Notes not finding email names in Custom Address Book

[steveolson]

I have a custom Notes address book that has been set up and it is on a Notes Server. All I did was create a blank Address Book file database then imported a vcard file with 850 people in it. Then I had the NSF file placed on one of our Notes servers by our Notes Admin. This is on Notes 6.5.

I have a Notes Bookmark to this file on several installations of Notes so several people can access this file and update it.

The problem is this:
[1] When somone selects multiple recipients from this address book and hits "Write Memo", it is spitting the actual names of the marked contacts into Notes, not the email addresses. Then when you try to send the email created, it doesn't find the recipients because the Address book in question is not a local Personal Address Book or our large corporate one. It only seems to check those 2 for the names. Is there a way to force Notes to look at this other Address Book on another server.
[2] There is a specific email file/account set up for mail for ths organization, but it doesn't have its' own address book associated with it. Is there any way for me to cause the custom Address Book mentioned in number one to open an email in an instance of this organizations Inbox and not the Inbox of the person currently signed into Notes?
[3] When clicking the "Address..." button while writing a memo, the only Address books available seem to be The local Personal Address Book, The corporate one, and a few INternet look-ups. Is there any way for me to add this shared Address book mentioned above to the available ones in the "Address..." pull-down menu?

Solving any one of these should get me to where I need to be.

Thanks!

--Steve Olson

 

[tonty]

At risk of asking the obvious... the email address field of contacts within this address book have been populated right?

Regards,
Tony.

 

[steveolson]

Valid Question, Tony. Unfortunately the answer is yes, the email address fields are populated. I'm still having a problem with there being no way to tell Notes to look in 3rd-party Address books. It looks in the COmpany-wide and Personal Books fine, but won't allow you to specify any not in the drop-down list. There's no Browse for Address Book type option.



--Steve Olson

 

[tonty]

The only other place that may be worth checking is the Full Name under the Advanced tab of the contact document. I have had problems in the past whith this retaining old email addresses and notes attempting to send to that address.

Your issue concerning a shared address book held on the server is one that your going to struggle with I think as Notes will only look for Names.nsf on the server when addressing mails etc. We're always getting requests from people wanting to share address books and our stock answer is that they can have them but there are limitations, such as you describe. One, rather convoluted, workaround would be to create a local replica on the desktop of those users wanting to use this additional address book, amend their preferences and add the file name of this local replica (File, Preferences, User Preferences, Mail tab, local address books) and you will be able to pick that address book when you click on Address in a new email. The drawback with this is you will suffer all the traditional problems with using replicas (people not replicating for months on end, people not knowing what version of the database they have open, etc.)

Regards,
Tony.

 

[steveolson]

Thanks, Tony. I guess that this is one of those occasions of you can't get there from here.

It just seems a little odd to me that they would be so limiting. You'd think there would be people trying to use specialty address books out there that don't want them integrated into their Personal Address Books.

My problem is that multiple people will be updating this and we want to be certain that we only have ONE main up-to-date list for them to use. That's why I don't feel replication would be good for exactly the reasons you cited.

Quick Question, Tony. What are a few sites that you consider to be good on-line resources for Lotus Notes (Aside from Tek-Tips, of course)? More from a Power User or Expert/Programmers perspective and not a user's perspective.


-- Steve Olson

 

[tonty]

The forum on notes.net is well used and has a good deal of historical documents -

http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf

For articles, tips as well as a decent knowledge base, try this -

http://searchdomino.techtarget.com/

Another site that I find invaluable is this one as notes.ini parameters often seem to be a bit of a guarded secret -

http://drcc.dyndns.biz/ref/notesini.nsf

Regards,
Tony.