LotusNotes: saving documents as email files

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I need to ask you about the possibility of saving LotusNotes documents (with the attachments) as separated files in EML format on a hard disc.
Of course it's not important to keep the original document's look but it's very important to input into the file the content of the notes document including all the attached files.
The reason is to be able to open the exported file in an email client.
Is it possible?
Do you have any experience with resolving a problem like this?

2 Answers

The easiest way to do this for a small number of documents is to use @MailSend to forward the documents to a Notes user account or to mail-in database, and then go into that mailbox, select the message, and drag it to your desktop. Recent versions of the Notes client will save the document as .eml file that can be opened in Outlook or other standard mail clients. Or instead of sending to something in Notes, you could send to a non-Domino email system, connect with Outlook and do the same drag-to-desktop there, which I believe results in a .msg file instead of a .eml file, but they're essentially the same.

To automate it for a large number of documents that I need to do in one batch, I might still use the @Mailsend approach, but I'd do this on a dedicated Domino server. I'd address the email to an external address, and I'd set up SMTPSaveOutboundToFile=1 in the notes.ini file of that dedicated Domino server.

I think the Notes-client drag to desktop operation results in somewhat higher fidelity in the .eml file than either of the other approaches, but it's been about ten years and three major Notes/Domino versions since I played around with any of these.

Yes this can definitely be done programmatically. To do this, convert the doc to MIME via convertToMIME() using the DxlExporter to do the rest of the work. It creates XML output that contains a <mime> tag in which the output of the fully converted MIME format document resides. See this for a full description: How to Programmatically Convert Lotus Notes email Document to MIME Format

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