I have a user who has imported a large number of addresses from Another Email System into her Notes PAB. They seem to show up fine – fields sorted correctly, etc. However, when she selects one and clicks “Write memo,” the memo comes up with a blank “To” field.
Further fun – if she goes into Edit mode in any entry and Saves, THAT recipient address shows up correctly in the “To” field when she uses “Write memo.”
So, the question is, does she have to go in and save every one of several THOUSAND entries, or is there a way to update these en masse so they’ll all work? Or is there something else I should be looking at?
I’m also concerned because she’s not the only one bringing in large numbers of addresses from Other Email Systems – I’d love a fix for this BEFORE it becomes Crisis du Jour!
Subject: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
You could try creating an agent with the refresh selected or refresh all docs @Command
That works for me when I import addresses from, for example, CSV files.
Not sure what is causing it in general as that function should work without issue. Try it and see if you get the same results.
Also, in general, it’s probably better NOT to have those in the personal address book since the information may change, however, it’s understood that option is not always feasible from a client perspective.
Subject: RE: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
Lissette – thanks. I’ll try and figure out how to write the agent (I’m an end-user admin with no formal Notes training, so everything I know I’ve taught myself. Until recently, other people would have handled this, but they are no longer with the company…).
On the question of whether or not the info should be in a PAB, well, it’s not data that’s duplicated in the NAB, or I’d simply tell her to use that. And because it’s office-specific, and we have literally hundreds of field offices, it’s not anything I want in the NAB, either.
Subject: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
Here’s a possibility: it sounds like the contact address is a calculated field in the contact form. When you do your import, there is a checkbox ‘Calculate fields on form during document import’ - did your user have it checked?
Subject: RE: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
Unfortunately, I got the problem only after everything had been done, so I don’t know how the import was handled. I suppose I could just tell her to delete 'em all out and re-import them, and make sure it’s done right this time… and that might be the more time-effective answer. I’ll have to see how big a deal Lissette’s agent is going to be for me… Thanks!
Subject: RE: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
Daniel – thank you. I called the user this morning and she had gone into every entry, put it in “edit” and then saved it, and that seems to have resolved the problem. I will save all this information for the next time, because I’m sure there will be one.
Another thing that might have caused problems is that she was importing – through Excel – from a program that puts everything in all caps. I asked her to see if she can change it to sentence case before importing and see if that helps.
I’m just not sure why we had all these problems when a simple Edit mode and “save and close” solves everything. The mysteries of Lotus Notes!
Subject: RE: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
Here’s what you do to create the agent. It will just do what the end user did (edit then save the doc) and if the full name was not completed (as indicated in a previous response), the save will do that as well.
Open the address book
From the file menu, select Create - Agent
Designer will open and present the Agent properites box
Enter a name for the agent in the properties box (this is what you’ll select from the file menu later to run it)
In the same property box towards the bottom, change the drop down in the Runtime Target box to “NONE”
Close the property box
In the right pane of the agent, change the “Simple Action” drop down to “Formula”
In the area right below the drop down (only place you can type) enter the following “@Command([ToolsRefreshSelectedDocs])”
Select the green checkmark to the right of the Formula dropdown.
Close and save your agent
To run it:
Open the personal address book
Select one document first to test then from the file menu, select Actions - The name of your agent. If the results are good then go to step 3.
Select all documents (ctrl + a) then run your agent
If find that even if “calculate” is used during the import, this agent is still required to show for example, the company name in the view. Let me know if that works for you.
Subject: RE: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
Lissette, thank you VERY MUCH for this! It will be invaluable. I have another user who is moving his address book from an external system. We are going to try using his Blackberry (he has BB on both systems), but if there are problems, we will use your handy little agent. If I get the chance, I’ll report back on how it did, but I expect it’s going to be excellent!
Subject: RE: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
As a tip, whenever you want to migrate contacts from one system to another, forget the Excel approach; that was good with the pre-R5 methods but somewhat klunky now.
Instead, focus on v-cards. Assuming the “other” system is Outlook, you open the contacts from the client, then “forward as v-card”. This will place all the contacts as separate attachments in a new messages in Outlook. They will all have the .vcf extension.
Highlight and drag those to a folder on your PC. From Lotus, select “File - Import - vcards…”, select the files you copied, then get ready to start hitting enter. You will be prompted to “accept” each v-card. Sure, you may have to hit enter a thousand times, but considering the one to one outcome, it’s worth it.
It’s the Outlook limitation that doesn’t allow you to export vcards at all but other systems, such as Yahoo, etc, will allow you to export all the contacts into one vcard. So when you import them into Lotus Notes, you will be prompted to accept all of them at once.
I’ve used this approach when migrating from Exchange to Lotus Notes and it works really well.
I glad to help and hope this tips helps you deal with contact migrations in the future. Good luck!
Subject: RE: Personal Address Book Woes – imported addresses don’t resolve for “Write memo”
Lissette, when you say, “open the contacts from the client,” are you talking about Notes? How would I do that? If you are talking about Outlook, we don’t use it in our environment – these users have come from outside our company, but have business contacts they are bringing with them in a file. How do we handle this when, really, we do not have the originating system?
