Not a Lotus Notes Developer but have to get data in a Lotus Notes database into SharePoint. All of the LN entries have attachments. I tried to export to a csv file but that doesn't include the attachments. I think created a new view with the Attachments field but that only returns the number of attachments. How can I extract the associated attachments with each LN form. Thanks in advance
3 Answers
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Your question is pretty broad. Attachments are (sometimes) treated as embedded objects in a Rich Text Field. This URL has some sample code:
Copy/paste may not work for you because the attachments may not be in a field called "Body" or there may be multiple "Body" fields on the document (which requires other considerations beyond the scope of this question), or the attachment may be embedded objects in the document. Or all the of the above. That that code will give you a sense of what you need to do.
Also, see this:
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I have done this by writing LotusScript code to detach all the attachments from all docs into a single folder, using the document's UNID plus the attachment name for the filename in the folder. Adding the UNID covers cases where attachments with the same name exist in mulitple documents and might actually have different content. I do not attempt to de-duplicate.
The agent adds a NotesItem to each document giving the filename(s) of the detached attachment(s).
I then create a view containing all the fields that I want to export, including the new field with the filenames. I export that view to CSV. I hand the CSV and a zip file containing the attachments over to the SharePoint team.
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Maybe a bit late but... I do have extensive experience (approx. 15 years) with data extraction from IBM Notes applications/databases - independent of the type of application - and have supported migrations of quite a few large IBM Notes applications to various targets for companies around the world.
You can access IBM Notes databases using the native C-API, LotusScript, COM or Java, for example or make a document available for further processing by exporting it to Domino XML (DXL) format.
The C-API is the foundation of IBM Notes, meaning that COM and Java APIs only offer a subset of the C-API's functionality. Any of the APIs should give you the ability to extract a document's metadata and attachments. However:
A document, including it's attachment, can be encrypted using an IBM Notes ID. If you do not have access to the ID that was used to encrypt the document, you will neither be able to extract the document nor the attachment.
Attachments can be "real attachments" or so called "embedded objects". Depending on the type of attachment, the attachment needs to be handled differently if it comes to the API calls required to do the export.
Attachments can be compressed. In most cases, the API should handle the decompression transparently. However, there is at least one proprietary compression algorithm (based on Hufman) that is widely used. If you extract documents in DXL format, you will not be able to read those attachments, as they are embedded into the DXL in compressed form.
Objects being embedded into a document using (Object Linking and Embeddeding (OLE)) cannot be extracted using the COM or Java API. I.e. even if you gain access to the documents, you will not be able to transform them into a readable format.
If the information you are trying to transfer from IBM Notes to SharePoint is important to the company you work for, I would recommend to rely on a proven solution for the export/migration rather than developing this on your own, as the details can really be tricky.
Should you have any further questions, don't hesitate to get in touch.
