An (unfortunately) Much Needed Tool for Duplicate Entries on Notes Calendars

If you have used or supported Notes Calendars (or probably any other calendar) for any length of  time you have probably run in to problems with duplicate entries at some point, usually they happen on heavily used calendars that are maintained by multiple individuals… but they happen.  Notes 8.5 introduced the Repair Calendar Feature which has been helpful.  Today IBM made public their Tool for finding and removing duplicate calendar entries documented in Technote 1316738.

Question How can you find and remove duplicate calendar entries in Lotus Notes?   Answer You can use the attached tool (in the Attachments section below) to find and remove duplicates found in the calendar view of a mail file. The tool is a database template file that can be used to create a database and agent that runs the application. The agent can also be copied from the database template to another mail file or template. For best results, run the tool locally on a copy of the problem database to verify that it will work as expected. Some problems have been observed in getting the tool to run on a server copy of a mail file. If you encounter a problem, run the tool on a local replica and then replicate the changes to the server copy. WARNING: This tool should be used as is and at the user’s own risk. This tool has been used on several different mail files with success but IBM/Lotus cannot ensure that it will work with every mail file since it has not been quality assurance tested. This is not a supported tool but is a possible solution with the understanding that errors relating to the tool cannot be resolved by Product Development or Product Support.

File this away in the category of I hope I don’t need it, but I am glad it is available if I do.

One Response to An (unfortunately) Much Needed Tool for Duplicate Entries on Notes Calendars
  1. Ray Bilyk
    February 2, 2010 | 9:31 pm

    Nice find! Thanks for mentioning it. Consider it filed…