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SHOW STOPPER: If you’re upgrading from 6.5 to 8.5....

Franziska Tanner  June 29 2009 12:15:00 AM
...and you don't like mail files that are useless to users with "Unable to load frame content: Formula Error" or "Can't find view" errors, you might want to take a minute to read the below.
No worries, since I have a pretty good grasp of my target audience, I am giving you an ADHD version that literally takes less than a minute, and an extended one for those inquisitive minds among you.

The Short Version:
If you're upgrading from Lotus Domino Server 6.5 to 8.5, stop what you're doing, call IBM and get a hold of the hotfix for SPR's LMAN7R6L44, JCIK7PFGCT, which is one hotfix that you need to apply to your 8.5 servers BEFORE you move any data on to them. If you don't do this and apply 8.5 policies onto those 6.5 mail files, bad things will happen and your end users won't be able to user their mail files anymore, either with the Notes client or iNotes.

The Long Version:
Apparently, there were a bunch of fields not present in 6.5 mail files, which makes sense, since new functionality gets added in every Notes release.
The problem comes in when you have/do the following:
- an 8.5 Domino server with "only" public hotfixes
- 6.5 mail files residing on such 8.5 Domino server
- 8.5 policies applying to those 6.5 mail files users
- upgrade those 6.5 mail files to 8.5 either manually via "load convert" or with the seamless upgrade policy

In our case we moved mail files from a 6.5 server to an 8.5 server via adminp, then added those moved users to an auto-populated group (based on home server membership) and then applied new 8.5 policies to those users. We then upgraded the user's client, which all went fine, until we upgraded their templates.  Since we didn't have anything other than public hotfixes on our servers by the time we moved 6.5 users to our 8.5 servers, we got one mail file after another with "Formula Errors" or "Unable to load frame content" on the Inbox and anything built on $Inbox not good.

This was due to two things, one of which was already documented in JCIK7PFGCT, which resolves an issue with $ToStuff that gets set with an invalid formula if you apply 8.5 policies to 6.5 mail files, specifically those setting attention indicators. So make sure you do NOT set attention indicators in your policies if you have any 6.5 mail files on your 8.5 servers.

The trickier one we discovered was LMAN7R6L44, which resolves a problem with malformed $ToNames, a field in the calendarprofile document that also didn't exist in 6.5.  Just like in the above issue, if this field gets populated by an 8.5 mail policy it renders your mail file users very unhappy, via both the Notes client and iNotes.

So the good news is that you don't have to go through this painful experience 'cause we already did that for you.  Just get a hold of the hotfix for SPR's LMAN7R6L44, JCIK7PFGCT BEFORE you move any 6.5 users onto 85 servers, and all will be fine.
The not-so-good-yet-tolerable-news is that even if you already moved 6.5 users to your 8.5 servers and applied an 8.5 policy, the lovely folks at IBM Support will help you get rid of the garbage in the $ToNames and $ToStuff fields.

So tell your friends and neighbours, as I can assure you that migrating users without this hotfix will give you enough gray hair to keep L'Oreal in business for a long time!.