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MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Mat Newman  June 7 2012 13:41:25
Lotus Notes has fantastic message tracking capabilities. By combining the 'Reply Only' and 'Display, Original Message' commands when composing email replies, Lotus Notes 'conversations' functionality will help you save space and make it easier to track message history in Lotus Notes Mail.

Here's how to use these fantastic features of Lotus Notes:





Comments

1Anonymous  06/08/2012 0:47:36  
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  06/08/2012 4:28:37  
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

06/08/2012 7:55:38  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.

Mat Newman IBM Champion

4Peter Smith  06/08/2012 9:31:29  
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  06/13/2012 0:53:45  
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  06/13/2012 0:59:12  
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

06/14/2012 11:04:01  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.

Mat Newman IBM Champion

8Hogne B. Pettersen  06/21/2012 3:22:05  
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  06/28/2012 3:00:01  
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

07/01/2012 16:29:01  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.

Mat Newman IBM Champion

11Steve  07/06/2012 1:17:34  
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  10/19/2012 18:47:56  
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  10/26/2012 4:14:31  
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  
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  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.

Mat Newman IBM Champion

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

Lotus notes is totally fucked! nowhere near outlook.

17Foua  02/07/2013 3:16:12  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

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

18Rob  02/08/2013 1:14:34  
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  03/15/2013 10:38:26  
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  03/19/2013 0:26:06  
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  03/19/2013 0:32:26  
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

03/19/2013 10:32:31  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!

Mat Newman IBM Champion

23Mat Newman

03/19/2013 11:13:17  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.

Mat Newman IBM Champion

24Eric Smith  05/22/2013 4:41:29  
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  05/22/2013 5:42:35  
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."

26Mat Newman

05/30/2013 9:55:24  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@24, Eric: "Outlook is praised" have you done a Twitter search on Outlook recently? ;-)

That analogy makes absolutely no sense. the New, Reply, Reply to All, Forward, Delete, Move to Folder, etc, etc... Work differently in Notes compared to every other mail client? I don't think so. What features match what your analogy actually refers to?

Mat Newman IBM Champion

27chris  06/09/2013 23:35:06  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I finally switched at work from Lotus note to outlook. I am a free man!!!! I could do in 4 days what would take me 20.

IBM shall pay me for all the stupid overwork I had to do the last 3 years because of the trash that is lotus note that roughly 30 to 1 hour PER day!!! Slow, unusable and completely impossible to use when you are on a business trip. I hated my life until this week.

28Mat Newman

06/18/2013 10:21:12  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@27, Chris: Are you suggesting that it took 5 times longer to click reply in Notes compared to Outlook? I too am a very frequent business traveller, Notes works flawlessly online, offline and over some of the worst connections you might imagine. Did anyone ever show you how to create a replica {link}?

Mat Newman IBM Champion

29Belarade  06/21/2013 5:24:02  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hi Mat,

I've accidentally found your site as a result of a Google search for an explanation of a strange behavior which happen to show me today while using Notes 8.5.3.

The trigger was the new 'feature' of Notes that gives to the user the right to modify a sent mail. (well, its copy stored in sent folder). For those who have not yet learned about this, you can modify the body of the message, the subject and even the recipient lists. You can save the message afterwards or choose to (re)send it again but in either case, the message will not duplicate in the sent folder but just appear there in its new form instead.

I don't want to start a whole discussion about this as my intention is to solve and fix things rather than spoil everything with words out of shame which usually only increase tensions and make things worse.

I really hope that I've missed a setting or a patch or something. It is true that I didn't had the time to make a deep research about this but as far as it looks atm it is something that I have to solve it somehow. Yes, I know that it can't have a serious business impact (as the real mail sent is delivered as intended first) but it makes place for debates and normal people will have real doubts no matter of technical explanations. Which is an unnecessary loosing of time.

I'm taking care of IT things where I work and I'm using Notes for more than 6 years.

Last thing, here's my opinion of Notes as an old user and admin: Notes works but maintenance costs are quite high. Users, most of them are getting used with it after a while and with good training they even like it. At least my users are behaving like I told. Knowledgeable users think different from the start and they appreciate it as a global product rather than a simple mail - calendar application. But these are quite few unfortunately.

The thing I personally don't like about Notes is probably one of the most aimed targets. It tends to bind a company for good which has side effects. I think you know what I'm talking about. If not, then see the sad history of Unity. As you're part of the family, I'm very sure you know it well.

Good thoughts are fortunately a lot, especially with latest versions.

30V  07/25/2013 11:46:05  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hey Mat!

I've got a few questions about Lotus Notes.

Why is it so amazingly rubbish?

I've actually just gone through a very simple test of a basic function of the mail database in Lotus Notes - Sending an email. With a picture. This did not go well...

I compared it to Outlook while I was at it, so I had a control to compare it against.

Here you go - Screenshots and times for each and every step I took to do the same function in Notes and Outlook:

Notes: { Link }

Outlook: { Link }

Problems encountered in Notes: Issues copy/pasting, no fixed aspect ratio on image resizing, colour depth issues, unwanted image compression/colour reassigning/conversion, memory leakage, badly named menu options, proxy issues, wasted time...

Problems encountered in Outlook: Err... None.

Time taken in Notes: 3 minutes, 22 seconds.

Time taken in Outlook: 41 seconds.

If you have any suggestions on what (judging by the attitude on your blog so far) I am doing wrong, by all means please fire away.

