I suspect this post has a very small audience, although I suspect that goes for the blog as a whole. Anyway, what follows is a step by step instruction for using Outlook 2003 to read your Lotus Notes email.
h3. Assumptions
This has been tested and works for Windows XP, Lotus Notes 6.5.4 (although the MS bridge should work for Release 5 and up), using Outlook 2003.
h3. Download the Microsoft Conntector
It’s “available for free(Microsoft.com – Outlook 2003/2002 Add-in Notes Connector)”:http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=8EBBBA59-5F17-4E52-8980-C4F0DFA92D65&displaylang=en from Microsoft. It states it works for Outlook 2002 and 2003, for use with Notes release 5 or 6.
h3. Uninstall Microsoft hotfixes
It seems that Outlook 2003 security fix “KB892843”:http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=1D156043-B041-4305-8442-3C4E3B832788&displaylang=en stops the connector from installing properly. Unless you remove it, you’ll get the error @”Unable to open your default e-mail folders. The server is not available.
Contact your administrator if this condition persists@. This hotfix is also included in some roll-up fixes, so I suggest you remove any and all Outlook related hotfixes. These hotfixes only affect the installation of the connector, so you can re-run Windows Update afterwards.
You can remove hotfixes from the Add/Remove program dialog – just make sure you have the @Show Updates@ checkbox ticked. The Outlook hotfixes will be listed under Microsoft Office.
h3. Install the connector
Shut down both Notes and Outlook. Double click the connector and follow the on screen instructions
h3. Set up Outlook to read your notes email
Start Outlook up. Select @E-Mail Accounts…@ from the @Tools@ menu. Select @Add a new email account@, click @next@, and select @Additional Server Types@ and click @next@ again. Depending on your configuration, you’ll be presented with several server type options. We want @Microsoft Offie Outlook Connector for IBM Lotus Notes Domino@. Click @next@. You’ll now be prompted to exit Outlook before the new account will be active.
Outlook should pick up your notes file automatically.
h3. Re-install the Oulook Hotfixes
As you wouldn’t want to forget that, would you 🙂
Anyway, that should be it. You’ll now have a slightly more usable way of accessing and sending you email, as well as working with calendars and your todo list. Note that you’ll be unable to read all notes email – those sent with high encruption levels (the ones you can’t send to non-notes email accounts and that can’t be forwared) will not show up, but you should get told that they can’t be transfered by the connector.
magpiebrain 
234 Responses to “Using Outlook 2003 to read Lotus Notes Email”
Thank you VERY much for this article. My office uses Lotus Notes exclusively. Lotus Notes is great, however – the e-mail client is pitaful
I’ve been using connector for years now. As of last week it quit working. Unable to open folders, blah blah is the error and zero updates have been made since install of Office 2003. I went as far as uninstalling all three pieces, Office, connector, and notes. still no glory. Any Ideas?
Updates will show up in two places – are you sure you’re looking at the updates displayed under office 2003 itself, rather than the generic windows updates?
Fantastic, thanks! The rolled up Outlook update will look like “OUTLOOKff…” in you Add or Remove Programs window. Also, if you start Outlook before fixing this and get the error, just go to Control Panel, make a new mail file, set it as default and restart Outlook. After that you can start from the top.
Thanks for this. Works a treat!
Hi
I am having a similar problem.
Building a new machine – loaded XP with SP2 included & Office 2003. Loaded all the updates, then the connector & cannot open the Outlook folder.
Removed all updates for Office except SP2 & KB907417 which cannot be uninstalled.
Reloaded the connector, which asks for a Notes password as expected.
Whan Outlook opens I get a message specifying the Domino configuration, then a message that the Connector is not the default e-mail account & then Outlook continues as normal.
However, I still cannot open the connector folder
Any suggestions as I am baffled??????????
Hi,
I am having the exact problem that Alan has described above when I try to access my Notes Mail database using Outlook.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
I have been able to resolve the problem by removing all email accounts from the profile, setting up the connector & ensuring that the connector is working. Once this was working, I recreated the POP3 accounts that I had previously & then reloaded the Office updates.
A question that I now have is – should the Notes mail automatically be moved to the Personal folder, if that is specified as the delivery mail box, in the same way as it can be setup to do when there is an Exchange server & a Personal folder?
Any suggestion would be appreciated.
Well I am not able to open Microsoft Office as initially I had configured the Mail account directly by specifying the Domino server name(before installing the connector) but Outlook gave me and still gives me an error and shuts down and thus I am not able to access the ooptions to use the connector. How do i remove these settings to revert back to the original Outlook configuration? please help!
