Tim assured me he knew how to fix the problem, he just wanted to know if I had any quick answers to give the user as to why all her mail messages had suddenly turned to Unread.

Afraid there might be a problem with replication, I asked Tim to verify which replica Linda was using. Her Notes 6.5x client showed Linda still on her primary server. Then I asked whether the view selection button was set to View Unread Only but, sadly, it wasn't. Since I didn't have a quick answer, and Tim still insisted he didn't need my help to fix the problem, I returned to my reading.

Just as I turned the page, hoping to find the configuration needed to keep my coffee cup filled, Tim called back. He'd only half-fixed the problem. Now some messages appeared in black, to show they'd been read, while others stubbornly refused to go from red to black. Tim had even re-installed the Notes client when selecting Edit, Unread Marks, Mark all Read hadn't worked.

I opened Linda's mailfile with my Admin ID as Tim pointed out the problem messages. Three were from Linda's supervisor. One was from the company travel desk. I opened the first problem message. There was nothing remarkable about it. I closed the message. The sender and subject line remained red. I opened another message at random. When I closed it, the sender and subject line changed to black.

Tim suggested the supervisor had changed something in the messages before sending them to Linda. I considered what I knew of the supervisor then discounted the possibilty because it didn't explain the messages from the travel desk.

Anyway, Linda was, by far, the more creative user. I asked that Linda get out of mail for a few minutes while I ran utilities and collected my thoughts. I ran Fixup, Updall, and Compact on her file to repair any damage Tim might have caused. Then, just to be sure, I refreshed the design.

I sometimes have nightmares about one user's desktop that displayed in 14, carefully co-ordinated, shades of purple. Then there was another user who'd created a custom-color combination that caused cc:Mail to display the subject line of new messages in white on white.

With such memories nagging at me I opened Linda's file and went to Tools, Preferences, Colors. To alert her to important mail from her supervisor and the travel company Linda had chosen red letters on a white field, similar to the choices shown in Figure A.

FIGURE A

Here, we hilight messages from Support. Click picture for a larger image.

I sent a screen-shot to Tim so he could see what Linda had done. Then I suggested he call her and offer some other color combination for important messages, maybe pink on orange.

DominoPower Contributing Editor Nancy Hand is primary Notes admin at a remote site for a large corporation. She earned both Novell and Microsoft certifications in network engineering before being introduced to Lotus Notes. The 3,000 users she supports constantly challenge Nancy to keep up with their creative missteps. With a background in art, she brings a different perspective to working with computers and their users. In the past, Nancy has worked in the fields of accounting, criminal justice, and museum display. To balance the challenges of the job, she continues to draw and sculpt between stabs at writing novels and designing knitware.