Otherwise, please do try to defend your rather outdated, rubbish piece of software.

Thanks!

31ce  08/16/2013 20:15:06  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

lotus notes is the WORST email client ever. for instance today i came back to the office. my out of office summary email said - this email has no content - but when i open it does have content. in fact summary of who was notified that I was out?!? IT said it has no human generated content that is why. oh right. dumb.

if you delete an attachment from an email it says this operation cannot be undone - so when you close the email it asks if you want to save the email

etc etc

1.When I hover over the icons down the left hand side I have

“Internet Explorer links”

“Favourite bookmarks”

“More bookmarks”

What is the difference between those? Why do I need three bookmark icons?

2. What is an “Internet style forward”? Why would I ever choose that? Why would I never choose that? I have no idea what it means. When I search the help for “internet style forward” I get zero results returned.

3. When I decide I don’t want to send an email and hit escape why is the default selected option “Send AND File”? The absolute opposite of what I want to do.

4. Mandatory maximum window. I can’t tile my email to see more than one at a time

5. What is with the cartoon when I type in my password? “It let’s you know if you have entered the right password” – so does the enter key when I press that

6. “Default Custom expiration” – What? Is it default or is it custom, it cannot be both

7. Delete a calendar item “Do you want to delete or remove?” What?

8. “You can not delete this item because notes needs it” – what does notes need it for? I don’t need it

9. Archive error – “Some items have already been pruned” – Great, what does that mean?

10. Paste in a table and it goes in as a gif

11. Someone sends you an image, you cannot drag it to the desktop, you need to right click, hit copy, and then paste it into MSPaint and then select save as – or send it to your other email client and then back again and it makes it detachable.

12. “Select tools” – wait, which of the three tools menus do you mean? The File – tools, the Actions – tools or the tools button in the email and come to think of it under which preferences menu?

13. Is it a mail or a memo? Make up your mind.

14. On the quick links I can “Scan Mail” or “Open Mail” – what is the difference?

15. Sending an email freezes the tool as it uploads the mail.

16. Replication. I don’t think I need to say any more.

17. Ok, I will. The schedule for replicating. Is it in the calendar where you might logically assume a schedule would be kept? No, it is in the address book….

18 Why does a contact print off on two pages with incomplete fields showing?

19. Want to look for an address when typing a mail? Don’t look for a “To:” button, no you have to actually use the non-standard technique of clicking on the “to” label.

20. Click “View Unread” and then click “View All” it won’t put your mail back the way it was before you clicked “View Unread”

21. See a hyperlink but want the underlying URL to copy and paste somewhere? Good luck with that.

22. The search never finds anything useful or what I’m looking for – it finds less results in all documents folder than any other folder.

23. If you happen to be typing on your keyboard when a reminder pops up (“why would anyone be typing on their keyboard?”), it accepts your buffered characters as input for the reminder and disappears so fast, you can’t even see what the reminder was for, even if you are looking at it.

24. They finally added sort by subject, but it still doesn’t help much because it considers the “Re:” and “Fw:” as part of the subject, so your replies & forwards get sorted separately from the original and each other.

25. Every time you close the application, you have to re-open the folder trees that you previously had open.

26. Why won’t it minimise when opening so I can see my desktop?

27. Out of office – I get reminded by the calendar about appointments I heave already been to because I was actually out of the office – and the out of office message sometimes takes five hours to reply to emails.

28. Opening a gif – picture displays as you would expect. Close the picture a box saying “unable to locate program” appears with “OK” button. Even though it did locate the program because it opened and it’s not really OK but you have no choice in order to continue.

I could go on forever but I have a two line email to send and need 30 mins to do that. 1 min for typing and 29 dealing with Notes.

29. Print an email off and the email address isn’t printed just the person’s name. Useful.

- No shortcut keys for reply and reply-to-all;

- No reply and reply-to-all from a calendar entry;

- No ability to see a note appended to a replied to calendar invitation.

- Selecting meeting beginning and end times from the little – clock dropdown is laughably implemented; what’s with the 15 mins?

- Moving email addresses around different fields is a cut-n-paste nightmare;

- You can select-and-copy from some interfaces and not others;

- The performance (basic or eclipse) is pathetic;

- It doesn’t look like a native app.

- Search results are near random and can’t then be sorted by date;

- The calendar interface shows popups that are the name of the icon (e.g. “pencil icon”) rather than the name of the entry (hello??)

- You can’t resize calendar entries in the calendar interface through common click-n-drag (heard of a mouse?)

- Can’t alt-tab between e-mails

- Can’t copy and paste formatted text without notes hanging for 5 minutes

- Have to click refresh or F9 to see a new e-mail

- Task tray icon sometimes shows a new e-mail and there isn’t one

- When it crashes, you need to reboot or use Kill Notes app to restart – what kind of program ships a Kill My application function with it?

- Items that appear in inbox are not necessarily in all docs

- Sorting by column only works ascending or descending for some fields

- Annoying splash screen

- Out of office replies seem to come out at random

- Replicas/replication is just so technical (yeah yeah, go on about user error/training, but you can set up an outlook PST in 5 seconds and its obvious what is in there – I don’t want a training course to use simple software – this isn’t 1980 anymore)

- Even the database app (the so-called great feature of this “product) is poor in terms of UI

32ce  08/16/2013 20:23:16  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

after 13 years using lotus notes i have wasted so much of my time and my company's time there must be some way of getting compensation from IBM.

when they told me that my new job involved lotus notes i seriously considered not taking it up.

