1Anonymous  8/06/2012 12:47:36 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The problem is that maybe 10% of all users need that functionality. For the rest, it is a(nother) source of confusion while replying their e-mail.

2Dwain A Wuerfel  8/06/2012 4:28:37 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The problem with that is those 10% that need it don't know about it and will complain to everyone about how Notes sucks. So, the squeaky wheel will drive hatred and those not using the functionality will start to believe that person without listening to what they are saying to realize they are complaining about something they never use or do know about.

3Mat Newman  8/06/2012 7:55:38 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@1, Anonymous: This particular tip is hugely beneficial for any user, especially those who have a Mail quota. The outcome is: the user can keep more messages, for a longer period of time, and stay under their quota, simply by not increasing the size of every message they reply to. By *not* using the 'With History' option message content is not duplicated within their mail database.

The purpose of the Mythbusting series is twofold:

1) To demonstrate that Lotus Notes is a more feature rich software application, and

2) To educate users on the functionality that is available.

In my experience, it is education - or rather, lack of it - that is the biggest driver for the 'Lotus Notes Sucks' fraternity. Rarely do I conduct training sessions (especially with migrations from Outlook) where a participant leaves with the impression that Lotus Notes is an inferior tool.

Foot note: Even *IF* 'maybe 10% of all users need this functionality...', I've just helped over 10,000,000 (10 million) people. I'll take that any day.

@2, Dwain: Thanks for reinforcing the point.

4Peter Smith  8/06/2012 9:31:29 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

What I'd like to see around this is the ability to Send or Reply (with/without History) to email, including sending attachments, but not actually storing attachments in the saved email - just a description of them.

5Jamie  13/06/2012 12:53:45 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

As a person who has just converted from Lotus Notes to Outlook I have got to say that Outlook is a lot better than Lotus Notes.

I don't hate lotus notes but please don't try and pretend that it is a good email client. It may do other things well but from an email client perspective it is not very good.

6Jamie  13/06/2012 12:59:12 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

But I will concede that the Reply without history does save a couple of keystrokes.

7Mat Newman  14/06/2012 11:04:01 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@6, Jamie: Would love to connect with you and discuss your experience.

8Hogne B. Pettersen  21/06/2012 3:22:05 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

What the article doesn't touch on is that Lotus Notes is very frustrating when it comes to creating installation packages for the client.

Don't get me wrong, I like that the client is very configurable via settings on the notes.ini file, as well as via policies, but they are so incredibly hard to find, and the lack of documentation of them are excruciating.

We are currently creating a totally new system for installation of software at work, and the new SCCM is incredibly good. However, if there is one product that has created problems for us, it's Lotus Notes. Especially when it comes to single signon.

While every other product and software package we use have no problems with creating single signon and/or passwords that are synchronised with the Windows password, Notes has been pure hell. We spent two days figuring out just how to do it, and it's still pretty shaky.

We ended up using something that IBM tells us is deprecated. But I'm not sure, because both the deprecated and the new method have almost similar names.

And don't get me started on now complicated it is if a user wants to change the password, and we have synchronisation set up against the ID vault, with internet password and with the windows password.

I've been told that Notes 8.5.4 will follow the Windows standard for this and thereby making this much easier. I just wish earlier versions did too. This was also a problem at my previous employer.

Let's face it, IBM: Lose the ID-file! It's a relic that is no longer necessary now that we have perfectly fine ways of authentication via Microsoft's own tools. And I'm sure it can be fixed on the Mac and on Linux too.

It's too bad the administration is so hard like this, because I've worked with Notes since 1995, and I really like the product. I'm also giving courses and training, and my Notes applications are usually met with "this is Notes?!?!..but..but...it's so good!" (Thanks Chris Blatnick for a LOT of nice tips through the years). But I have a hard time defending the product when it comes to what I've described above. :)

9Steve  28/06/2012 3:00:01 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Dilbert to Dogbert: "Can I ignore email from people who don't include my original message in their reply?" Dogbert: "Yes, and you can hate them too."

Concerned about space? Delete the older emails in the string as new ones come in. Keep just those with needed attachments. Two email sins - replying without history and breaking the chain by replying to an older email causing multiple chains.

