I was wondering if I could get some help converting a Notes database to MS Access (or Excel). I saw that someone in this forum said to create a view that includes all of the information that you want, but I cannot get one of the fields to display in a view (it’s called “Body”, and is the description for the record).
The other thing I tried was using NotesSQL to create an ODBC connection. This works fine except Access crashes with an Extended Error (-7711), and the Notes Client dumps an NSD file about half way through the export. I have found that if I restrict text fields (in the System DSN for NotesSQL) to about 1024 characters, it works fine, but then I do not get all of the data.
Subject: Convert .NSF database to MS Access, NotesSQL
Josh,
“Body” in Lotus Notes is generically the name for a Rich Text field. It is roughly equivalent to a Microsoft Word document within a database record, without all the bloat that makes a Word file larger than it should be. A Rich text field cannot be displayed within a view, just like an entire MS Word document cannot be displayed in a folder.
You can write an agent that appends a new field to the database record (the “Note”) to capture the text within the “Body” field, but you will loose all reference to formatting, embedded objects, attachments, etc contained within that field. Essentially you are performing the same operation as saving a Word document as a “Plain Text” file.
eg:
FIELD DumbTextForAccess := @Abstract( [TextOnly]:[TrimWhite]; 64000 ; “” ; “Body” )
Once you’ve run the agent against your document’s, you could then include the “DumbTextForAccess” field in your view.
I’ve heard of people converting Access (RDBMS) or flat list files (Excel) to Notes, but many people have difficulty (even the very best from the “Dark side” … see MS Analyser for Lotus Notes) converting Notes apps to something remotely approaching the functionality of a Lotus Notes application.
What is it you’re trying to do?