33Grenadeh  08/17/2013 2:25:29  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

What in the heavens would possess someone to write something this completely false? You are aware, right, that in 1812 when Lotus Notes was programmed, it wasn't actually intended to be an email program? On top of everything listed, after my first 15 months of supporting Notes and working with the Lotus Notes administrator, and having used Outlook for years before that, there is absolutely no comparison.

Notes is simply one of the most terrible programs any IT worker and any other worker in a company will ever have the misfortune of using. When it works, it works fine. When it doesn't work, it's a mountain of woe. I rue the day I ever worked on deploying machines with Lotus Notes. It's a nightmare to support, a pain to administer, and a massive inconvenience to use.

34Grenadeh  08/17/2013 2:38:26  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

It does and can work perfectly fine for e-mail and even for databases - something Outlook does not necessarily handle well, although there's no reason for it to do so. The problem with Notes is when it spans an entire corporation in different places, with different servers, and different deployment methods. You get so many caveats and rules and all this red tape that make anything into a nightmarish spider web.

I've never personally had any problems with my Lotus Notes client - other than the time that it was jacked and I literally couldn't use it for 3 months, or the time my ID file was corrupted and no one bothered to get into the id vault and spend 8 seconds fixing it. Those are administration issues which arise from Notes being garbage, not actual notes issues, but they count to its discredit all the same.

35Andrew  08/28/2013 14:59:49  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Lotus Notes is a steaming turd which I've suffered through for the last 7 years in two different companies. My current employer is now upgrading to Outlook and Windows 7, so this pile of junk can be consigned to the dustbin.

It's only 9am and it's crashed twice in an hour, argh.

36BobHope  08/29/2013 1:26:34  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

20% of ALL of our tickets called into the service desk at the company I work for EVERY MONTH says you're wrong. The amount of client config issues and general weirdness that was explained in detail in post 31 (thanks by the way) is unbelieveable. I admin'ed Exchange and used Outlook for close to 10 years and have helped admin Domino and used Notes for the last 4 years, and I can say by FAR Exchange and Outlook were wel ahead of Notes 8.5.2 even at the 2007 version. I can only imagine how much better Exchange and Outlook are today.

News flash. People don't care about the added collaboration features that Notes provides when you can't do basic functionality properly.

37Vilius  09/20/2013 6:12:01  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

All I can say is amen to comment #31. It should stand as a monument to all the CTOs, CIOs, IT manager and all other decision maker out there. Run from Lotus like you've been chased by three hungry dogs.

38Darko  11/03/2013 0:17:16  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I did not know that You should have training for using email/calendar client. I didn't needed one neither for Outlook nor Gmail/Google Calendar. It would be great if my company would pay money to teach me how to paste excel cells into mail like rtf table insted of graphic, how to drag n drop schedules in calendar and some other things we take for granted in 21st century.

39Darko  11/03/2013 0:25:00  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@ce You dont have to reboot after crash. Jusk kill process nsd.exe Even better: delete or rename nsd.exe

40Steve  11/04/2013 2:22:58  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

What drives me mad about Outlook is that there is no "Send and File" functionality, as there is with Notes.

Even the Options | 'Save sent mail to' only goes halfway and does not display the folder structure, just a folder name - which is pretty lame, and it doesn't get stored in sent view also.

In Notes 'Send and File' does just that. The mail is saved in sent view and the 'file to folder' is a pointer to that mail. But the user see's it as a real email.

Pretty neat I think. Outlook can't do this as it is not a database, but a data store.

Apart from this + or - the odd bit of functionalality there is really not much in it. After all mail is becoming a commodity item, a bit like printer toner/ink

41Mat Newman

11/08/2013 15:01:23  MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@29, Belarade: This is not a new feature, "Edit Document" has always been there. You can Ctrl+E or double click the record (ANY record) in Notes and it will put it into Edit mode. Including Email. Outlook has exactly the same feature.

Mat Newman IBM Champion

42AnIBMer  12/07/2013 9:36:17  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I've been working at IBM for 15, and I hate lotus notes with passion. I've probably lost 3/4 years of productivity waiting on Lotus notes to do something, restarting it, killing it, etc. It's insane to me that fan boys say but look at all these features and it does sooo much more than mail. Who the fuck cares if it does 1000 different things if it does all of them half ass. It's absolutely terrible and embarrassing that we sell this POS. I'm sorry customers. Truly I am.

I laughed myself silly when I saw #GetProductive #GetLotusNotes together. If there aren't two more diametrically opposed hash tags on the face of the planet I don't know what they would be.

Which brings me to the next point. I loved it when I upgraded to Lotus Notes 9 SOCIAL edition. What a stupid Johnny-come-lately idea. Why the fuck couldn't they have just made it work better, instead of adding more fucking bloat. I just want to pull my damn hair out. It's SLOWER than 8.5.1 if that's even possible.

I just don't understand drugs or alcohol have to be significantly involved in development.

43Andy  12/13/2013 20:44:32  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@ 22 Mat Newman

> 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.

Who the hell would want to view Excel attachments regularly whilst refusing to install Excel? This is the Lotus Notes approach summed up in a nutshell: YOU'RE SOLVING THE WRONG PROBLEM.

