My Lotus Notes email database was getting a bit large.  Almost a gigabyte in size to be precise, so I decided to archive for the first time in 4 and a half years!

eProductivity has a wonderful ability to integrate with external databases. (Thanks to Eric Mack for pointing this out to me.)  I figured I wouldn’t ask for guidance, as I wanted to see how easy this would be and to find any issues that a newbie was likely to face.  Here’s what happened.

1.  I created a new database using a standard Lotus Notes mail template.

With my workspace open I clicked:

File > Database > New

I named it Pauls email archive and clicked OK

2.  I copied the database as a link

From the “Workspace” view I single clicked the database to select it without opening, then I:

Right Click > Database > Copy as Link

3.  I associated this database with eProductivity

From eProductivity I went to eProductivity Preferences:

eProductivity > Preferences

I chose the “General” Tab > “External Databases” > “Database 1” (I’m using Database 2 only for this demo!

Then I pasted the doc-link that I had just copied.  I knew it had succeeded by the little blue symbol that appeared.

I selected “Show on Main Navigator”

Then I chose “Save & Close” and closed and reopened my eProductivity mail file.

When I reopened my eProductivity file I saw the new external database at the bottom of the left hand navigator.

 4.  I started transferring emails to be archived

A word of caution here.  For some reason, Lotus Notes handles “sent” mail differently.  During recent times I’ve been filing both incoming and outgoing in a folder (in the right column).  When you then archive it moves the whole of the incoming fine but it leaves a copy of the outbound in “All documents”.

This is an issue because when you archive its not likely you’ll want to archive all documents (as this includes projects and actions) and that would mean picking your way through things.  This is time consuming (trust me on this).

My suggestion is that you archive sent mail directly from the sent mail folder.

With this covered archiving my mail was dead simple.  I selected the emails I wanted to archive then:

File > Move To [your archive name]

I chose the folder I wanted to archive the emails to and that’s it.  I checked my archive file the emails were right where I expected them to be.

5.  Although archived my mail file had not reduced in size!

This surprised me but apparently I’m database illiterate.  I needed to compress my mail file to reduce its size.  (Thanks to Vaughan Rivett for the advice)

I closed my mail file (making sure my welcome page didn’t refer to it).  I went to the Workspace view and:

Right click > Database > Properties

Then chose the “i” tab and click “compact”

This took some time to compact because of the size of my database.  The only sign that was happening was a note at the very bottom left of Lotus Notes.

When it had finished I had reduced the size of my mail file by almost 70%.

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