Without any sys changes, NDLs now produce "Notes Document Link is not formatted properly, or it is not a Notes Document Link"

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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Hi everyone, Our app produces Notes Document Links (or NDLs) that are sent as attachments to M$ Outlook users.

Normally, the user double clicks the NDL attachment and the attachment launch dialog box appears asking the user to choose between saving the file to their hard drive or opening the attachment. When choosing the “Open” option, Notes launches and violahh the document referenced by the NDL opens.

However this morning, with no changes to the system, all users tested so far get one of these 2 error messages:

  1. “Invalid directory name or device not ready” or

  2. “Notes Document Link is not formatted properly, or it is not a Notes Document Link”

any ideas of what could have caused this or what to check?

the code that produces the NDL is listed below but that has always worked and nothing’s changed,

Thanks for any ideas,

-MC

— BEGIN CODE SNIPET —

Open filename For Output As fileNum%

Write #fileNum%, "<NDL>"

Write #fileNum%, "<REPLICA " & rtlink.DBReplicaID & ">"

Write #fileNum%,"<VIEW " & dview.UniversalID & ">"

Write #fileNum%, "<NOTE " & rtlink.DocUnID & ">"

Write #fileNum%, "<HINT>" & rtlink.ServerHint & "</HINT>"

Write #fileNum%, "</NDL>"

Close fileNum%

Call rtlink.Remove

Dim OBJECT As notesembeddedobject

Set object = rtitem.EmbedObject( EMBED_ATTACHMENT, "", filename)

— END CODE SNIPET —

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Subject: Without any sys changes, NDLs now produce “Notes Document Link is not formatted properly, or it is not a Notes Document Link”

Michael, can you try creating the doc link manually to see if you can open it? If you are not sure how to do this, here are the instructions.1) Open the database from notes.

  1. right click the document, then select “copy as a document link”

  2. Open notepad or wordpad and click edit paste

  3. save this file with a .ndl extension (type can be text, rich text, etc). Save to desktop

Now double click on the .NDL from the desktop.

Does it open? if so, could be a problem with code. If it doesnt open, does the .ndl contain any < or > other than the ones created by the NDL? For example, if I have a mail document and the subject has a < or a > symbol and I try to create a doc link, it will fail when I try to open it with the same error message that you listed “Notes document link is not formatted properly, or it is not a notes document link”. I opened a ticket with IBM on this today as we encountered this same error message.

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Subject: RE: Without any sys changes, NDLs now produce “Notes Document Link is not formatted properly, or it is not a Notes Document Link”

I am facing the same problem .The NDL file when double clicked launches notes and opens up the linked document

The NDL file when attached via Lotus Notes manually and send to outlook user works fine

the automated version where lotus script creates the outlook memo and attaches the ndl file fails and gives the error message .

the ndl file works fine

Any tips or script that creates a notes url instead of ndl files