The company I’m working from is currently migrating from Notes 6 to Notes 8. As I’ve said earlier, I’ve been using the latter for some time, and am mostly happy that I am.
A service call I got the other day had a user reporting that she’d get a “Type mismatch on external name…” when opening her calendar afet she’d upgraded to Notes 8. Not the most informative of errors, but that is the way of Notes, it seems.
One of the interesting things about upgrading from one version of Notes to another is that with a new version of Notes, comes a new design for the mailfile. I encountered it with the upgrade from Notes 5 to Notes 6, though there, the issue was mostly related to layout and design.
The solution, then, to this problem is to upgrade the mailfile design.
Blog
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Lotus Notes: "type mismatch on external name"
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Five tips for giving better tech support
Having worked in tech support for close to five years, I find I still enjoy my work. Yes, at times, I feel like a target at a live fire exercise, but at the end of the day, I still find fulfillment in knowing that I am able to help my users. Here are five tips to giving better tech support:
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Windows XP SP3 blocks uninstall of software
As previously reported, Windows XP with Service Pack 3 has a nasty tendency to cause people to be unable to uninstall software such as Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8.
What I didn’t know, was that it doesn’t confine itself to blocking uninstall of these programs, but that it also blocks the uninstall of, for example, Lotus Notes.
I even got an error message; this one, to be exact: “The Windows Installer Service Could Not Be Accessed”
It would seem that Service Pack 3 actually blocks software from accessing the Windows Installer Service. The solution, then, is to uninstall Service Pack 3. After I did that, I could uninstall Lotus Notes. -
Lotus Notes: Resolve "Type mismatch" error
I recently had a user call inn to report that whenever she tried to delete an invitation to a meeting, she got this error:
The invitation in question would get an X beside it, and delete when she refreshed her screen.
The solution is luckily simpler than the error message could lead us to believe; a simple change to the preferences is all that is needed:
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Unable to uninstall Internet Explorer 8
The next version of Microsofts Internet Explorer is currently in public beta. Many of the beta testers are reporting that they are unable to uninstall the beta. The reason? They are running Windows XP SP3.
Now, you can still uninstall IE8, it just takes a little more time, and effort. The first step to doing so is uninstalling SP3, which in turn should allow you to uninstall IE8. -
Don’t argue, just do it!
One of the tasks I am called upon to perform as part of my job as a desktop service tech is checking and troubleshooting VPN login. One fo the ways I do this is to log in as the user on my own machine. My employer uses RSA SecureID key fobs combined with a personal password for authentication.
As you may or may not know, RSA SecureID key fobs change the code they display every 60 seconds. Almost invariably, when I ask the user what the current code is, I am told to wait, as it is about to change. All well and good so far. Twenty seconds later, the code changes, and the user tells me what the new code is.
At the end of it all, I am left wondering, wouldn’t it be quicker to give me the code in the first place, instead of arguing? -
Read your GMail while offline
In a previous post, I talked about Google Gears. Now, let’s take a look at a practical application. First, the developers at Google brought us the next big thing in web-based email. Now, they are bringing a way to take it offline.
Bear in mind, Offline is a GMail Labs feature, so it is wont to be a bit unstable for now. That being said, here’s how to enable the feature:
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Google Gears for Offline and Online goodness
The clever people at Google have made Gears, an Open-Source multiplatform program that enables more powerful web applications, by adding new features to your web browser, such as:
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Oh no, they didn’t – or the many versions of Windows 7
I have long been of the opinion that where Microsoft have gone very, very badly wrong indeed when it comes to Windows is that they release multiple versions. The argument could be made that this is how it has been since NT4.0/98, but that argument doesn’t hold, because they ditched the Windows 98 line of development in favor of the NT line of development with the release of Windows XP.
XP, of course, was released in two versions, Home and Professional. More recently, Vista was launched with no less than six different versions. With the recent launch of the public beta of Windows 7, we see no less than five versions, with a possible sixth reserved for volume licence customers.
In my opinion, what any version of Linux, as well as what Mac OS have going for them is a simplicity of choice: choose distribution. You are done. With Windows, you first need to choose Windows, then choose which version you want. I think it is time that no matter your needs, your should be able to get all of the features, provided your hardware can handle them.
The division between XP Home and Professional was a mistake. Understandable, but a mistake. Why do Microsoft keep making the same rutting mistakes??? -
Lotus Notes: Notes automatically deletes email
A while back, a user called in, telling me that he had lost a lot of important email. All of the emails he lost were roughly three months old, and he’d lost all of his emails that were older than three months.
The cause of this problem was that the user had set a flag in his Replication settings, instructing Notes to delete emails older than 90 days. After removing this flag, the user no longer had this problem:
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Lotus Notes: Resolving "You are not authorized to use the server" errors
The error message “You are not authorized to use the server” is caused by the user being entered into the Deny list. When this error message is displayed, the administrator of the Deny list will have to change the permissions of the user in question.
Edit: A commenter commented that I’d got it wrong, so I’ve now corrected it.