Methodology to Extract Contacts from names.nsf File in Lotus Notes

extract contacts from names.nsf

We all are aware that in IT, vCard is a portable electronic device. It helps to maintain the entire important contacts. Users can easily maintain the record of contacts of various email applications such as Outlook, Lotus Notes, Outlook, Windows Live Mail, etc. Out of which one such is, Lotus Notes of IBM is a desktop-based email client that is used by various business organizations. It easily manages the contacts, emails, tasks, notes, etc. and maintains the order.

It offers high security of data that is required by an organization to keep the data safe and secure. It stores all its data in .nsf file format. In the following section, we will discuss the want to extract contacts from names .nsf.

Why Users Need to Extract Contacts from Names .nsf?

There are various reasons because of which users need to extract contacts from names .nsf file format as mentioned.

1) Many times, users want to maintain the records of their contacts for the future usage, so users extract contacts of IBM Notes to vCard. As it, vCard creates an individual list.

2) vCard is not a platform specific as IBM Notes. Users need the proper IBM Notes environment to access the contacts from names.nsf.

3) User can access the contacts on various email applications whether web-based or desktop-based, after extracting the contacts from names .nsf to vCard.

Due to these mentioned reasons, user needs to extract contacts from names .nsf to vCard but they do not know the way to perform the process. One such query of a user is picked up from forum as discussed:

"I am using IBM Notes as an email application in my office. It contains all my contacts. Now, I am planning to extract contacts from names .nsf file format. As many times, I need to access my contacts and all the time I am not having IBM Notes environment to access my contacts. However, I am stuck in a problem, as I do not know how to extract contacts from IBM Notes. Can anyone guide me to overcome from such a situation?"

Technique to Extract Contacts from IBM Notes

There are two ways with which user can extract contacts to vCard as mentioned. It helps user in extracting all the contacts.

Extracting Contacts through Manual Fixes

User can follow the following steps to extract contacts from names.nsf to vCard by using manual fixes.

  1. Select the icon that shows the bookmark to open address book that contains the contacts.
  2. Choose the desired contacts, which are required to export to vCard.
  3. Go to File option >> Export option
  4. User can also choose the vCard edition
  5. Choose File name, notes give the name by default.
  6. Click on OK button to end the process.

Limitations

It is a time consuming as well as lengthy procedure to extract the contacts from IBM Notes. For e.g. if the user is having about 2000 contacts in their IBM notes then, it will take a lot of time for user to extract the IBM Notes contacts. Even there is also more chance of data loss in this procedure.

Extracting Contacts by using Third Party Utility

There is an application namely Notes Address Book Converter. It is designed in such a way that makes easy for users convert multiple contacts from Notes address book to vCard file format. It helps to save users time by converting bulk of data at once. It scans all the Notes contact and sort it alphabetically. It has simple graphical user interface to utilize.

Conclusion

In the above discussion, the need of the users to extract contacts from names.nsf to vCard file format is discussed. Along with it, two solutions are discussed in extracting contacts from Lotus Notes. The first solution has some limitations. Therefore, user can opt second solution, i.e. Notes Address Book Converter software. It is fully safe and secure to utilize. It gives accurate result without data loss.