No amount of training can fix the bugs, performance and related productivity hits of using Notes. My first experience was with 8.0 and it was a total disaster -- even with IBM's assistance (we are big company with direct IBM support). IBM released a dud and made it worse by lying to us about the hardware requirements. With the hard work of IT and now that we are on 8.5.1 it is usable but there are still things that drive us nuts. After spending a ton of money on Notes my company wised up and is moving back. I have two days left until I am converted to Outlook and Lync and I can hardly wait. Those that have already been converted are so much happier. In addition to being intuitive it just works. So much that the roll out is going much faster than anticipated.

10Mat Newman  1/07/2012 4:29:01 PM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@9, Steve:

1. Please reply to any one of the messages I have sent you.

2. You keep making negative points about Lotus Notes on this blog and writing blanket statements that Outlook is just better, refer to point 1. Did you really try Lotus Notes and train your users, or are you just telling stories?

3. You demostrate your ignorance of Outlook with your own arguments:

Your point about reply-with-history is moot as soon as more than one person composes a reply-to-all and hit's the send button at about the same time as another user.

Once that happens, the ** only ** way in Outlook to collate those messages back into a cohesive thread is to do a HELL of a lot of copying and pasting.

As pointed out in this post, Lotus Notes would not only put them in the correct order, it would also collate messages that had multiple forks. Something Outlook is simply not capable of doing.

11Steve  6/07/2012 1:17:34 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

1. Mat, I did not receive any messages. You sure you have the right Steve since I do not "keep making negative points about Lotus Notes on this blog and writing blanket statements that Outlook is just better." I know I did post at least one other comment back in January (not responded to).

2. When we switched from Outlook 2003 to Notes 8.0 (now on 8.5) there was training (apparently not enough since people with Outlook have no idea so much training is needed to use Notes just for email and calendar, let alone anything else it does) but you are missing the point. We had tons of issues that had nothing to do with that. PCs that were just fine prior to Notes ran like dogs with Notes installed. Massaging Notes and maxing out the memory didn't do much so new PCs had to be rolled out much sooner than planned. Even with new computers Notes is often slow. There are also bugs in the program. Not nearly as many now thankfully but still annoying. You want an example? How about from today -- I wanted to copy my signature from Notes to Outlook so in Notes I opened a new message. I clicked More - Insert Signature and got the "Please place the cursor at the desired insertion point of the body field" error. Oh, I don't know, how about putting it in the body field? Okay, fine, I clicked into the blank email and then tried again. Same error. Okay, I must have imagined doing so, so I did it again with the same result. Apparently until you type something in the body and hit enter or space, or click around a bit and do a dance, when you select More the cursor moves back to the To line. Fine, so I hit a letter and enter then paste in my signature. I copy it, put it in Outlook (which has a handy reply signature option) and x out of the Notes message. I click Discard and instead of closing, the window is still there and gray except for the toolbar. It does not go away so I click the x again. What happens? The entire Notes program closes! It did not even ask if I want to close it, which I have it set to do (it did not crash, it closed ignoring my setting). So I reopen it, it goes to the home screen quick enough but when I click on the shared mailbox that I still need Notes for, it takes a loooong time to load even though nothing has changed...no new emails or anything. All I wanted to do was copy my freakin' signature. It should have taken 2 seconds. You want another one? How about calendar items disappearing when the time is updated? Folder views that switch back to the default (which sucks). How about the lack of undo for just about everything (not a bug but a design failure). I could go on and on.

3. My comment about replying applies regardless of email app. Yes, on occasion multiple responses happen at once and is typically solved when necessary using a simple copy and paste. If there are a lot of mulitple responses, that usually means they are responding about something else that needs updated, like a document, so there is no need to collate the emails. They can be put together into the appropriate folder. Replying out of order when time has lapsed is definitely a sin. As far as Notes collating, that functionality leaves a bit to be desired both in function and performance. Also, I am not saying Outlook is perfect. There's some Notes functionality I'd like to have in Outlook but after being switched back I'd say it's 100x better than Notes. Just about every complaint we had using Notes is now solved. Keep working at it though since there are still millions of poor souls who are stuck with Notes and need all the help they can get.

12Pramod Patil  19/10/2012 6:47:56 PM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hi, I have just shifted from outlook to Lotus. Believe me outlook looks younger & dynamic than Lotus which is dull & very single dimension.

In outlook I can change the font appearance & it becomes personal than a very cold Lotus.

Amongst all other features I am struggling to find out how to attach a document I don't want it to be part of the message. Being an expert in Lotus can you pls help me out in this.

Thanks & trying to find the ways of working on Lotus.

