Lotus Notes is a crime against humanity. In exhibit 001-N we see that Notes knows more than it’s telling.
Every once in a while you’ll open an email. Like you do. Most of the time Notes does this as it normally does: it takes too long, mangles the formatting and destroys attachments; all absolutely normal for Notes. But sometimes you’ll be interrupted with a message like this:
Notes fails to offer any information on what “Fixup” is or how you would gain access to the source database. It also sheds no light on why a missing attachment would need to be deleted or, even more questionable, why a tool that can find it to delete couldn’t actually recover it. It also ignores the basic rules of grammar. Considering all that, you’ll likely just ignore it and click “OK”. Doing so then results in this dialog:
Apparently Notes forgot to let you know that this was a “Notes Error”. It repeats the exact same text with that addition. Just to be sure that you’re clear on what’s going on. As it still hasn’t provided any useful information, you’ll likely click “OK” again. Perhaps you’ll even, stupidly, harbor some hope that Notes will now provide something useful. The name or file type of the missing attachment, for example. You’ll be disappointed.
Instead, Notes will simply open the document normally. There will be no indication that there’s an issue with it. No way to determine which attachments, or how many, may be missing. Oh, and that wonderful “Fixup” tool; the one that’s supposed to help delete the document that you’d rather fix? Well, that tool is available only to Domino administrators – something that you are almost assuredly not.
A sane, helpful software package would give you information about the missing material. It would provide a tool to allow you to recover it. It would present this only information once. Notes does none of this. Instead it only seeks to further erode your faith in sanity.
