Saving Space in Your Notes Database
Every Lotus Notes user has an “nsf” (Notes database file) on the Domino server. Your Notes database contains many documents, such as:
• Email in your Inbox
• Email that you save in folders within Lotus Notes
• Email in your Drafts and Sent folders
• Attachments to all sent and received email
• Deleted items (until you refresh)
• Calendar entries, past, present, and future
• To Do items
If you open the All Documents folder in the Mail view of Notes, you will see all of the above items mixed together. The amount of “stuff” you keep in your Notes database might amaze you. For example, unless you diligently delete old documents, you will find all the emails you sent since we started using Notes at Amerijet, all your old calendar appointments.
Each of us at Amerijet has a set quota of space that our individual Notes databases can occupy.
Some employees reached the limit of their quota because they did not delete the items they no longer need. Others might reach the limit because they save emails with attachments in Notes rather than detaching the attachments to My Documents and deleting the email.
If you reach your quota, Notes allows you to continue sending emails, but does not keep copies in the Sent view or allow you to save documents in the Draft folder.
IT asks that you clean up your Notes database on a regular basis. The good news is that the Lotus Notes software provides several ways to automate this cleanup and still retain access to past data. This document tells you how to use these built-in Lotus Notes features to keep your Notes database within your quota.
Archiving
Lotus Notes holds the documents you archive in a readable form. You can view archived emails, calendar appointments, and to-do items right inside the Lotus Notes window. Archiving simply moves back items from the Domino server, where we all share storage space, to a separate Notes database on your local C drive.
Archive Setup
Use the steps below to set up archiving. After you set up archiving, Notes automatically archives for you at the intervals that you select.
1) In the Lotus Notes menu, select Actions Æ Archive Æ Settings….
2) Click the Settings tab.(See Figure 1.) 3) Check mark Enable Archiving.
4) Highlight Default Last Modified and click Edit.
Figure 1: Archive Settings
5) The Archive Criteria Settings dialog opens. Click Select Documents, which opens the Archive Document Selection dialog.
6) Select not modified in the drop-down list and change the value in after days text box to 90 (Figure 2). Click OK.
Figure 2: Select documents not modified after 90 days
Figure 3: Viewing your archive
You see a Mailbox that looks just like your regular
(unarchived) mailbox except that the folders, calendar, and to-do list in the Archive database contain past information.
Use the Archive folder in the same way you use the regular Notes Mailbox. Click on folders to list and access contents and double-click on emails to view them. Click on the Calendar or To-Do icons below the folder list to see past appointments.
Reducing Your Saved Emails in Sent
Do you really need a copy of every email you send? How many emails do you send with attachments of documents from your My Documents folder?
Do you delete old sent emails at least weekly?
This section describes how to select each email that you want to save as you send it and how to permanently remove old sent emails.
Selective Sent Saves
1) Open the Preferences Dialog.
In the Lotus Notes menu bar, select File Æ Preferences Æ User Preferences. When the User Preferences dialog displays, click the Mail tab on the left of the dialog.
2) In the Sending section, select Always prompt (Figure 4). Click OK.
Figure 4: Setting "Always Prompt" in Lotus Notes
Whenever you send an email, Notes asks you “Do you wish to save this new message?” Click Yes if you need a copy of the email. Click No to send the email without saving a copy.
Deleting Old Sent Emails
Review the items in your Sent folder on a regular basis, for example, weekly. After you receive a reply to an email, you should no longer need the copy in your Sent folder. Your email is probably included at the bottom of the reply.
1) Open the Sent folder in your Mailbox.
2) Click to put a check mark on the left of each email you no longer need . 3) Click Delete.
4) At the prompt, click one of the following:
Delete (the recommended choice) removes the document from the database. Remove
Saving Attachments
This section can only be done from a PC running Lotus Notes. Save and delete all attachments.
Every spreadsheet, Word file, etc. that you receive takes up an enormous amount of space on the email server.
To save an attachment,
1) Click on the attachment icon in the email and click Save and Delete.
2) The Save File dialog should show your My Documents folder. You can optionally create subfolders to the My Documents folder. For example, you might have subfolders for projects, company/person names, or accounting periods.
3) Give the attachment a name and click Save again.
NOTE: If you click Save rather than Save and Delete, Lotus Notes saves the attachment but also leaves the original in your Mailbox.
You can delete the text portion of the email after you save the attachment. If you need the text of the email, select File Æ Export to save it as a text file to My Documents.
Avoiding Attachment Duplicates
Every time you reply with history to an email that contains an attachment, you send the same attachment back to the originator.
If you want to make changes to the attachment then send the changed version back, click on the attachment, and then click Edit. Alternatively, you can click Save to keep the original in My Documents, make your changes and then attach the new version to your reply with paperclip icon or File Æ Attach. Your reply will contain two attachments, the sender’s and your own!
To reply with history to an email that has an attachment, delete the attachment from you reply, in one of these ways:
• Select ReplyÆReply without Attachment(s)
• Right-click an attachment and select Save and Delete or just Delete.
Summing Up
If you apply all the guidelines in this document and still run out of quota space, you can legitimately email *IT Email Support to increase your quota of space on Domino. IT will not increase your quota until after you:
• Archive
• Reduce the number of Sent emails in your Notes database.
• Detach and delete attachments.
