Notes 8.x Archiving

Rob HutchinsonDesktop Support Specialist
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Current strengths are Office 365 and Dell laptops: 7450, 7470, 7490, 5410/5420
https://www.linkedin.com/in/getlinkedwithrobhutchinson/
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Notes 8.5 Archiving Steps and Tips
This article covers setting up a Notes archive, and helps understand some of the menu choices making setting up and maintaining a Notes archive file easier.
To create a Notes archive file, first select the Notes mail file tab then the correct Notes menu choices will appear.

From the mail folder menu, choose Actions > Archive > Settings:
ArchivePic-01.JPG
At the popup box, make sure that “Criteria” is selected on the left (there are already two default pre-created archive entries).

The two entries (Default for Last Modified and Default for Expired) are useful to become familiar with the archive settings--but most people will likely want to create our own archive entry. To create our own archive entry, click on the “Create” menu option on the right side to see the box on the next page.
ArchivePic-02.JPG 
ArchivePic-03.JPG
In this box, first give the archive a name in the top box under “Descriptive name…”, select “[] ] Enable this criteria”, and then choose a location to place the archive in the “Copy documents into my …”.

By Default, the archive location will be placed in the: C:\Users\user’sName\AppData\Local\Lotus\Notes\Data folder in a subfolder named “Archive” although the archive location can be actually placed anywhere on the hard drive. For example, My Documents\My Email Archives.

Note: Do not change the archive location to a network drive as storing archives on network drives may not be allowed for your company.

There is also a button called “Selection Criteria…” where we can choose the number of days and specific folders if needed.
 
When configuring the “Selection Criteria…”; a good choice is “older than” as this makes sure that emails older than a specific date are archived.

If you choose “not modified in more than”; Notes will mark viewed emails as being modified….

What this means is that if you just open an old email, then that email will have been modified—which means that it will not get archived.

As an example, choose also a date less than 365 days if the date that your emails will be held is 365 days before the emails get deleted.

ArchivePic-04.JPGAfter making these choices, we will be brought to the Schedule menu choice where we can schedule auto-archiving.

We do not have to enable this option to schedule auto archiving though --some users prefer to archive manually.

ArchivePic-05.JPG
Just a warning here if scheduling archiving:
If there are a lot of old emails when first setting up your archive--older than our chosen archive date (when first enabling archiving) the first scheduled archive time might cause Notes to (appear to) lockup…meaning that the archiving process might take a very long time--1 to 2 hours--and Notes will not let you do anything else until completing  the archiving so it’s best to ‘not’ enable auto-archiving until we have manually archived most of the emails older than one year.

After finishing the Notes archive setup, a blue folder with the archive’s chosen name will be located at the bottom the email folders:
ArchivePic-06.JPGIf we click this Archive now before archiving our first email, we’ll get an error because the actual archive file does not exist yet.

To actually create the archive file in the location you specified, go into one of the Notes email folders and select an email for archiving by putting a check mark on the left side:
ArchivePic-07.JPG 
Now, click the Archive Selected Documents menu option (ActionsArchiveArchive Selected Documents)
ArchivePic-08.JPG
Within a few minutes after clicking Archive Selected Documents, we’ll see an archive file created in the folder location we chose in the archive settings.

Now our archive file will open up instead of giving an error.

Notes Archiving TIPS:
Disabling, or deleting, the entries here will not delete the actual Notes archive-- make sure you remember where the archive is stored if you want to find it later. If you disable the entry here, In the Mail tab the Archive link at the bottom of your folders will disappear but the archive will still exist.

ArchivePic-09.JPG
To disable an old archive( removing it from the Mail tab) and still have access the old archive--open the archive on the workspace tab.

Open the workspace tab up via the toolbar icon, click the icon shown below.
ArchivePic-10.JPG
From the workspace tab, right click the workspace away from any bookmarks and choose Open Application…:
ArchivePic-11.JPG
Now, click the “Browse…” button to find the old archive file.
ArchivePic-12.JPG
After choosing the file, the bookmark to this old archive file should be on your workspace.

Important note on intermittent Notes archive bug:
For whatever reason if we remove an empty folder from the Notes mail folder tab (after archiving this folder’s emails) and your active Notes archive has a folder with the same name…guess what, poof, the folder might also be removed from the archive...so don’t remove any folders from your Notes Mail folder.

Possible Archive Bug Work around:
If you plan on cleaning up folders from your Notes Mail folder, make sure that you de-activate the current archive first (safer to remove the archive entry from the Criteria box altogether) and create a shortcut on your Notes workspace to open this archive…don’t ever make this older archive active again either…you will always be able to open this archive via the Notes workspace tab as long as you do not move or delete the archive file.

Cleaning up Notes Mail folders should be done in this sequence:
1) Archive all emails in the Notes Mail folder you plan on removing from the Mail tab.
2) Deactivate or remove the Notes archive via the Criteria box mentioned earlier, and then create a bookmark on your Notes workspace.
3) Delete the old empty folders from the Notes mail folder.
4) Create a new Notes archive file.

Steps for sharing your archive, or needing to keep your archive for long term storage
If you plan on sharing your archive, or want to open your Notes archive without having to enter in your old Notes password, make sure that you unencrypt the archive first.

From your workspace tab in Notes, right click the Archive bookmark and chose ApplicationProperties
ArchivePic-13.JPGFrom this mini popup box
ArchivePic-14.JPGclick the “Encryption Settings…” button,

and then choose “Do not locally encrypt this database
ArchivePic-15.JPG
That’s it! Hope this article helped and you liked the archiving article!
 
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Rob HutchinsonDesktop Support Specialist
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Current strengths are Office 365 and Dell laptops: 7450, 7470, 7490, 5410/5420
https://www.linkedin.com/in/getlinkedwithrobhutchinson/

Comments (3)

Sjef BosmanGroupware Consultant
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Commented:
Suggesting: another article, this time about setting up server-based Notes archiving, and the pros and cons...
Rob HutchinsonDesktop Support Specialist
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Author

Commented:
Well, if I was in charge of the company's Notes servers I might be able to do this, but if you read my bio, you'd  see that I work desktop support =)

The group managing the Notes servers are in another country too...
Sjef BosmanGroupware Consultant
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Commented:
@EP: touché...

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