Dude,
Your article saved my butt. I had just reinstalled the OS and gotten all the dang updates (incl. Office 2003) but couldn’t get the Connector going. Removed the Outlook updates as you suggested and finally it worked. Thanks!
Kamal,
You should be able to uninstall the connector easily enough from the add/remove programs option under the control panel.
You’re a f*ckin’ genius! I just got my laptop back after a corporate re-build. After 2 years of using the Connector it gave me this exact error. Our IT group will not support anything outside of a std Notes install so I was hosed for 2 days. Thanks to you, I’m up and running.
Cam
I have a different problem. My Outlook Connector works perfectly, but other email does not. When I’m not connected by my VPN to the Notes server (VPN is down), I cannot send email via my Comcast account. Interestingly, I can get email from the same Comcast account. The only odd thing I’ve noticed is that even though I select Comcast account as to be used when sending the email, the email itself ends up in the Domino “Outbox”. Any ideas as to what might be going on? And – Thanks in advance for any help you might provide!
I have done everything you have suggested. I seem to have a different problem. When outlook trys to make the connection to the notes server it says someone is already using my file – I assume that means my message file. I am stumped and now completely desperate.
this pertain to a message that said my local message file.
thanks so much! I was going nuts trying to make my Notes connector work. Your the Best.
A question – can the Notes mail automatically be delivered to my Personal folder inbox if it is specified as the delivery mail box, in the same way as it can be setup to do when there is an Exchange server & a Personal folder?
Hi,
I’ve Outllook 2000 can i access my lotus email from this version.
-sk
Thanks for the tip…though some corrections might be in order based on my experience in making my Outlook connector for Domino in Outlook 2003 work again on my XP-SP2 (It was down for last few months ever since I got the Outlook updates from MS site via automatic updates)
Firstly, after I removed the 3 patches related to Outlook, my Outlook was crashing on start-up, had to use the “repair” option of Microsoft Office installation to fix that. Secondly, I don’t think I can run the patches again as they will again block its working. One just have to live without those MS patches.
HG, I have the same setup and I was certainly able to reapply the patches – I’m fully up to date (Office 2003, XP SP 2) and the connnector is still working.
Thank You!!
Worked like a charm!
Thanks you so much for the info. Our work uses Notes and it is the worst mail client ever made. It gives me no end of frustration and I had been unable to get the connector working until I found your blog saying to remove the Outlook patches, and it all worked a treat!!
Really big “Thank You” …
I have the exact same error message (default folders not found). I do not, however, have any outlook hotfixes, only windows hotfixes. Have been forced to use notes for 3 months now, and need help!
Excellent – removing the Outlook update and re-installing the connector fixed it. Well done.
One problem – none of the Lotus Notes folders appear in the Outlook view. I had this working previously before I rebuilt my laptop and don’t know what I have done differently.
There’s a few people out there with this issue – can anyone assist thanks?
Finally- After two weeks and reading your blog it finally WORKS!!!
Thanks so much for all this VERY helpful information. Finally it works!
[…] Thanks goes to the Magpiebrain’s guide Using Outlook 2003 to read Lotus Notes email. It helped me get started on installing the Notes Connector, when I was having problems with it. […]
The problem, for me, is only during configuration: setup ok, configuration seems ok but is bad. I removed the KB913807. So it works.
Thank you
So no-one else has had the problem where the Notes folders are missing? I can’t use the outlook connector as I need the folders. I’ve gone back to the horrible Notes client for now.
Hi,
I am also facing the same error while trying to open Outlook. But I don’t have Outlook 2003 security fix KB892843
installed in my pc. How to fix this error.
Hi All:
I need to access “four Lotus Notes email files” but do not have Lotus Notes and don’t need it. Is there any easy way to access these files … should I do the whole rigamarole of setting up Outlook?
I don’t need to access a server, don’t need to download anything … I just need to view four Lotus Notes email files which are contained on a DVD.
Any advice would be most appreciated … THANK YOU!!!!
Thanks! That worked great.
Another thank you to Brian above who’s tip fixed my issue! 🙂
Help…I had the connector working fine on my old laptop using Outlook 2002 and Lotus Notes V6. My new laptop came with Outlook 2003 and Lotus Notes V7. I do not have the Outlook 2003 security fix KB892843 installed. The connector installed fine, configured fine, but when I try to open the folders, I get a pop up error “folders could not be opened, server not available”..
Any suggestions. Also is anyone using connector with Notes V7. Thanks in advance.
Hi, my outlook connector had been working satisfactoriliy until a few days ago. It sync all emails except calender appointments. Is there any thing I needs to do to get that working again ?
Thanks for your help.