44Pedro  12/19/2013 3:11:18  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

i've worked extensively with both with Notes and Outlook. Went from 4.6 to Exchange 7 and now again back to 8.5.3 and i find my self looking to configure an Outlook 2013 client to my Lotus Domino. For me it's usability ,much clearer on Outlook side. Having passed through Helpdesk and on-site support the hours needed to attend the Notes client are overwhelming compared to outlook. Even with trainning new people find the client hard to use.. people used to it just accept it as it is ..but most ask me on a weekly basis ..when will we change?

45unocualquiera  01/24/2014 4:02:08  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

you don't work with outlook never. Lotus notes is a shit. for example: do you know the program "killnotes"?

46NotaNotesFan  01/31/2014 10:34:36  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The most glaring disparity between Outlook and Notes, in my experience, is the inability to run rules against the inbox.

In Outlook, you can right click on a message, choose to create a rule, then run the rule against all current messages to ensure they are moved to the new folder.

I can create a rule in Notes and it works for new messages, but I have to search for similar messages (another right click option in Outlook: Find messages from this user (or something to that affect)) and weed through ALL the messages (replies, etc.) that I DON'T want to move to the folder and move them a few at a time.

Very frustrating.

47PFM  02/07/2014 4:17:50  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I have worked with lots of pigs that use up tons of memory and CPU, most solid design packages and analysis software fill that bill, but you need that pig to produce good results.

Lotus Notes is the biggest pig, that just seems to get in the way of everything else.Anyone who thinks it is great should go get a Yugo and move tp Ebeye in the Marshall Islands.

48Sini  02/19/2014 19:40:23  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hello Mat,

Question: Why do I receive sometimes the message "conversation incomplete" in the information bar of a thread? How many entries are maximally possible to show in a thread? Thanks for answer.

regards

Sini

49Mash  02/19/2014 22:02:15  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The comment about Notes not working on new versions of Windows is not surprising as MS only thinks of compatibility with MS applications when they update their OS....very few other applications tend to work without issues, we have had problems with AV, Adobe....etc when moving from XP to Win7.

Secondly, to all those who complain about performance and instability, go sack your IS members. If a product is pushed to the user without first testing and setting correct config then ces't la vie. The one good thing about Outlook is that when it fails it does it quietly under the covers and a user only notices if they are staring at the bottom message display. Notes on the other hand shoots out dialog boxes and scares the user.

50David Scaglione  02/22/2014 0:45:05  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Mat, looks like you've taken a thrashing here and with good reason. Lotus is garbage, always has been, always will be.

We want an email program, not a database.

Please keep trying to defend the indefensible. It makes you look really ignorant and geeky.

51Joe  02/22/2014 3:18:40  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I've been using Lotus Notes for over seven years everyday at work.

I'm a project manager so I generate a lot of email and meetings.

The interface is not intuitive to me and I continually struggle with it.

We're on 8.5.2 or higher.

Since this is more of a subjective feeling my reasons why the interface doesn't seem intuitive and the bottom line conclusion are that if Notes were simply an email tool, it might be ok. All of the other stuff, while powerful and used in many organizations (like ours), does nothing for what I and the majority of people need.

Another aspect is that Notes Admin evangelizes the benefits of Notes all of the time, but it rings on deaf ears because the user experience is contrary to anything he says about it.

My company is moving off of the Notes platform in two months time after 11 years using it. I'm looking forward to Exchange Server and Outlook. As for the Notes DBs (apps) & Mail-in accounts, were porting those.

52Jeanie  02/22/2014 6:06:50  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I have been forced to use notes for the list year at a new job. I have always used outlook before. Items I hate about notes /miss about outlook are :

1. Being able to forward a calendar item AS A CALENDAR ITEM. in outlook is you forward an invite, the recipient can accept it, it goes into their calendar (at the right time) and the owner receives notification of the new participant. This is a Huge miss in notes. In notes, if a coworker forwards an invite is all text. I have to guess at the timezone and manually add it to my calendar and hope there are no change.

2. Notes is ugly and unwieldy. All the tabs. It looks like a holdover from the 80s.

3. Notes is hard to learn. No one taught me outlook. No one had to. It's intuitive. Notes could be light-years ahead of Outlook but if it takes years to learn it, or doesn't matter.

What does it say about Notes that IBM had decided to just give it away going forward as OpenOffice?

53DJ  02/27/2014 9:34:19  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

how can I reply/reply all to a mail that is in my sent folder or from a folder I have created? I onty see New / Forward. Reply or Reply All is not there.

Thank you

DJ

54DJ  02/27/2014 9:34:55  
Lotus Notes - How to Reply/Reply All from a folder

how can I reply/reply all to a mail that is in my sent folder or from a folder I have created? I onty see New / Forward. Reply or Reply All is not there.

Thank you

DJ

55chazcon  03/11/2014 5:07:33  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I have a problem with an author who is pushing his or her agenda/software/views/beliefs onto the readers. A review is cool, and reporting by definition should be 100% unbiased, so that the reader can make decisions for themselves using the review purely as information. Pushing, defending, aggressively interacting with your readers is as far from proper journalism as can be. So you love Lotus, awesome for you, but don't shove that crapware down our throats. What was the original intent of this piece? Just a yay piece about something you like? Take care.

56Glenn  03/18/2014 8:58:04  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I've been using Lotus Notes for a year. I don't like it at all and would trade it for Outlook in a heartbeat!! After using it for a year, you can't say I haven't given it a try. For all you people who like Notes.... I can't understand how that is possible.

