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Resolving the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 (and Higher) Attachment Issue

A long while ago, November 2009 actually, I posted about an Attachment Problem which was introduced in Lotus Notes 8.5.1. At the time, I pushed IBM for a solution and they eventually produced a half-solution (slightly better but no cigar).

Since then we've been living in pain.

Recently a commenter named "CIS" left a note on my original post to try putting AttachmentsUseCaption=0 in the notes.ini. It worked **THANKS** - you're my hero of the hour!

I decided to describe the problem and solution here in case others were in the same boat.

Here's how our attachments used to look prior to using the Lotus Notes 8.5.1 (and higher) clients.

At 8.5.1, the text under the attachments disappeared completely. This left me with a screen with two PDF files and no description. Not a good look for our extranet service.

We halted our Notes 8.5.1 rollout until IBM provided a fix but when they did, it wasn't a particularly elegant one.

Here's how it looked;

The attachment text (file names) stopped being under the icon and started being to the right of the icon. It might have been ok, if IBM didn't still keep invisible spacing under the icon.

It probably would have looked great if I could just left align the icons but it was not to be.

When the problem was still present in Lotus Notes 8.5.2, I decided to start upgrading our clients. I wasn't happy with the fix but at least we had descriptions for our attachments again.

A couple of days ago, following Cis' advice, I edited my NOTES.INI file;

C:\Program Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\Notes.ini

The location may vary for you - especially if you're using the Multi-user install.

I opened the file in Notepad and added the line somewhere near the top.

AttachmentsUseCaption=0

Then I restarted the Notes client and detached and reattached a file.

The result looked like this. (File No 1.)


Yay!! We've since added the line to our policies, so all our clients will get it when they reboot.

Now all we have to do is detach and reattach everything we've done since November 2009 - Thanks IBM, at least now nobody can say they've got nothing to do.

Comments

If you want a fixup, our Midas Rich Text LSX will let you control attachment icons in several ways, and you wouldn't need to detach and reattach. You can just run it through and have it recreate/change the icons in place.
Doh! IBM should finally acknowledge Ben's great work and negotiate a global license for all Domino & Notes users past & present. And integrate Midas in Notes & Domino.

My solid conviction for almost as long as I know about Midas.
Gavin, CIS, thank you so much for keeping that up and finally solved the issue. Had the exact same timeline with my extranet users in my neck every day.
Anonymous said…
I work for IBM and do deskside support as well as work on issues such as this (have CLP certifications as well).............Ben has done great work here, but don't expect anything from IBM......If he walked on water, they would say he can't swim.
Anonymous said…
Appreaciate for the work you have put into this article, it helps clear away a few questions I had.
Anonymous said…
Awesome! This was a huge pain. Spent way too long attempting a solution in the form itself before finding this article.
Anonymous said…
Thanks Gavin, It helps me to resolve my issue.
Anonymous said…
Thanks Gavin, it resolves my issue.
byman said…
thanks it solved my issue!
Venkatraman.S said…
Waahh ! Finally worked ! Why can't the dumb IBM include this info in their guide or help contents? Really need to do a thesis to understand IBM products even for a simple mail app.. sucks !

Thanks a lot man ! You are a hero !

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