Any idea when will a connector Notes 7 be released? Every since my company has migrated to Notes 7, my outlook has been crashing after 10 – 15 mins of use. I suspect its because the original connector has been designed only for R5/6
thanks
Why you would want to use the limited Microsoft tool when Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook is available and supports encryption as well as everything esle I don’t know.
I understand that it is not directly downloadable, however it should be free to your company and they should be able to get it for you.
Otherwise you can web register free here: https://www6.software.ibm.com/reg/sdlcom/getid-r?
Then download here: http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/download/search.jsp?q=Domino+Access&rs=ESD-NTSDOMTRL
Then you can start using Outlook to drive your Notes mail file without the limitations of the microsoft connector.
OK you will still be running Notes software in the background, but the objective is to use the nicer client isn’t it? I can’t see not being able to read encrypted messages as being very friendly in a Notes environment where encrypting your mail is as easy as breathing. But then you never can tell.
NeIT Wrote:
> Why you would want to use the limited Microsoft tool when Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook is available and supports encryption as well as everything esle I don’t know.
Several people in my company tried it – they found it to be more buggy and memory hungry than the MS connector. Many of our users also reported being unable to uninstall it. As for encryption, very few people use notes for this any more (as people’s email traffic is by and large mostly external to the company). Most people use notes because they have no other choice.
Thank for suggest of NeiIT, back last 2 months I has outlook connector to Lotus Notes yet it OK for me. But I has problem after IT dept have changed my mailbox from the old server to new one server it not work. I’m try to repair more time it still can’t work then after install tool from IBM my outlook come back again that find for me. Thank everyone for better suggestion.
I’ve tried all of the above suggestions and still get the error when I try to open the Connector folder ” The set of folders could not be oopened. The server is not available…..”. I don’t have any Outlook security fixes that I can see. Lots of Windows updates but none of the numbers listed on this blog. Any suggestions?????
Hi all,
great blog.
i have a problem with some attachments. i always get a message saying ‘the attachment can’t be downloaded from the server…..’. I know there is a workaround then by downloading the attachment via notes webmail, but as you can imagine that is hardly workable.
Has anyone had the same issue – and happen to know what the rootcause is/how to solve it.
all suggestions are very welcome!!
It works!! This site should be given a gold star. In order to get the folder to open this is what I had to do.
I had installed the connector and then uninstalled the hotfixes. Still couldn’t open up the folder. So as Alan mentioned above, I deleted the email account (connector) and still wouldn’t work. Soooo. I uninstalled the connector (again). I then realized that in the Document & Settings/User/Local Settings/Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook there was a file that had been created by Notes when I first tried to install the Connector. It brought over the data but was not being read by Outlook. So I moved the file (didn’t want to delete it right away), installed Connector again, set up the e-mail account as Sam explains, and Voila…..it brought over the files and works like a charm. I than ran the updates for windows and it still works!!
I would like to know as Alan asked on 6-13-06, if I can make the default folder for receiving emails the personal folders instead of the Connector folder. I don’t want to try it in case it screws something up.
Julie – try what I did and see if the folders come in. I was having the same problem until I deleted the file in the Outlook folder and reinstalled. Good luck and thanks Sam for making this available.
Sandi – thanks very much for posting the workarounds. I really should get around to updating this post with all the useful information that’s been left in the comments.
I have failed to get this working, despite resorting to uninstalling the connector, completely uninstalling Office 2003 then re-installing Office and the connector.
The connector picks up my server location and displays it in a greyed out box – asks for my password but fails to connect to mail error shows “set of folders is not available”
I am running Notes 6.5 on this XP box
Sorted !!
Document & Settings/User/Local Settings/Application Data/Microsoft/Outlook
I guess I didn’t read this page in full – Thanks Sandi
Has anyone tried or does anyone know whether the connector will work with Outlook 2007???
I would like to load the software but do not want to lose the current functionality
Alan,
Did some checking on the MS website and it looks like the connector DOES NOT work with Outlook 2007.(Some have tried and had no success) . I have a link here that gives some information on the new exchange. I’m not sure of all the ramifications but this might help some. In the meantime, your best bet is to stick with what works now! Happy e-mailing.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/interopmigration/collaboration/default.mspx
Many many thanks!
My company also uses Lotus Notes which has the world’s least intuitive user interface. I could not get Outlook Connector to work until I found your blog with its advice. Corporate IT disavowed itself of the problem.
I had reinstalled Office and Notes to no avail. I followed your directions and now I can use Outlook again!
Niall
We have the connector running great, but here is the problem: The Out Of Office assisant is only available on some of the machines! Why would that be? I have followed M$ suggestions but nothing will make it show up on the Tools menu. Anyone got any ideas?
Thanks