57Glenn  03/18/2014 9:00:52  
Re: How to Reply/Reply All from a folder

DJ - You've probably figured it out by now. In case you haven't...

If you open the mail item, ie. double-click it, you will then see more options, including the options you are looking for.

HTH.

Glenn

58Justin  04/02/2014 6:07:23  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Lotus Notes omg. I keep restyling this because I find this program so offensive I feel almost compelled to scream. Cost effective? For whom, I never spent days in mail jail trying to clear out folders in Outlook. I've never spent days wondering why critical emails aren't coming in only to find that internally generated emails won't be accepted by whatever lots notes does unless it is generated by a client, in other words it doesn't read regularly formatted emails until it's passed through some sort of portal. I've discovered after months that lotus notes won't receive emails from a windows ce server I have of on the local network.

It's clunky, I hate how it doesn't show you the incoming mail when you open it before shuffling it off to a folder. This makes it hard to tell when you have new mail if you have a larger folder with unread messages. And, sometimes it shows there's an unread message in a folder and there isn't one.

Translate document to .eml? Dumb.

It really, really, really is garbage. I've lost days of work trying to get it Lotus to work. There is NO COST SAVINGS, any money "saved" by IT will be lost within a month by lost productivity in other departments.

If I found Lotus Notes on a street injured, I run over with my car, over and over and over again. Then I'd call the police and say it was trying to rape me. Strong, not a chance, this is a boat anchor to productivity.

Matt please don't take this personally, I don't want to have to learn my email client, I have other important work I need to do. You appear to have a PhD in Lotus Notes, I don't want one, nor should I have to have one to send email. I'm pretty happy doing my job, now appearently I have to be some sort of me mail guru too. Lotus Notes is bad, and if emails are important, it can be a disaster!

59Justin  04/02/2014 6:07:28  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Lotus Notes omg. I keep restyling this because I find this program so offensive I feel almost compelled to scream. Cost effective? For whom, I never spent days in mail jail trying to clear out folders in Outlook. I've never spent days wondering why critical emails aren't coming in only to find that internally generated emails won't be accepted by whatever lots notes does unless it is generated by a client, in other words it doesn't read regularly formatted emails until it's passed through some sort of portal. I've discovered after months that lotus notes won't receive emails from a windows ce server I have of on the local network.

It's clunky, I hate how it doesn't show you the incoming mail when you open it before shuffling it off to a folder. This makes it hard to tell when you have new mail if you have a larger folder with unread messages. And, sometimes it shows there's an unread message in a folder and there isn't one.

Translate document to .eml? Dumb.

It really, really, really is garbage. I've lost days of work trying to get it Lotus to work. There is NO COST SAVINGS, any money "saved" by IT will be lost within a month by lost productivity in other departments.

If I found Lotus Notes on a street injured, I run over with my car, over and over and over again. Then I'd call the police and say it was trying to rape me. Strong, not a chance, this is a boat anchor to productivity.

Matt please don't take this personally, I don't want to have to learn my email client, I have other important work I need to do. You appear to have a PhD in Lotus Notes, I don't want one, nor should I have to have one to send email. I'm pretty happy doing my job, now appearently I have to be some sort of me mail guru too. Lotus Notes is bad, and if emails are important, it can be a disaster!

60BOTA  04/03/2014 0:02:02  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Used both. Oversaw a migration from Notes to Outlook about 6 years ago.

People still thank me - and I'm at a different company.

61BOTA  04/03/2014 0:03:15  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

And.....

I worked at IBM. People used the Outlook client....

62Leon Kuai  05/17/2014 23:30:42  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Who ever say Lotus Notes is better than Outlook then his brain must have problem. as a long time Outlook user, I had to use Lotus Note for last 3 years due to I have been a IBM employee since 3 years ago. ever since than, I had to curse Notes almost every day. This is not just me but everyone in my office is cursing this so 80s software design application. it is so unproductive. even with Local replicate, it is under performance. the application freeze from time to time. it is not crash but just freeze for a moment then come back. I am using Notes on a W530 with SSD but the performance is worse than my 5400 rpm T400 with Outlook 2010. the Preference setting and every little setting is so uninformative. and u need training to use a email client and calendar? This itself told you how bad this software is designed. I can say even Office 97 and outlook 97 is better than Note 8.5.3. yes a 15 years old software is better than this piece of Sh*t.

63bigjeff5  05/26/2014 5:10:22  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I found this site while looking for a way to copy the link embedded in an html formatted picture.

The fact that I had to google something that any sane program would include in a right-click menu should tell you everything you need to know about how shitty Notes is. I could literally see the URL I wanted in the status bar, teasing me, as I had no way to copy it.

In case it doesn't tell you how shitty Notes is, I'll tell you how I managed to get the url: I first had to edit the email. You can then select the picture and actually get the properties for it (why can't you do this without editing the email? Who the fuck knows?). Then, it's a simple matter of searching the whole goddamn properties window and not finding any URL anywhere until you notice an entirely non-obvious drop-down menu in the title bar (seriously? the title bar? wtf is wrong with Notes designers?) and find the hotspot properties (who the fuck knows why the call it a fucking hotspot either) and there's your URL for the copying.

Sorry for the language, but reliving the stupidity of this entire operation just pissed me off again. Stupid stuff like this comes up all the time. Apparently it takes 20 years to learn how to use Notes well. I don't have that kind of patience.

