is more secure, for sure if users are not able to access their own data, how can hackers access it.
and the irony is IBM claims it can make smarter cities and smarter planet
Another gem from Lotus!
We have just 8.02 installed and for some reason, Notes randomly auto-opens messages when browsing through them. Very irritating. Anyone know how to turn this off?
I work the IT dept for my company and within a shift I might spend 70%+ of my time in Notes. Having a first hand experience with the user frustration with Notes that occurs in my office, not to mention the Help Desk guy that, at times, wants to rip his hair out over user issues that occur, I can give some tips on how to minimize the headaches when using Lotus Notes:
First, its a good idea to make sure your computer has the minimum recommended specs for the CPU and more than recommended for the RAM.
You wouldn’t believe how much crash instances were reduced just by upgrading to 4GB of memory. Lotus Notes is a memory hog, especially when you run multiple internal lotus DB apps, Sametime and mail simultaneously. RAM errors are very common Notes issues.
Second, use the Killnotes program to stop any processes that are left behind in the even of an error so that you dont have to reboot each time a problem occurs. this small 10kb file can be downloaded at
Third, its a good idea to close the program after your shift, even reboot your computer at least twice a week to keep the processes fresh. Even though your network admin may require the computer stay on, you can still reboot as often as you would like.
Finally, make sure you are using a recent version of Lotus Notes. Even though most admins like to wait until a newer version has ‘proven’ itself before pushing it out to the company’s computers, the version before the most recent should at least be used to reduce problems.
I hope this helps with some of the frustrations felt by the masses of users forced to endure the pain that is Tortoise Notes.
<–Thanks for reading -)
Question: Is there a way to determine which “folder(s)” [view(s)] contain a given document? If I use All Docs to find a given email, is there a way to determine which folder(s) contain it?
I’m kind of an outsider here, I have to admit. I’m from the Dark Side. Google got me here.
I think you are not the same Dude as the previous Dude, because that Dude has years of Notes experience, and probably knows the Help and the forums at developerWorks.
If one thing is good about Notes then it’s the Help, not to mention the rich forums at developerWorks.
So I started to count:
Open developer help (Help/help85_designer.nsf): 5 seconds
Click “Index”: 1 second
Type “folder”+Enter: 1 second
Scan results by checking the help entry titles till finding the appropriate NotesDocument and NotesDatabase properties only by looking at their names: 15 seconds
Read the entries 15 and 25 seconds.
Gone in 60 seconds – nothing that Al Bundy couldn’t handle anyhow
.
Of course opening the Designer Help and the “Index” view takes longer if Notes has to create the indexes first but don’t despair, this is one time only (per help version).
For views it’s a bit trickier you have to enumerate through database views, grab the selection formula for the given view and Eval it on the document.
By the way: why do you think that anyone who hates Notes knows the answer?
To answer the last question first: because my real point was that this bloated battleship of an application, 1+ gig install footprint, 22 years of development, apparently has no user-level ability to determine something that seems obvious and necessary to me. Something that would have been one of the first features I would have developed in any similar multi-view system.
But anyway, curious, I looked in the “IBM/Lotus” directory for the “Help” folder… that’s odd, no “Help” folder at all. Oh, I see, it’s in “Data/Help”. Okay, whatever. And in that folder I find only “help85_client.nsf” and “cshelp85_client.nsf”. More to the point, apparently the answer to my question is: yeah, sure, if (a) you’re a LFN developer and (b) you have the time to develop a feature that should be there already.
I’m not, and I don’t. Email is just a tool I use frequently, and it needs to be as simple, intuitive, out of my face and user-friendly as possible. LFN is none of those.
And while my background gives me the ability to develop such a feature (if I wanted to spend the time), it’s far beyond the abilities of 99.9% of most users.
Have you thought about just using the simple Action button in the mailfile that says “show folders where this belongs”?
No I haven’t… BECAUSE THERE IS NO SUCH BUTTON! Maybe someone modified your version to add it, but no such button or menu selection exists in mine (8.5.1 FP2).
8.5.3 has this feature. Please upgrade and stop yelling.
I don’t have Notes open right now (I am at home and this site is blocked at work) but there should be a folder icon on the toolbar. Click the drop down arrow next to it and there should be something like Discover folders.
