Learn How to Archive in Lotus Notes in A Few Steps

  author
Rollins Duke   
Published: January 12th, 2022 • 4 Min Read

No matter whoever you ask, storing older mails is a practice which is done by everyone. One of the main reasons behind this is the incoming and accommodation of hundreds of mail (on an average) on daily basis. It is better to be safe than sorry and thus users store all their mails by keeping a copy separately in a hard disk. But this huge stack of data gets hard to handle and also occupies unnecessary hard disk space.

Therefore an alternative is to archive all the mails on a regular basis. With hampering you can be dead sure that the entire database is maintained in a secured manner without altering the performance of the database. Same is the case with Lotus Notes. In this blog post we aim to enlighten the users with the archiving feature in Lotus Notes. If you are also filled up with query as How to archive in Lotus Notes, the step by step procedure will help you get through the process of archiving in a very easy manner.

Why Is Archiving Necessary?

Archiving is one of the strongest features of Lotus Notes. When a mail is sent, a copy of the mail is sent in the Sent Items folder resulting in a bloated Notes file. Archiving enables to free up space occupied by messages that are no longer in use and are old. Storing the messages in an archive folder improves the performance of Notes database. Also archiving reduces the issues related with large size of Lotus Notes files which eventually get corrupted. Thus archiving in Lotus Notes should be taken into consideration by each and every Notes user.

How to archive in Lotus Notes?

For storing the archive mails, Lotus Notes needs an archive database. The given procedure will be an effective solution to the query How to archive in Lotus Notes?

The first step in the process is to establish archive settings so as to create an archive database.

#1 Click on Tools option and select Archive settings option.

Archive settings

#2 After selecting Archive settings option, three different tabs will be displayed.

  • Basic: controls the server and workspace settings.
  • Settings: used for enabling and disabling archiving.
  • Advanced: shows the archived database and the schedule for archiving.

three different tabs

#3 Select Basics tab. Archiving can be done in any of the following ways:

  • Workstation to Workstation archive is done to store archive in local database.
  • Workstation to server is done to store in the archive database which is server based.
  • Server to server archive enables archiving on to a different server.

#4 In this click on Change option to make the archive settings to Workstation-to-Workstation.

Change option

#5 Now, go to Settings tab and select the Edit option.

#6 In this, select the  option.

Default For Expired

#7 In this settings window, select the name for your archive folder.

select the name for your archive folder

#8 Check the first checkbox named Copy All Documents Into My Archive Database, then clean up this database.

Copy All Documents

#9 Check the Delete Older Documents From This Database checkbox.

Delete Older Documents From This Database

#10 Click on Select Documents option to archive the documents.

Select Documents

#11 A Archive Document Selection window will appear. In this select the Marked as Expired option to archive mails that have been expired after a selected time period. For example, we have selected to archive mails once they expire after 5 days.

Marked as Expired

#12 You can apply these conditions to all the folders by enabling the In These Views Or Folders option and then selecting the folders.

In These Views Or Folders

#14 You can also schedule it to begin at a particular time or after a time period.

  • Archive Now option will start the archiving process at the same instant.
  • Archive Selected Documents will archive the selective documents.
  • Open Log option will display all the recent archive activities performed.

Archive Now

In case the archive database was absent, it will be created as soon as the archiving process is initiated.

Conclusion

Most of the time, it is important to manage the database by archiving it in proper manner. In the above-discussion, we have discussed a way to archive in lotus notes in an efficient manner.