Lotus Notes is practically the textbook definition of a shitty application.

64Theo Viljoen  05/27/2014 13:46:08  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

So many comments about how good Outlook is and how bad Lotus Notes is.

Sorry Mat... these people are misinformed, inexperienced and generally have no clue.

Outlook is just email and calendar, maybe some tasks... Now try to integrate it to the rest of your windows applications... good luck with that and hope you have lost of $$.

Lotus Notes is NOT just email and calendar. It is a whole platform. Secure and reliable. IBM did not do a great job in promoting Lotus Notes where as Microsoft did. They threw a lot of $$ at it where IBM did....again, nothing!

But as with the rest of the world, you'll hate what you don't know... afraid of spiders or snakes? get to know it/them and you'll see a totally different side.

65Leon  05/29/2014 4:21:05  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

How much $$$ IBM alone is losing to this shitty application. there is over 400k employee in IBM. consider a large portion of that need to spend extra 5 mins on dealing with this shitty application. How Much $$$ IBM is losing? losing $$ by using office? what a joke. with this kind of mentality, no wonder this shitty application has no HOPE.

Application is service its users. when lots of users hates it and just some few saying it is good on feature no body cares. this alone tells u what is going on.

BTW, it is not just Lotus Note. the Sametime SUCKS too compare to Office Messaging. Lotus Office suite? 20 years ago Lotus 123 was good but who still using this shitty Lotus application? IBM simply killed Lotus branding. Continue to deny and I hope one day this lotus applications can completely R.I.P.

66Janet Fincannon  05/30/2014 22:20:35  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Our company just switched from OL to Notes 9.0.1

I have several functions I used every day, multiple times a day that I cannot locate in Notes. I would be grateful for someone to help me with these.

1. Need toolbar shortcut for moving to frequently used folders.

2. Need a way to add more columns to the mail inbox.

3. Need global setting to sort each date column the same.

4. Need a way to mark something as JUNK. I know about SPAM and Barracuda. Is this the Block Sender?

5. Need a way to keep folders expanded or collapsed when in the MOVE to mode.

It could be that our company set up us to disable these functions or that I cannot find them. But based on not having these, and icons that are hard to interpret, I am NOT a fan of NOTES. Wishing for OL again.

Thanks.

67Donald Bryant  06/10/2014 5:37:25  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Okay how about Lotus Notes V9, how can I set this up for v9, when I go to actions view conversations it crashes my system, my guess is it is an action and not a view because lotus can't handle this much information at once, 150+ emails a day

Please tell me I am wrong and getting a conversation view will work

68John D  06/18/2014 7:46:46  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@66

1. Not sure why you need a toolbar shortcut for going to folders - they are usually displayed on the left side of the mail pane. Not sure what you're trying to accomplish here.

2. The Inbox is a "special" folder (IBM's words) that has a bunch of code behind it. It is normally modified via the mail template. Not sure what additional information you're looking to include in the Inbox, but you should be able to create your own folder and add columns to that.

3. Global settings in Notes can have a far bigger impact than you'd think. Such a setting would affect all Notes databases which would probably be undesireable. If you are talking about just the folders in your mail file - when you create new ones, use the Advanced button so you can select an existing folder to copy from. That should keep the date settings the same.

4. This sounds like a Mail rule - you would have to supply the information that would be used to determine if a message was junk and what to do with it - i.e. move to the Junk folder.

5. I believe these are always expanded - probably to make it easier for someone to see subfolders. Believe it or not, some people can't remember where all their folders are located.

69Kerry  07/23/2014 16:42:21  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I have read through the above and don't think my question was answered although I may have missed it.

I am an apple user and use iCal. My husband uses notes.

He can't accept my calendar invites. Is there a different calendar that I could use to solve this problem?

70Mike  08/04/2014 23:28:08  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Thanks Mat, Good information and I agree with you completely. Outlook supporters act like hitting 'send' only works in MS products. We're going through an enterprise conversion from Notes to Outlook right now (very large company) and it is a complete and unmitigated disaster. Headaches at every turn, disappearing calendar entries, mail that goes nowhere and with no error, phantom meetings...etc. Out internal ticketing system is now in flames. It fits the pattern. MS sales says it will cost x and take x amt of time and it actually costs 4X and takes 3X amount of time. And when you're done....you have email (and now with viruses). Which is what you already had..except for the viruses. Outlook is a toy compared to IBM Notes. End of story.

71Jay B.  08/20/2014 1:51:07  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Post 31 is one of the most amazing and thorough internet replies I have read in all of my IT professional career. It looks like the strikes against Notes are so numerous, that Mat either can't be bothered to respond to them all, or has just finally accepted the cold, hard truth that Outlook is preferable to everyone -- end-users, support technicians, etc. -- in every way possible. Sorry, Mat... you tried.

72JP  08/27/2014 7:17:14  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@71

You must have a poor IT career. Post 31 can't even spell. It really sounds like that user company IT department sucks at their job. Mat is most likely not replying to them because it the same old complaints. Typical society does not want to be empowered they want to be hand held and told what to do. Keep following the heard.

73Andy  08/28/2014 2:13:50  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

@72

> Post 31 can't even spell

> Keep following the heard

LOL

74Jeff  09/04/2014 12:10:26  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Sorry but there are Massive fails for BASIC functionality in Notes.

- No shortcut keys for reply and reply-to-all;

- No reply and reply-to-all from a calendar entry;

- No ability to see a note appended to a replied to calendar invitation.

