Managing Contacts files

CONTACTS

Managing Contacts files
Your Contacts file is the file in which all of your contact entries are stored. By default, it is called names.nsf, and is created for you automatically.

When you address a message to a person,

IBMR

Lotus NotesR

looks in your Contacts file (names.nsf) for the person's mail address. You can create a new Contacts file to use instead of this default file. You can also create additional contacts files. Then,

NotesR

will search all of your contacts files for an e-mail address. If the information is not in one of your Contacts files,

Notes

checks in the

DominoR

directory on your home server.

Creating a Contacts file

You create a new Contacts file the same way in which you create any

Notes

application, using the

Personal Address Book

template (pernames.ntf) . To keep all of your contacts files together in your data directory, use a variation of names.nsf (such as names2.nsf) as the file name for any additional contacts files you create

Deleting a Contacts file

You can delete a Contacts file as you would delete any file, but make sure that you always have at least one Contacts file or Notes will not run. Never delete your only names.nsf file.

If your names.nsf file becomes corrupted, ask your administrator for assistance in creating a new one and retrieving as much information as possible from the corrupted one. Back up your Contacts file frequently.

Changing or adding contacts files

You can change the Contacts file that Lotus Notes uses to find e-mail address, or you can use more than one Contacts file. If you use more than one Contacts file, then each of the local contacts files appear as a choice when you want to search for a name in dialog boxes such as the "Select Address" dialog box.

1. From the menu, click File > Preferences > User Preferences

Macintosh OS X users:

Click

Lotus Notes

Preferences

User Preferences

2. Expand Mail, and then click Sending and Receiving.

3. In the Local address books field, do one of the following:

To change to another file - delete the existing Contacts file, and then click Browse to locate and select the name of the Contacts file you want to use.
To add an additional Contacts file - click Browse, to locate and select the name of the Contacts file you want to add to the list. Repeat to add other files.

4. Click OK, and then exit and restart Lotus NotesR.

Tip: To change the name of your Contacts file in your bookmarks, change the title in the application properties, for example, from "Jane Q Public's Contacts" to "My Good Contacts 12-02-02."

Related topics
Creating a Notes application

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