13Anil  26/10/2012 4:14:31 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Pramod you can save document as .eml if you are using notes 8.5.2 and onwards. Thanks

14Lotus Fan (not)  12/12/2012 1:13:20 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Little known fact: Lotus notes was created in hell by Satan himself. He wanted to give a small piece of hell to everyone who uses it.

Littler known fact: those who defend Lotus Notes are Satan's spawn.

15Mat Newman  12/12/2012 9:18:20 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@14, Lotus fan (not): Always happy to help out with any queries regarding IBM Lotus Notes. Let me know what your actual issue is, and I will help.

16Gay Fucke  27/12/2012 12:07:29 PM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Lotus notes is totally fucked! nowhere near outlook.

17Foua  7/02/2013 3:16:12 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Mat, thank you and Lotus Notes is AWESOME!!!

18Rob  8/02/2013 1:14:34 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@12 Pramod - about 3 months later but better late than never - you can change fonts in Notes, including setting a user default for both Serif and Sans Serif fonts. (though it's a dangerous tool in the wrong hands!), not sure what you mean by your first point?

However, you're right that you can't attach a file without it being SOMEWHERE in the email. I personally prefer this, drives me nuts in other mail clients that don't support it, but I can understand it doesn't appeal to everybody.

Of course, it's about time we all used email about 99% less anyway. Threaded forums are a far better medium for multi-person conversations. The debate about reply with history, multiple branches etc is archaic.

(in the interests of disclosure; I'm an IBMer)

19Ari Thompson  15/03/2013 10:38:26 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

i was at first amused to find there is an actually advocate of Lotus Notes out there - i guess it takes all sorts, kind of like the guy still using a blackberry and claiming it's better.

then i realized he works for IBM - so that kind of explained everything, because and let me state this as matter of factly as I know the earth revolves around the sun - LOTUS NOTES is a FAR INFERIOR product compare to outlook.

I say this for SO many reasons, (was a Notes user for 8 years in 2 separate corporations) - the headache that was working with that software was part of the reason i left my last job. I can honestly say, i would consider changing my job if my current employer considered switching from Exchange/outlook to Notes.

1. Performance - have you ever watched a Notes user boot up and login?

2. Usability - in terms of logical UI design Notes ignores every principle in the 101 guide to functional usability.

3. Performance - did i mention its f%^&&*ing slow?

4. Notes destroys attachments/graphics and converts them to 8bit greyscale monsters - is this 1988 or 2013?

5. Idiotic Notes based address aliases - notice those emails you get from Notes users which have xxxx@/23234/2343/ - WTF is that?

6. Did i mention performance?

7. Ever tried to use iOS mail with Notes? And NO i don't want to use a dedicated separate email app

8. Did i mention performance

anyone who can sit and say they prefer Notes over Outlook - and honestly Outlook isn't the greatest program ever written has ZERO credibility in my view.

20Anonymous  19/03/2013 12:26:06 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The problem with Lotus Notes, I will admit and I am a Notes Engineer, is as the application becomes more and more complex with more and more functionality to cover and array of tasks, it becomes more and more unstable. I find simple tasks like creating an object in a formula language script does not release the object value in memory after the the script terminates. It did that with no problem in previous versions but now, even with the RESET method, It still does not and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

21Anonymous  19/03/2013 12:32:26 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

it also has a tendency to crash a lot on the latest windows platforms; Vista, Windows 7, etc. It's customizable but now the word cusomization is synonymous with frequent pmr's just to get the darn thing working. It's a never ending process. I will admin, although Outlook is more or less an inferior product functionally speaking compared the Lotus Notes which is somewhat of an "artificial intelligence", Outlook, with its limited functionality, is far more stable in many cases. Just my experience.

22Mat Newman  19/03/2013 10:32:31 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@19, Ari: I don't work for IBM. Thanks for your post.

1. Performance: I'm writing this on a 5 year old Lenovo T61p. Notes boots in less than 5 seconds.

2. Who's guide to functional usability? Lotus Notes is a powerful, feature-rich application. To provide the power, flexibility and feature set of Lotus Notes necessitates a certain level of complexity. See any of my user blast slides for guides on how to navigate Notes. BTW I would much rather a UI which puts everything just a couple of clicks away, rather than burying myself 5 screens deep using some sort of 'hand-holding-wizard'.

3. Did I mention that I'm writing this on a 5 year old laptop and Notes works perfectly?

4. I have never seen Notes convert anything inside an attachment, or in an embedded object, including graphics. I have especially never seen Notes do anything to the colour depth of images as you describe!

