This is a strange one, but wanted to post this in case it might save someone else the trouble I went through to find a workaround…
A new customer wanted me to do some work for them and sent me a database via email. Every time I tried to open the database, it would instantly crash Notes. I tried this with Notes version 8.0.2, 7.0.2, and 6.5.6 - same result: instant crash. I could open the database in Designer, but if I tried to open any form or the About Database document - instant crash. I could look at other design elements just fine. So, obviously there was a problem with the forms, but I couldn’t open them to find out what the problem was.
The problem was caused by navigators from a different database (that was on the customer’s server) were embedded on all the forms and the About Database doc. The database’s launch property was set to open the About Database doc.
The work-around was to get a connection to their server and use one of their IDs (so that I could edit the forms without crashing), then rip and replace the navigators in each form and the About Database doc.
It seems that Notes should handle the whole situation more gracefully than crashing, but it happened 100% of the time.