How to resolve Lotus Notes error: “Entry not found in index”?

As you all know, IBM lotus Notes is one of the popular email clients. It includes the following components e-mailing, calendaring and scheduling, address book, database, web server, programming etc. and provides you with the features like integrated messaging, business applications and social collaboration. Lotus Notes stores its mailbox data in NSF file. The NSF files contain all the Notes mailbox data such as: emails, contacts, calendar entries, notes, journals, etc.

If any damage happens to the nsf files, then notes starts prompting various error messages on the screen indicating database corruption.

Here I would like to introduce the Notes error: "Entry not found in index..."

The error can occur in several situations while working with Lotus Notes documents, design, mails or views. 

Cause 1:

Error: "Entry not found in index..." when opening documents


The above errors can occur while opening document within a view or folder.

The cause for the above error can be an incorrect look up formula in the document's form that returns error. Or the error can also be prompted if a refresh is required for the host view or folder.

•    If a refresh is required for the host view or folder:

Resolution:

•    Press F9 key torefresh theNotes view.
•    Press Shift+F9 to Rebuild the Notes view.
•    If the document’s lookup formula is causing the problem

The above error can occur when you are using @DbLookup and @DbColumn within Notes document. If you are using incorrect syntax of the formula,then the above error can be prompted.

Another reason for the above error to occur is if some value not found. If the @Db Function refers to a key andsearches it in Lookup View and ifit’s not found there then a blank or null key value is returned to the function that causes the above error. Also if the Lookup View is not sorted on the first column, the error can occur. Thus we can say of the referred key is not existing then it would lead to the above error. There can be such situation when the key document is exiting but still the error occurs. This can happen if the Reader Names field within the document does not contain the database Replica ID (.i.e. Replica ID of the database which performs the lookup).

Resolution:

Simply check your formula if something is incorrect in it and then correct the mistake or syntax error.

You can use the @IsError function to diagnose such errors.

For example:

temp := @DbLookup("":"NoCache";"":"";"view";"key";2);
@If(@IsError(temp);"Error message";temp)

If there is one error in the formula then the text, "Error message," will be returned. Otherwise the lookup value (contained in temp) is returned.

Cause 2:

“Entry not found in index”

This error can also occur due to corruption in the names.nsf file.

The names.nsf file is located in the Notes\Data directory. It includes your contacts, connections, locations, and Personal Address Book information. If the NSF file gets corrupt or damaged, you can ask your administrator to create a new one and recover the possible amount of data from the corrupted one.

Resolution:

1. Compact the database 

•    Open the Notes workspace.
•    Select the notes mail database
•    Right click  the database
•    Go to application then properties
•    Click the ” i ” tab
•    Finally click compact to compact the selected database

2. Repair the corrupt NSF file.

Lotus Notes provides free inbuilt utilities to repair corrupt NSF files. You can run the Fixup, compact, Updall commands to perform NSF filerecovery.

Load Fixup -i Load compact -c -i Load Updall -r.

To know more about the inbuilt Lotus Notes repair utilities visit: http://recover-email.blogspot.in/2014/01/how-to-perform-lotus-notes-recovery-for.html

Note:You can run “load command name -?” to get help about any of these commands and know about various available switches.

For example:

 

If the above described methods fail to recover your corrupt NSF file then, you need some powerful NSF file recovery software. The tool must be capable of recovering all the contents from the corrupt NSF file.

You can easily find such Notes recovery software with free demo versions available over the web. After going through the product features, software specifications and other product information available on the page, try out the one that seems suitable to your needs. You can evaluate the output of the DEMO to decide if the tool is capable enough to perform an efficient recovery of the corrupt NSF database and provides you the desired results.