I need the R4 and R45 StdMail templates (according to the sources I heard) in order to open my mail database created in version 4 of Lotus Notes but currently used in Lotus Notes 6.5.
Does anyone know how I can download these templates and how I should use them?
I’m really panicking now as my 200 MB R4 database can’t be opened in Notes 6.5. It contains many important emails and I would be totally devastated if I can’t open it.
I also can’t find any direct support from IBM Lotus Notes team. I wonder how I can get the real experts at IBM to help save my R4 database. Do I need to fly to India with my database? Isn’t there any Notes expert in Singapore from IBM?
You would simply refresh or replace the design of your mail database, and select the template when prompted.
That, however, is not likely to fix the problem – Notes seems to think that your database is just a replication stub (a placeholder file that needs to replicate with the database you are copying before it is a “real” NSF). Have you tried running nfixup, nupdall, etc., as was suggested? These are maintenance programs that are designed to fix errors in NSF database structures.
By the way, you don’t need to leave the database at R4 if it can be recovered. You can upgrade the database design to 6.5.
I wouldn’t put much trust in this source. Notes 6 (and up) should be happily opening any db based on an R4 or R4.5 template. Not the other way around, though.
Replacing the template will not help, especially, if your database is down to 14 MB from 200 after compacting. I just hope you DID a backup off the original, before running nfixup, nupdall and ncompact. If not, you’re toast.
Don’t get me wrong, what Ivan had suggested, is exactly the right thing to do. If this procedure resulted in an empty database, there must have been some serious data corruption. If you still happen to have a backup of the db (better still would have been a backup of the state, before the corruption happened …), you might try running
nfixup -C database.nsf
first. This should not make any changes to the db, but just report any errors. Be prepared for the worst, though …
I’ve followed Ivan’s instructions to run the 3 commands and no errors were returned. The result however was a shrunken database (from 200MB to 14MB) that showed up empty.
I’ve got a backup copy before trying Ivan’s suggestions but like you said, it could already have been corrupted. How? I don’t know.
I tried your suggestion with nfixup -c and here’s what I’ve got:
Database Fixup: Started
Performing consistency check on cyp2.nsf
Completed consistency check on cyp2.nsf
Database Fixup: Shutdown
Does this mean the database is still intact? Or is there a log file I should be looking at?
I’m going from panic to disbelief and now to despair. I wonder if this is some kind of sign to me. I started keeping this backup database since I joined the public service 8 years ago. With the database completely wiped out and inaccessible now, I can’t help feeling very lost. It’s like amnesia just hit me. Maybe this is the sign to me to move on to another job.
I’m still holding out a hope that the database could be saved.
By the way, is it possible that the Notes 6.5 I’ve got or my company has in the server is not able to open this R4 or R4.5 database because our Administrator has removed these templates? That’s what I was told could be a cause. Why they would remove these escapes me.
Do you think my idea of downloading the R4 and R4.5 mail templates and putting them back into the Notes directory would help? I’m desperate to try anything.