5. It's called a hierarchical naming system, it enables a company to uniquely identify every employee, and users to easily include the correct employee name in any Notes document. Especially useful if there are 2 people named 'John Smith' one who works in manufacturing (John Smith/manufacturing/orlando/company) and another who works in sales (John Smith/sales/houston/company).

6. Did I mention Notes flies on a 5 year old T61p?

7. There are 8 iOS devices in my home including iPad's, iPhones and iPod Touch's. Lotus Notes Traveler integrates seamlessly iOS mail with Lotus Notes. Lotus Notes Traveler also provides the easiest method of configuring iOS mail I've seen, simply log into your Traveler server using Safari, touch "configure my iOS device" and then click the apple notification to "Install" Traveler. Done.

8. Did I mention Notes works perfectly on my 5yo laptop?

I have been working with Notes for over 20 years. I also am a big fan of Zig Ziglar. One of Zig's maxims is know your competition. Therefore I know a LOT about Outlook. I just don't understand anyone who says Outlook is a better software program. Take away the rest of the Office suite and Outlook is very limited in it's capabilities. One can't even view an Excel attachment sent to an Outlook user if they don't have Excel installed. Lotus Notes can; it includes native viewers for almost every 'productivity' application ever created. That's just one of a plethora of examples I could use. And then a user jumps out of their mail database (yes mail in notes is just ONE database) and opens any one of a myriad of applications built within Notes that can do *ANYTHING*, including CRUD data from an SQL based system.

And then there's live-text, embedded experiences, widgets and plug-ins. All available WITHIN Lotus Notes that extend the software to be capable of virtually anything an organisation might want to provide their users access to.

Feel free to ask any question about Notes that you can think of. I would be happy to show you how Notes is capable of the same thing as Outlook!

23Mat Newman  19/03/2013 11:13:17 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@21, Anonymous: In my experience many Notes 'issues' aren't related to the core product at all and tend to be the result of outside applications. Poorly configured Anti-virus tools seem to be the main culprit on Windows. I've been running Ubuntu Linux for the last couple of years and I'm a BIG fan of Ubuntu as a platform for Notes where crashes are extremely rare, especially on the x32 version of the OS. I've just looked at my logs and there have only been 4 instances since January 1st this year. Not bad considering Lotus Notes is up almost 24x7 on my machine.

Conversely, I've also seen Outlook crash frequently. It's interesting that Outlook seems to be one of the only Microsoft applications that doesn't display a crash dialog every time it goes down, but instead, simply restarts itself. This behaviour leads to the misconception that Outlook is a more 'stable' application than Notes because the user simply doesn't see Outlook fault.

Jump onto Twitter and do an Outlook search. It won't take you long to find a user exclaiming that Outlook has crashed on them.

24Eric Smith  22/05/2013 4:41:29 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

First off, the term "better" is very subjective, so what's better for you may not be better for me and vice versa.

That said, I've used both Outlook and Notes during my career. Notes may be the more powerful tool compared to Outlook but that power is completely wasted because, by and large, Notes is an incomprehensible usability nightmare. Sure, you've had training, and no doubt if every Notes user on the planet got proper training then much of the "hate" wouldn't be present.

However, training isn't free. It consumes time and money, and corporations don't like to waste either. Outlook works the way people *expect* a mail program to work. 99.9% of the "power" of Notes is utterly irrelevant to 99.9% of the user base who just want to send and receive email, perhaps with an attachment from time to time.

Your argument that Notes is "better" sounds a lot like the typical argument of Linux is "better" than Windows. Linux *may* be technologically superior in many ways, but the average user *does not care*. They just want their apps to work in the way they expect them to work. Notes doesn't satisfy this very well; Outlook does. That's why Notes is typically reviled and Outlook is praised despite any technologically superiority of the former over the latter.

25Eric Smith  22/05/2013 5:42:35 AM  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I just read probably the best analogy I've seen yet on what's "wrong" with Notes:

If you supply an average driver with a car that steers right when the driver turns left and left when when he turns right, he's not going to like it. You can espouse the technological superiority of the cupholders all you want. You can talk up how wonderful the rich, Corinthian leather is. Notes *does* have much to recommend about it, but it's the *basic* stuff it gets wrong -- so incredibly, impossibly, ridiculously wrong -- that makes people hate it. And the typical Notes advocate response? "You need more training." The user's response to that is "no, I need a damned steering wheel that works intuitively, not training that tries to go against every usability convention in all of history."