- Moving email addresses around different fields is a cut-n-paste nightmare;

- You can select-and-copy from some interfaces and not others;

Yes the list goes on and on, but these are some of the most pertinent one's for my life. Really, how hard would it be to be able have a "reply-all" shortcut? This is intrinsic functionality that EVERY other email application has.

75Phill  09/05/2014 21:30:25  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Lotus is a pile of junk.

I've worked 8 years in IT Service delivery supporting 7 and 8 and it was the bane of my life, a constant distraction because it would never work right on an enterprise scale, with TWO different compaies!

Thank god we binned it and went with 365.

76SQL Dave  09/25/2014 1:01:32  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Need "canary in the coal mine" evidence of how bad Notes and it's retarded cousin Sametime are? Consider: In our 50000+ employee company, most people experience some sort of "copy to clipboard". For some, it only works about 2/3 of the time. For others, Ctrl-C works but right-click-copy does not. For others, it's the reverse.

Also, what kind of developers create a program where users manipulate text and do not include Undo functionality (Sametime).

Really? REALLY!?!?!!? I know "processing users' keystrokes" is a fairly new, cutting-edge endeavor, but sheesh.

There are many, MANY other ways Notes sucks (www.ihatelotusnotes.com), but I find those 2 particularly hilarious (in a funny/sad kind of way).

77George  10/11/2014 5:09:15  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Lotus Notes is 8-bit garbage. It's 10 years behind on development. It's a huge productivity buster for any average user. It's a massive drain on IT resources.

There really is not point in using it over any other SMTP, or Exchange platform.

78FrustratedWithNotes  10/17/2014 20:23:23  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hi,

Here's something that *ought* to be simple:

I move a mail from Sent items(drag and drop) to my Project folder for future reference and to maintain history.

First problem: The mail continues to be shown in the 'Sent' folder --> not intuitive !

Second problem: When I delete the mail from the Sent folder, it deletes the mail in the Project folder too ! All I want to do is clean up my sent items folder by deleting unwanted ones and segregating the required ones into their own folder.

There's a saying in German which translates to: A pig which gives milk, wool and also lays eggs. Seems like Notes is trying to be that animal. Whats the point in being super-powered when you can't do the simple tasks simply.

79Lola  10/24/2014 0:08:45  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Where you at now Mat

80Duh  12/17/2014 6:06:38  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

This is funny. If Bogus Notes wasn't so terrible, this site wouldn't be necessary. By the way, email and calendar software shouldn't need training. Also, it should deliver functionality consistently. If there is one thing notes is good at, it is surprising you with new ways of being terrible. about 10% of the time I press reply on an email, it attempts to reply to an unrelated email. Awesome.

81Ryan Hennessy  12/24/2014 19:41:26  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hi Matt,

I'm a complete convert to Lotus notes and love it to bits.

I have a question, I have a document template that we use to make appointments that is saved in .doc format

I wanted to know if lotus notes had the capability to Have the ability to ask a user certain Questions for example (Customers name, Appointment time, Banker you are seeing) and filling in the template with the details that were asked by lotus notes, Then copying this text into a new memo where you can simply Type in the customers e-mail address and sends.

Is such a thing possible?

We have something similar that asks a user certain questions to develop an e-mail signature.

I also believe that we use Lotus notes 7 so it would have to be compatible with doing this.

Any assistance would be appreciated.

82Telnet25  01/17/2015 9:50:27  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I use Lotus Notes to teach how to NOT design an UI, flows, and processes.

I cant believe that piece of grotesque garbage still exist. Even the cut-n-paste doesn't always work as it should, this kind of problem has been solved by any other software company since early 90s.

OP must be trolling....

83mcinsand  01/24/2015 8:58:05  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

When Lotus Notes still can't handle simple functions like keyword searches reliably, when it can't tailor filter messages for autosorting, among other shortcomings, it is still unacceptable as an e-mail client. Not that Outlook is significantly better. Outlook versus Lotus Notes is way too much like a real life example of the Southpark election episode.

84Mohan  01/29/2015 14:27:05  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hi All,

===Quote

5Jamie 06/13/2012 0:53:45

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.

===unquote

Jamie would appreciate your feedback after nearly 2+ years of usage. How many issues you faced (the truth) in Outlook, how it was easy to access your "confidential" mails from the pst by others etc....

Let's hear it out

And please do visit MS Forum to see what solution is being given for Outlook 2013 issues,

---mails with attachment still in outbox

----solution provided re-configure

---attachments are not going eventhough within size limit

----OMG ..in Outlook 2013 attachment bloats by 1.3 times...oops

-----Slow on loading Outlook 2013

------Disable add-ins you love!!! and needs in excel!!! and more

I am no fan of Lotus Notes alone trust both have their own problems and issues along with merits..

It is like no two human beings are alike..

85Dave g  03/02/2015 20:21:47  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Interesting comments. We've had notes for years with 3500 users and most of all the above complaints have never happened. Trust me if there were serious issues our lot would soon complain, well they do anyway but more to do with preference imho. 😄

86Dave g  03/02/2015 20:29:16  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Ryan, re 81. Yes can do , with a few lines of code (about 20) we do that sort of stuff at work (for emails that go to media, emails get populated from a 'stationery' template)

87Mike  03/07/2015 7:40:51  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

I use Notes 8.5.2 at work for a long time now, but I can say that it's most frustrating client I've ever used ! Interface, search possibilities, need to be a programmer to understand it, it just sucks for us ordinary users.

