Real World Computing

Today marks 25 Years of IBM (Lotus) Notes. It's a pretty impressive lifespan for a product. Sure, Windows has been going 29 years and there are many older systems out there but few I suspect have retained the incredible levels of compatibility that Notes has. Can you still run Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 or even 95 programs on the latest Windows? Sometimes, but not really. Not without emulation. Notes applications however still run fine on the newer notes platforms.   What is Notes? For so many years, people thought that Notes was email - in fact, they still do today.  I have no idea why they have that impression, after all, IBM/Lotus sold a separate product, CC:Mail for years before finally deciding that Notes handled mail well enough to not require it any more.  Nevertheless, Notes always drew comparisons with outlook and lots of companies moved away from Notes mail because it was fashionable (and a safe bet) to use Microsoft and because they figured that the n...

For years, we've had it easy with Notes. We've had our ID files stored safely on a secure drive and whenever a user moved to a new desktop, we could simply copy their original ID over to their new machine and do most of the setup without them. All that changed somewhere between Windows 7, Notes 9 and getting Notes to use the Operating System login. It's a good change, don't get me wrong and it certainly protects the users privacy and makes things more secure. Unfortunately it also renders all of our ID's "Poisonous" and now we can't reuse them. Instead when opening an ID file on a new client installation, just after agreeing to "copy the file to the Notes data directory", we get messages telling us that Notes cannot open the ID File.   Eventually I tried other ID files only to find the same problem. Fixing the Problem As it turns out, there's a surprisingly easy fix for this. Simply generate a password protected copy of the ID from...

In my last post on reusing text via bookmarks in Word, I mentioned that there was a problem with the reused text retaining formatting.  Sure, you can reformat the text to look how you want but when you update it, then new text takes on characteristics of the old.  You end up with text that looks like this.... There's an easy (but not obvious) way to fix this; Getting into Reveal Codes Mode on Field So, first we need to know exactly what makes our fields tick.  So, click on one of your fields and then press Alt+F9.  The field will change to show the code. In my case, the code is; {REF Title \h \* MERGEFORMAT } This is more or less the default setting (the word title is the name of the bookmark I inserted).  Mergeformat means that the format of the original text is being merged. To change this option, simply click on the code and overtype it. In this case, we're going to change MERGEFORMAT to CHARFORMAT. Once this is done, Press Alt+F9 to t...

I guess this is a bit of an oldie but I was surprised how many people didn't know about it.  Why would you do this? If you find yourself opening old documents and then doing a search and replace to change a name, a date or a version number, then this is the tip for you.  It allows you to write your key information down once and then have it auto-update. If you do a lot of contracts or quotes - or basically any kind of document based on a template, then you'll find this very handy. Getting Started (Bookmarking the Original Text). Open a Word document and type in some useful repeating text; eg: Customer Name:  MyCompany Limited 1. Highlight that text 2. Select the Insert Tab on the Ribbon. 3. Click the Bookmark Button A dialog box will appear. 4. Type a name for your bookmark.   This can be any name but it should be something that you'll recognise when you see it. 5. Click Add. Inserting the Bookmarked Text So, now that you ...

I forgot the F8 shortcut key today and I looked it up via google. On the way I found a post about colouring text white to hide bullets in notes.  Crazy.  In any case, I wrote these instructions for my people and thought it was worth sharing on the blog; How to Do Bullets and Numbering in IBM Notes There are lots of cool things you can do with bullets in IBM Notes. To turn them on and off, click the bullets or numbering icons on the toolbar Getting Spacing in Bullets If you're in the middle of a bulleted or numbered paragraph and you want a few lines to yourself. Press Shift+Enter This gives you a new line inside the bullet. When you press ENTER again without holding down shift, then your bullets will start again. BTW: That trick works in Notes and Word and blogger and nearly every other application I can think of. Getting Indentation in Bullets If you're wanting to do sub-bullets; For example Just below and indented from the main bullet Like a sub-...

Until recently, in fact until Notes 9, our Notes clients used to show email addresses as we typed them in but suddenly with IBM Notes 9, it started showing their Job Titles. We got a lot of complaints about this and the fix wasn't entirely obvious (to me at least), so that's why I'm documenting it here. As you can see, the problem wouldn't be so bad if all of our contacts came from the same company - but they don't. Our contacts come from lots of different companies. So, how do we change this? In your Notes client, click on File , then Preferences . In the left hand panel, click on Contacts . On the contacts screen, change the type-ahead option drop-down to display Internet Address (or you could use company name which is quite useful too). Click Ok . The effect should be immediate, so try starting a new email and typing a first name (then push comma) and see what happens.  PS: Big thanks to Daniel Lechner and Sunanda A Patil f...

I'm surprised that nobody seems to know how to do this - well, according to my research on the web anyway. So here it is, the instructions for getting your IBM Notes (we don't use the words Lotus Notes anymore) personal address book Synched with your Apple iPhone (and presumably Android too). Note: I'm assuming that you're already running Traveler and are able to get your mail and calendar. Enabling Contacts Synchronisation In IBM Notes, Select File , then Preferences . Click on Contacts Make sure that this is turned on;     [x] Enable "Synchronise Contacts " on the Replication and Sync Tab   While you're in here, make sure that in the Recent Contacts section you have selected;    (o) Do not add any names This bit isn't critical to the procedure but it's caused us no end of grief.  It's fine if you don't have lots of outside contacts in a giant corporate address book but it's painful if you do. Click Ok . Enabling...