• Save the file in whatever format that you wish.

When researching this further, I found a Lotus Customer Support Technote published last month called "How to Properly Export a Notes View to Microsoft Excel." If you're interested, go to http://www.lotus.com/support and search for Technote #149789. Thanks again to everyone who sent me email about this tip and posted comments to the DominoPower PowerBoards.

Tip #2: The case of the missing Notes mail folders
This tip was published on July 27, 2001. Sometimes I come across a problem that throws me for a loop, and it takes me a while to find a solution. This tip resulted from such a problem, that of losing folders when upgrading my mail template. While it's not a problem many users will run into, it is useful to know about it because when it does happen it can be devastating to a user. And understanding how it can happen helps you to better understand how Notes works as well. Keep this tip in mind as you start upgrading users to Notes 6 in the future.

I was late writing the tip for this week because I was searching for my lost mail folders. I recently replaced the design of my mail template with the default R5 Mail template and POOF! Some (not all) of the folders I had created to categorize my messages had disappeared. This was devastating to me, since I live and die by having important mail messages filed away carefully for later reference.

After researching this, I found out that what happened was actually pretty simple. At some point, my Notes mail database got set to no longer inherit from the R5 mail template. Since it was no longer inheriting from a template, the new folders that I created were not set to "Prohibit design refresh to replace or modify" by default. Therefore, when I replaced the design of my mail file, these unprotected folders were deleted. Meanwhile, other folders I had created when the database was set to inherit its design from the R5 mail template were protected and were not lost during the design refresh.

Fortunately, I had created a file-level copy of my Notes mail database and put it in a safe place before refreshing the design of my mail file. What I did to resolve the issue was the following:

(WARNING: The steps below are only a guide and are not for novice users. If you're unsure about what to do, ask your System Administrator for assistance.)

• I replaced the local replica of my mail file with my backed-up file-level copy.

• I viewed my mail database in Domino designer and made sure all of the folders had the "Prohibit design refresh to replace or modify" option checked. Automated ways of doing this can be found using the Iris Sandbox link below, but it only took a few minutes to manually go through the folders.

• I right-clicked on this backed-up copy of my mail replica and chose Replication-->Settings. Then I clicked on Advanced, and under Replication I deselected the "Forms, views, etc." box (in order to not replicate the folder deletions).