How to Migrate Lotus Notes to New Computer / Laptop / PC?

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Written By Andrew Jackson
Anuraag Singh
Approved By Anuraag Singh
Published On August 26th, 2022
Reading Time 5 Minutes Reading

This blog guides you to migrate Lotus Notes to a new computer whether it is a PC or Laptop. This migration can be needed under various scenarios like if the user wants to migrate from an old system to a new system. Accessing the Lotus Notes application in two machines can be a requirement of many IBM Notes users. In such conditions, users can opt to install some configuration settings in another machine to access emails of the same user account. If you are planning to export Lotus Notes to Outlook then download the tool:

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Get Complete Techniques to Migrate Lotus Notes to New Computer

In the next section we described the three-stage process to complete the task:

Stage 1: Get ID File of Lotus Notes

It is important to gather the “.ID” files from the current system or machine or a laptop, which holds some crucial information of your account for communicating with another mail server.

Open “My Computer” in your system and go to below-mentioned location;

“My Computer > C > Lotus > Notes > Data”

Here you will view a file with .ID extension. The name of the file depends on your username in the IBM Notes application. For instance, here user.id file is available. Copy this file and save it in Pen Drive and this file and information available in this file will be used on the target machine.

Stage 2: Find Domino Server Address

IBM can host multiple servers and in this case, one must know which Domino Server is being used and your account is assigned to which server. Domino Server is used for Mail server hosting and correct server information is extremely important to implement the technique, which will be used by us. It carries user e-mail and you will host the local copy needed for replication with assigned Domino Server(s) for exchanging emails.

In order to find Domino Server Address, it is important to boot up and then Login into the Lotus Notes application. Once you have successfully logged in, go to the Workspace and click on the drop-down arrow in the mail program.

If there is two or more server available, make sure that you note the details of your server. Note the details like full server name and path. This information will be essential to find your account by new IBM Notes install on the target machine on the provided mail server.

The IP address of the server has also to be found so that IBM Notes application does not get confused with multiple hosts’ names. For this, open the Command Prompt window.

Go to Start>>Run>> type CMD and Enter.

In order to find the IP address, “ping” the Domino Server and find the IP address using a below-mentioned command.

Ping [Server Name]

Here server name is “lotus” and hence we will type ping lotus;

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IP address will be traced using this command and it varies for different users. All the information received here should be noted down which will be used later.

Stage 3: Install Lotus Notes in New Computer / Laptop / PC

In earlier steps, we gathered .ID file, server name/path and IP Address of the server. Now we can proceed to install new IBM Notes application in another PC / Laptop / Machine. Get a fresh version of IBM Notes through ISSI, any version will work fine. When the installation is done 90-95% it will prompt you to setup Lotus Notes for install to finish.

Wizard Setup

    • Welcome screen of the wizard will appear like below. Click on Next to proceed further

4: Migrate Lotus Notes to New Computer

    • Here provide Your Name and Domino Server name or path (in this case, it is lotus/IWS). Click Next once you provide correct details

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    • Apply Connection Settings as per your environment and click Next

6: Migrate Lotus Notes to Laptop

    • In this next window, provide details like Domino Server Name & Path, Network Information and IP Address we traced in above-mentioned steps. Click Next once the information is fed

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    • Next step will ask you for User ID file which we copied in Pen drive. Save the ID file in new target machine and click on Browse to navigate to its location. It will prompt you to make copy of it, click Yes to this message prompt. Once the file is added successfully, click on Next

8: Migrate Lotus Notes to PC

    • Do Not Select any Option in next screen and click Finish

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    • Once the set-up is successfully installed, a message will be prompt click “Yes” to it.

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Conclusion

If everything is correctly done after migrating Lotus Notes to a new computer, you will be able to access your emails in Lotus Notes the way you do in the previous system. There are some cases where while downloading “Domino application files” users are prompted with a warning message that some of the .nsf files are missing. If you get such messages, simply copy these files from the “notes” folder on the target system. This process will help you to access emails of Lotus Notes in any other PC/Laptop. Moreover, you may also need to merge NSF Files, if your new machine already configured with your new account in Lotus Notes.

  author

By Andrew Jackson

I am SQL DBA and SQL Server blogger too. I like to share about SQL Server and the problems related to it as well as their solution and also I do handle database related user queries, server or database maintenance, database management, etc. I love to share my knowledge with SQL Geeks.