Using Outlook with Domino instead of Lotus Notes

neildeadman

In some previous posts (here and here) I blogged about having to use Lotus Notes at work and some of the things I didn’t like about the client.

Well today I had a go at installing Microsoft’s Outlook Connector for Domino. The connector can be downloaded from here: http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?FamilyID=8ebbba59-5f17-4e52-8980-c4f0dfa92d65&displaylang=en

Having installed the connector, I loaded up Outlook and proceeded to add a new email account (Tools > E-mail Accounts > Add a new e-mail account > Additional Server Types > Microsoft Office Outlook Connector for IBM Lotus Domino). You must have the Lotus Notes client application installed and configured to use the connector, so the connector will automatically get the settings.

This didn’t work for me, giving me a message about the service not being able to start. As always with errors, I did a Google search and found many posts where people said that they went through uninstalling each update to Office 2003 since SP2 (note this connector is not designed for Office 2007).

This seemed long winded and should be my last resort.

Eventually I found another blog that told me to make sure the path to the Lotus Notes executable was in the PATH environment variable. On my system this was no longer there. So I added it (Right-click Computer > Properties > Advanced system settings > Environment Variables > Add it to System variables).

On my Vista system my path was C:\lotus\notes, which contained all the DLLs and the nlnotes.exe executable.

I then loaded Outlook again and it picked up my settings. Sorted!

I can’t open the Shared Calendar yet, but I’ll let you know when I have that working also!

Neil

4 Comments

  1. Alex9 September 2009 at 05:15

    Neil, the connector isn't the best. IBM had 1 too but, unfortunately and sadly, gave up on it. These connectors, while work, have/had a number of issues and were never considered for long term production use.

    I don't know if this is in the works, but you'd be much better off if your company were to upgrade to the latest version of Notes. 8.5 even looks like Outlook, Outlook 2007 and not 5.5, which is what Notes 6.5 is more akin to.
    And iPhone support is there too.
    Good luck with your adventures with Notes.

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  2. Neil Deadman9 September 2009 at 10:01

    Hi Alex, thanks for the comment.

    It certainly isn't a complete replacement for using Notes as I am unable to access everything (i.e. shared calendars etc.), however it makes everyday usage much more pleasurable.

    With regards to upgrading... if only I could get them to upgrade. Nobody here likes Notes, but it is being forced upon us from our International head office. We are currently looking at alternatives, one being a Google Apps account allowing us to use GMail.

    I'll save that for another post!

    Neil

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  3. Alex9 September 2009 at 17:15

    That's rather interesting. Your company would rather move to Google Apps rather than perform a simple in-place upgrade. Somebody should talk to them. ;)
    IBM will do most anything nowadays to convince its customers to upgrade. And it sounds like your company is not a small customer.
    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  4. Neil Deadman9 September 2009 at 17:21

    We are just the UK division of the company. The overseas office is where the decisions are made and they say no to the upgrade, at least for now.

    My UK office is going to use Google Apps because we don't like Notes and there is no chance of convincing them to upgrade!

    I know its not an ideal solution... I just wish this was my decision to make!

    ReplyDelete