Collaboration in the Enterprise from the perspective of Anthony Holmes, an IBM Accelerated Value Program Leader (Premium Support Program).

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Macintosh and Lotus Notes Templates: where they live

Anthony Holmes  23 June 2009 10:26:31 PM
This took me longer to work out than I expected. So, for anybody who wants to ask the question "Where do Notes templates live in Lotus Notes on a Macintosh and how do I use them?" here is some information.


I'm using the eProductivity application. In order to use it, I apply their template to my Mail File design so that I can use the the Getting Things Done methodology.

On Windows this was a matter of copying the eProductivityMailTemplate.ntf file into my c:\program files\ibm\lotus\notes\data directory and then applying the change to my mail file by opening my mail and replacing the design with File; Application; Replace Design... Because I knew what I was doing under Windows, it only took me a couple of minutes. It's also simple to do the same thing on a Mac, but it took me quite a bit longer to work it out.

Making the Replace Design... Menu Option Visible

On my Macintosh, my first hurdle was that there was no File; Application; Replace Design... menu option. Immediately I (wrongly) assumed that because the Macintosh didn't have a Domino Designer client, maybe it also couldn't replace a database's Design.  Wrong!  It can. I had just forgotten that with Notes 8.5 (on Windows, Macintosh and Linux), the Replace Design option isn't visible until you select View; Advanced Menus.

Finding the Template Folder and adding another Template to it

As soon as I made the Advanced Menus visible, I could choose File; Application; Replace Design... option and see the standard templates. But I needed to add the eProductivityMailTemplate.ntf file. I needed to physically copy it into the 'correct' folder so that it would be visible as a template. From my Windows background, I assumed that this would simply mean that I needed to add it to my Macintosh Notes Data folder. On the Macintosh this is Users/username/library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data. Wrong! Although that's where your databases (like names.nsf, bookmarks and your local mail file replica) reside, it's not where your templates live.

Instead, it resides deep inside something that looked to me like it was a single file (but it's actually a file archive containing many files). Inside the Applications folder there's a file called Notes (or Notes.app if you are displaying file extensions). If you Right Click on Notes and select Show Package Contents you can then start navigating through the contents of the archive. Go to the following location:

/Applications/Notes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/Data

(I guess with other languages, the English.lproj bit will have a different name.)

There you will see the 'out of the box' IBM supplied templates. Whilst you are looking at the Package Contents, you can drag a new template and drop it in. You'll get a prompt to enter your Macintosh Administration Account password before the new template will be added.