How to get Notes/FX working in IBM Lotus Notes 8.x - UPDATED

Here’s an easy way to update your Windows registry so that Notes/FX (field exchange) will work under Lotus Notes 8.

I’ve written previously about how a client of mine who’s long-time user of Lotus Notes was held back from upgrading to Lotus Notes 8.5 (from 6.5) when he discovered that Notes/FX no longer worked. This meant that automatic generation of  Lotus WordPro documents,  used pervasively throughout his Notes apps, could no longer be generated from Notes data.

Refer to my older postings for background on this issue. IBM Support didn’t ever come up with a solution to this bug. Apparently no IBMer could be located who knows about Notes/FX, or was willing to admit it!

Luckily I eventually stumbled upon the solution back in February this year. What I didn’t do then was pass on to you a tip that enables you easily to roll out the fix to across all of your Lotus Notes desktops.

So here’s that simple fix, better late than never!

• STEP 1 - Using a text editor such as Notepad, enter the following (without the green line numbers). Please note that line 2 was updated to remove the spurious string “_catch22” at the end, which I used during testing and forgot to delete in this example: 
  
  01 REGEDIT4
  
  02 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Notes.link\Shell\open\command]
  
  03 @="C:\\Lotus\\Notes\\notes.exe -defini %1"
  
  
• STEP 2 – Save this text file with a name such as NotesLink_command_adjust.reg or NotesFX_fix.reg (the important part being the .reg file extension)
  
  
• STEP 3 – Mail this tiny text file out as an attachment to all your Lotus Notes users, telling them to double-click on it and allow it to execute.

In my case, Notes 8.5.1 is installed on the G: drive in the Notes851 folder, so that line 2 becomes:

@="G:\\Notes851\\notes.exe -defini %1"

After this, Notes/FX should start working again under Notes 8, that’s all there is to it.

DISCLAIMER:
The above tip is provided on an “as is” basis. I don’t claim to know all that much about registry files. If you don’t either, it’s probably wise for you to take a look here or here or here or here (or elsewhere) to find out a bit more about using them and the implications of altering the Windows registry.

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