88stressman  03/30/2015 11:03:50  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

lotus notes is a really big useless fat pig. can not understand why anyone runs it.....unless there is kickback or blackmail

89stressman  03/30/2015 11:03:56  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

lotus notes is a really big useless fat pig. can not understand why anyone runs it.....unless there is kickback or blackmail

90dave g  04/13/2015 14:24:03  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

'stressman', the name says it all.

91Piotr W  04/30/2015 2:55:55  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

In my new company I switched from Outlook to Lotus 8.5.x It was a terrible experience. Worst part is search is not working, behaving completely unpredictable. With Outlook I could search my whole local or remote email archive in seconds. With Lotus it is not possible or extremaly cumbersome. I really don't like Lotus, I am happy my new company will soon switch into Exchange/Outook.

92Don  07/07/2015 12:54:52  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Hi Matt, you have a lot of icons at the bottom of your sidebar. What are these and how do you control these ?

93alan  07/14/2015 2:45:00  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Looking for Lotus Notes training for users. Any suggestions ???

Anyone who complains about Outlook over Lotus Notes is just lazy.

Learn the application and move on.

I spent 20 years on Microsoft email platforms and only the last 2 on Lotus.

94Khan  07/24/2015 6:33:07  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Well... after reading through most of the posts here, I just want to say that one of my clients (a small business) has been using a particular version of Lotus Notes on a Linux server for the last six years. The product has been discontinued and is no longer supported by IBM. Yet he continues to use it with just one person (me) to support it. The email system just keeps working. In the meantime, I am enjoying this contract where I get a good some of money for a fraction of time to support it.

Another (rather selfish) note is that while Lotus Notes deployments may be declining, the salary being offered keeps increasing ({ Link } versus { Link }

By the way, both IBM and Microsoft are now offering a cloud based solution for email to their customers. So pretty soon both Notes and Outlook server/ clients may be history.

95Christopher  10/01/2015 1:20:52  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The blue kool-aid in this thread is amazing.

If it's an email client, it should quickly and easily perform that function. To those saying "take the time to learn it," you're missing the intended business function.

Email users are not programmers, and executives should not have to be trained to use simple email functions. If I have to train my users, some of which have been using email since they were 5, to use simple email functions in Notes, I've wasted time and money that should have been put into the business. QED.

Yes, there will always be advanced features that can be learned, but the basics should be intuitive. Notes is anything but intuitive for the average user and those saying otherwise tend to be on the Notes gravy-train.

I landed on this page trying to find a fix as to why the client hangs when I try and paste in a formatted link from a browser. Evidently "Social Edition" does not include "sharing web links."

"Better?" I don't think you know what that word means.

This thread is over three years old and most of the issues listed in #31 are still valid for the average user. #AMAZING

@Kahn #94. Yeah, and Cobol programmers made a lot of money during Y2K, dying technologies tend to do that for a time until they become obsolete. Hope you're banking a lot of that cash or learning new tech.

96DexterMorgan  02/03/2016 5:02:57  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

https://www.campaignmonitor.com/dev-resources/will-it-work/email-clients/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk1dbsBWQ3k

97prince of persia  02/09/2016 18:44:30  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The problem is Notes has never been a usable GUI, nor friendly. Always thinking on the technical side of program, never respecting the ordinary user. Long, complicated messages even to report simple issues, and millions of non standard features that 99% of modern programs do not use. A great productivity killer. No easy install no easy remove. Never know if it will upgrade successfully or keeps you busy for days to upgrade a new version

I am a former Outlook user and for 2 years I have been using Notes in my new company . It is about to be being replaced by Outlook after years of complains. There may be some technical or cost reasons to use Notes that I can understand but please nobody claims that it is better that Outlook in the normal user's perspective. Notes is years behind of even Outlook 2003

98Dave  04/26/2016 0:31:20  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Mat, I think you're WAY outvoted here, on your own fan website no less.

99raghu  06/26/2016 22:28:38  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

The problem is Notes has never been a usable GUI, nor friendly. Always thinking on the technical side of program, never respecting the ordinary user. <a href="{ Link } <a href="{ Link } on titan season 2</a> <a href="{ Link }

100Pratik  02/20/2018 19:22:31  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes

101Pratik  02/20/2018 19:24:15  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

lotus notes is the WORST email client ever.

102Pratik  02/20/2018 19:25:35  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

right

103אמדיקייר  08/16/2019 6:08:38  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

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MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

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107martyn ripley  11/08/2019 22:46:49  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

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108martyn ripley  11/08/2019 22:50:50  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

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MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

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110JustQuikr  01/11/2021 4:21:44  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

Yes!!! Lotus Notes is far better than the Outlook.

111Jean Pierre Mescouilles  03/03/2023 20:07:20  
MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

After that many years, when I feel sad or useless at the office, I return to read this refreshing post #31.

You make me believe in humanity. One needs to have the energy to list facts against non-sense.

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MYTHBUSTING Outlook IS NOT better than Lotus Notes, pt 8: Reply without History

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Mat Newman

THE Notes (formerly IBM/Lotus Notes) Guy. Productivity Guru. Evangelist. IBM Champion for IBM Collaboration Solutions, 2011/2012/2013. Former IBMer. HCLite. Views are my own.

#GetProductive #GetHCLNotes

Mat Newman




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