Ah, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, by combining kam’s and Steve Bailey’s comments, I have an answer! This feature exists in the All Docs “folder” and in Inbox and Sent and in SOME of my views (but not all). So THANK YOU for that!
It still does highlight three new issues, though:
1) The popup dialog has four buttons: [Open Folder], [Remove from Folder], [Add to Folder], [Exit]. I wondered what the third one did, since I’m supposedly looking at the folders already containing it doc. Turns out it opens another popup that lets you pick a folder to add to. That button needs the “…” after the text to indicate it opens a new dialog rather than performing an action.
2) Both the “Folders containing” and the “Add to Folder” (mislabeled “Move to Folder”) popups have [?] and [X] buttons in the upper-right. In both cases these buttons are disabled. Also, both windows allow resizing (ONLY through the resize “grabber” in lower-right, NOT by grabbing window frame), but neither allow moving (the resize only moves the right and lower frame). So, again, 22 years, 8 major versions, 1+ gig install footprint, and basic window operations work like ****.
3) I assume I get this “Discover” feature or not due to some aspect of the folder design or template. That’s hugely annoying, excessively complicated and far beyond the ability of most users. Again, all I want is to do email as transparently and effectively as possible, and LFN constantly thwarts that purpose.
Yes there is!
From your All Docs view, right-click on the document you want to find, and choose “Folders | Discover Folders”. A window will then be displayed showing which folders the document is in, and you have several options to move or copy the item to other folders from here.
Not quite as intuitive as the Outlook view, but it works. It’s possible to develop a customised view which matches the Outlook style, but this does not come out-of-the-box. The folder options should meet your requirements though.
BTW – if you don’t see the option, upgrade your mailbox to Notes 7 or 8 design.
SB
I don’t find that option when I right-click (but see above comment!). BTW: I don’t use Outlook, have never used Outlook and couldn’t care less about making LFN look like Outlook. I’m not coming from a “Lotus isn’t Outlook, boo hoo hoo” point of view. I’m coming from a Lotus is a mis-designed, ridiculously bloated, POS point of view.
Which version of Lotus Notes are you using? The “All documents” view has a column that shows which folder the spesific mail is located in. I’m on the lates 8.5.3 version…
Ah, a site after my own heart! I just finished reading the last six months of comments here; interesting and fun reading. I’ll definitely be back to get into it more.
I’ve been a software developer for 33 years, and I’ve worked with (and developed) more software applications than I can count or remember… but I have never hated a piece of software so virulently as LFN (I imagine you can figure out what the “F” stands for).
I’ve been subjected to this nightmarish offense to users since version 3. We currently use 8.5.1 FP2, and I will say that it’s gotten better. Now it’s more like hitting yourself in the head with a ball-peen hammer than with a sledgehammer. It’s been years since I had to make a habit of regularly deleting cache files to avoid database corruption. And it’s been years since merely opening a problematic email caused the whole program to crash.
So after 22 years of being “Enterprise” software, I will say that LFN has risen to a higher circle of hell than the depths from which it arose. (Which may all be the very definition of ‘damning with faint praise.’ d;-)
And I understand that LFN isn’t really an email package at all (it really, really isn’t). It’s groupware that uses a template-based flat forms database (one that for years regularly corrupted itself through normal use). The problem is that 99% of its users (around here, anyway) use it strictly as an email client.
An email client with a 1-gig install footprint (yikes) that–according to the testimony of the pro-LN folks here–requires expert administrators and serious user training. And insuring you have the very, very, VERY latest version (because apparently the versions from the last 20 odd years are all acknowledged to be garbage (and so they are)).
Reading the comments and counter-comments reminds me a bit of various discussions of Unix tools or of Unix itself. Those who’ve invested the years to become proficient with the tool can indeed use it successfully and well. They seem unable to fathom why others wouldn’t chose to invest so much (in this case, merely to use email). And that investment of time and love blinds them. WE ALL DO THAT! It’s understandable.
As has been pointed out repeatedly, all (big) software has bugs and issues. The question in this case is whether there are objective criteria we can use to judge relative value. And I think there are. And I also think that compared objectively, LFN consistently falls short. Way short. I’ll get to that later; The Daily Show is on soon, and I have a question I want to ask in another comment!
