Quick Tips

If you are looking for tips, and you haven't already done so, I suggest you check out Lotus Notes Frequently Asked Questions(Notes/Domino 4.5). This amazing single web page becomes more than 100 pages (!) of lotus tips when printed.

Ever read a simple technique and have the reaction "Hey, I didn't know you could do that !".
I decided to start my own list of those interesting "ahas".
Your reaction may be "But of course".
Hopefully though, you'll find some of these interesting. Maybe you'll have suggestions to add..
(These are intended to be short and sweet; More involved ideas can be found in the NotesDesign database.)

Cutting and Pasting response documents from one main document to another.
Opening multiple databases in a single navigator.
Documents appear in a view but when you try to open them, Notes says they have been deleted...
How does a user who does not have design access to a database delete a view ?
How do you sequentially number newly submitted documents.
How do you (programmatically) make one document be a response to another.

or simply scroll down the page...

In a view, "Edit-Cut" (Ctrl-X) some response documents from a main document.
Now Select some other main document.
Do an "Edit-Paste" (Ctrl-V). The documents have now become responses of this new document.
(In other words, the $Ref value of the responses now matches the @DocumentUniqueID value of the new main document.)

You can open multiple databases "into" the same navigator. On The Notes Desktop click once on a database icon to select it. Now, holding down the shift key select some others. Double click one the icons you selected. The navigator will show all the selected databases. Now open the search bar and perform a search. By simply clicking on each databases you can see the results of the search as performed in that database.

Ever have this problem: A document shows up in a view but, when you click on it, you are told that it does not exist. It's been deleted ?
Given the document does not exist you decide to REALLY get rid of it: You select it and press delete. Notes kindly informs you that it can't delete it because, even though you can see it in the view, it does not exist (??). Anyway... What you probably have is a corrupt index. F9 by itself does not fix the problem, F9 simply reindexes the documents. What you need to do is rebuild the index by pressing Shift F9. Did you also know that Pressing Ctrl-Shift-F9 on the Notes desktop rebuilds ALL the indexes of all the databases on your desktop. (This takes a while ! Ctrl-Break interrupts it).

How does a user, without design access to a database, delete a view ?
This situation can arise when a database contains a "Personal on first use" view which needs to be updated. Users must delete their old local personal version for the new version to take effect. To delete a view from the navigator, select the view with the Right mouse button. Hit escape to close the dropdown shortcut window. The view will still be highlighted. Now press the delete key and confirm that you want the view deleted.
Alternately, to remove all local views, the user should remove the database icon from her desktop by clicking on the icon and pressing the delete key. The user is asked whether she wants to remove the selected icon from her workspace. Then a message appears: "Removing the database will delete your private view(s). Remove anyway ?". She should answer yes. Now when she adds the database back (File/Database/Open), the personal on first use views will be recreated. (This is because removing the database from her workspace deleted the local views in the Desktop.dsk file)

Sequential numbering of new documents.
This is the most often raised question in discussion groups. I swore there was no need for me to cover it here. But then again,why not ..
First ask yourself, do you really need sequential numbers? If you are looking for a way to uniquely identify submissions and to sort them in the order they were submitted, I suggest you use an Identification field computed with the @Unique formula together with a DateTime created field set to @Now. Then you will have a unique ID and a way to determine the order that documents were submitted.
If you do need to use a sequential numbering system then there are two scenarios:

If all your users are accessing a single database on a server (i.e. no replication)

• I suggest you create a Profile form to store a "next sequence number" field. As each new document is composed, the id field, a computed when composed field, reads the profile form and assigns a next number, something like..
  LastNum := @GetProfileField("DatabaseProfile"; "LastSeqNum")
  NextNum := LastNum+ 1
  @SetProfileField("DatabaseProfile"; "LastSeqNum";NextNum)
  The only problem with this is when the new document is canceled before it is saved. This results in a number being jumped. One solution is to assign the number when the document is being saved. ( i.e. use: @IsDocBeingSaved )
  

If your users are replicating a database to their local machines before working on it, then there will be an issue..:
"Sequential numbering of new entries" and "replication" are fundamentally incompatible concepts.

• The advantage of replication is that it allows two copies of a single database to get "out of sync".
  Then at a later date the two (or more) copies can be re-synchronized through replication. This advantage allows multiple users to collaborate on projects while being physically separated. However, the fact that the database copies are no longer synchronized means that there can no longer be a unique "Next" sequential ID number.
  One "work around" I have considered is to include two fields on each new document, a temporary sequence number and a permanent sequence number.
  When the user ( say on a plane above the Atlantic) composes a new entry, it is assigned a temporary sequence number using the profile method described above. Later, this user replicates with the master database on the server.
  On the server is an agent that runs every night. This agent runs on all entries that have not yet been assigned a permanent ID number (These entries are sorted by the time they were created). The agent gives each such document the next permanent sequence number in turn (again based on an @GetProfileField method as above). This agent could run on all documents submitted more than 24 hours ago, to ensure that all the records are processed in the correct order.

How do you make one document be a response to another ?
There are cases where the Notes help is no help ! You're trying to find out how to accomplish some task. The only way to locate the method you seek is to do a search using the method's name. If you knew the #$%^ ing method name you wouldn't need to be doing the search in the first place (sheeesh !) : Case in point.. MakeResponse
The situation... When you import to notes, you can create response documents but they all end up being responses to the document you happened to be pointing at when you did the import. How do you get these ( or any other response documents ) to be children of the correct "parent". The answer is the NotesDocument method "MakeResponse" as in

Call notesDocument.MakeResponse( notesDocument )

An example (from help under makeresponse)..

This script makes the second document in a view a response to the first document in a view.
It also modifies the Form item in the second document so that it displays in the user interface as a Response.

Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim view As NotesView
Dim docA As NotesDocument
Dim docB As NotesDocument
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set view = db.GetView( "All documents" )
Set docA = view.GetFirstDocument
Set docB = view.GetNextDocument( docA )
Call docB.MakeResponse( docA )
docB.Form = "Response"
Call docB.Save( True, True )