Monday, July 23, 2012

How to Fix Common Lotus Notes NSF File Errors

Notes Storage Facility (NSF) is a database file for Lotus Notes email client and Domino server application. While working on Lotus Notes, many times we have to face many type errors. Here we shall discuss few common errors:

Error:  “Entry Not Found in Index”

Cause and How to Fix?

Mostly this error occurs when you make some changes in exist policies.  You can solve this problem by re-editing and resaving all defined policies on server with .nsf extension like: names.nsf.


Error: when Lotus Notes is the Source, missing key value in server log error message.

Cause and How to Fix?

When you encounter an error, it will log the key field and its value for easy identification of the problematic data. In some cases, the key value is missing: for example,

[Kernel][Lotus Notes, RecordSet][Lotus Notes] Failed to read plain text from Rich Text; Fetch failed. Error occurred while fetching field [RichtextFieldName], DataType Rich text
[Kernel]Error on this retrieved document with Key Field[KeyField] = []

This issue occurs due to ordering of fields in Composer Column Mapping. If the field which is causing a problem comes before the key field, you will find the key value empty.

To solve this, try the following measures:

1) Make a copy of the replication
2) Unmap certain fields that are more likely to cause an issue (e.g. rich text and other complex types)
3) Resubmit the job.
4) If you continue to get the error, systematically repeat steps #2 & 3. Once you find a mapping where the job runs correctly, then the column(s) that you most recently unmapped are the cause for this error.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Error: Unable to open Name and Address Book (-names.nsf), due to error “File does not exist”. Locations cannot be used until the problem has been corrected.

Cause and How to Fix?

Firstly, check the location of .nsf file to make sure that your personal Names.nsf file is on the right place or not.

c:\program files\ibm\lotus\Notes\data (single user install)
or
\local settings\application data\lotus\Notes\data (multi User install)
There are many ways to track the location of this file. But, you can simply use Notes.ini file which will tell you the correct location of the file. It is faster than searching entire registry.
In case, if the Names.nsf does not exist, then simply restore or recreate the new database.

Except above errors, there are some destructive errors may also occur in your Lotus Notes database files which can cause data loss problems. To fix such kind of errors, you should go for a third party Lotus notes repair application like Stellar Phoenix Lotus Notes Recovery. This software is a very simple to use and effectively handles the damaged NSF file. The software recursively scans the damaged/corrupt .nsf file and make Lotus Notes error free.