I just wanted to introduce myself and say “Hi! Loving it!! (The site, not LFN!)” To quote the Ah-nold, “I’ll be baaack.”
This morning I went to upgrade Lotus Notes on a machine that has a system drive of M instead of the typical C. (I inherited that setup.) The current version was 8.5.1 and I was going to upgrade it to 8.5.3. When I launched the setup wizard, it started to compute available disk space. At this point, I got error 1327, which is something like “Invalid drive C:\.” This machine has no C drive. *grumble* I check everywhere in the registry, and every spot properly points to the installation path on M. Bah. Here’s what I did. I mapped a network drive to the local system’s M$ drive. I ran the installer again. It worked! Stupid Lotus Notes. Later in the installation wizard, it knew that my current installation directory was on M. So, the problem with the installer is only at the beginning when it check for available disk space. It must be hard coded to look at drive C. Dumb, especially when the remainder of the wizard obviously checks registry values. I hate Lotus Notes.
Now now, just because your Porsche’s ashtray isn’t big enough you hate the whole car??
Really…
I use M$ outlook at home – just to remind myself how s**t it is in comparison to Notes.
Even if what you said were true Steve I’m not sure that changes the fact that Lotus Notes sucks the sweat off a dead man’s ba11s.
Umm…corporate google is cheap, doesn’t require and admin, integrates with calendar and everything else…supported on all mobile devices and did I say doesn’t require an admin!
Why is anybody using Exchange or Lotus for mail/calendar?
No, I don’t work for google, we use notes…fortunately.
Sure, that’s great . . . if you want Google having access to all your proprietary data and don’t care about disaster recovery, compliance regulations, or a host of other concerns that Google cannot address.
Google Apps is great if you don’t want team mailboxes / public folders (Google Groups are not an equivalent, despite what the Sales guy will tell you!), and there’s no encryption either, (the Postini solution doesn’t work on the internal apps domain) which will annoy your HR department.
The room reservation system is good but lacks enterprise-level features, oh, and here’s a good one….
The mail searching facility in Gmail doesn’t search attachments!
C’mon guys – Notes full-text indexing has been searching attachments since 1997!
(Trust me on that one, it’s true…!)
Is there a keyboard shortcut for “copy into new Todo”?
This would be GREAT!!!
Closest I can get is by selecting the doc you want to copy into new To Do,
Go to Actions and then type “m”, “c”, “t”
Almost a shortcut!
Press Alt-A, W and then choose m(essage), c(alendar) or t(odo). Mouse free!
I work for a large multinational corporation whose money-saving measures are pains in my ***. I’ve spent nearly two hours on the phone with the outsourced help desk in India trying to get Lotus Notes version 6.5.5 from 2005 set up on my PC. We also run Internet Explorer version 6 if you were wondering.
I feel for you…
That version of Notes went EOL a couple of years ago. It is unsupported by IBM.
I HATE Lotus Notes. I have from the moment I started this job and had to use it. I don’t know why businesses use it other than it’s so crappy and user unfriendly that the common worker won’t bother to try use any of it’s features or customize it.
And we are still forced to use IE6 as well, you are not alone, I see you. I use Chrome portable on a usb when I’m not doing something on one of our web programs from the 90′s that won’t run on anything higher than IE6. Also still using Adobe 6, Excel and Word 2003 and I had to find my own photo editor because my position isn’t allowed to have photoshop or pagemaker on the computer, but I’m tasked with doing images for the websites… srsly?
Lotus Notes 8.5 crashes if I click on my e-mails too much. The computer has 2GB of RAM.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… To effectively run the Lotus Notes Client you must use a properly sized machine. I don’t think IBM’s sizing numbers are near enough to run the client effectively.
I run with 4GB of memory and would not want to run it with any less.
I’m running an i7 with 8GB of RAM, using IBM’s own internal distribution of 8.5 and it crashes constantly. Honestly, this **** is embarrassing.
So you’re saying an e-mail program needs 4GB of RAM to run? Bloated much?
Autodesk Inventor (a 3D modelling program) can run on less than that!
it is the same with my pc (8GB)