4 Common Lotus Notes to MS Outlook Conversion Problems and Their Solutions

As you all know, MS Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes are two broadly used email platforms which are mostly used by small, mid-sized and big organizations across the globe. Both are worthy and have their own pros and cons. But MS Outlook is more in demand and is considered to be better for email communication as Microsoft has upgraded Outlook with the latest set of abilities and features.

The email conversion has turned out to be top priority amongst organizations for a healthier communication platform. But in order to switch from one email client to a different- involves conversion as the file formats of data storage of every email client are completely different. And to successfully make the transferred data compatible and accessible on a different email client, it is compulsory to follow the rules to accomplish an appropriate email client switch. But, even while following the right procedure for the conversion of the data, a number of problems may take place in between the conversion process.

In this article, we are going to discuss four most common problems which users face while performing Lotus Notes to Outlook conversion along with their solutions.

Issue #1: “You are not authorized to perform that operation.”

When you launch the Lotus Notes, this error message will appear on your screen stating that you are not having the required authorization to perform the respective action.

Cause: This error generally appears when the existing ID’s of user are not having access to Bookmark.nsf database via Access Control List. In this case, either only Admin has been authorized to access the database file or Bookmark file has been replaced with the new one.

Solution: You can possibly fix this error by creating a new Bookmark file having Lotus Notes user ID’s. And make sure that the new file should be added to that directory only from where you can easily delete or rename the Bookmark file and restart Lotus Notes.

Issue #2: “The message was migrated without the attachments.”

You are likely to face this error while using Transport Suite to initiate the migration of Lotus Notes mailboxes to Exchange 2007 specially

Cause: The main problem with mailbox migration using Transporter suite is that you cannot migrate Lotus notes emails of more than 400 MB size to Exchange. This is due to the default limitation of 400 MB for ASP.Net for buffering threshold of input steam. And to carry on with the migration process, emails are transported without their attachments and thus, you are left with the error message while migration.

Solution: In order to resolve the issue, you need to basically modify the values i.e. increase the buffering threshold limit of input stream along with the execution time out period.

Issue #3: “Unavailability of selected data conversion”

When you select any particular data type for conversion, you face this error which states that the selected data is unavailable for the conversion.

Cause: Users encounter this type of problem because it is not possible to select any particular data type manually for the conversion purpose.

Solution: A logically reliable solution to get rid of this problem is to make use of any third party tool to export NSF to PST.

Issue #4: “Unable to open Names.nsf or address book.”

In some cases, while opening Lotus Notes Address Book this error message appears stating that Name and Address Book cannot be opened due to the error “file does not exist”.

Cause: This problem takes place when Notes fails to find the Address Book/ Personal Name either due to the deletion or renaming of the database or due to the presence of a different version of INI file on the drive.

Solution: The solution to this problem can only be applied to Windows based Lotus Notes 6.x edition. In this case, you need to contact Notes Administrator to check the location to data directory and to know the status of Notes.INI file. Also, Notes Administrator should also check the location of Names.nsf file directory from time to time so that users don’t face any problem while opening Address Book.

If you are still unable to resolve the issues by following the solutions given above with their respective problems, then it would be better to make use of any third party LotusNotes to Outlook Converter to migrate from Lotus Notes to MS Outlook without facing any of the above problems.