I want my old calendar views back !!

One of the issues we’ve had to deal with is that the new version (8.5x) of Lotus Notes seems to have taken away a number of ‘old favorite’ views in your calendar, like the ‘work month.’ The work month calendar was particularly nice because it gave you a fill month’s view of your calendar, without the weekend days.

Turns out, there’s a way to get them back, although this trick doesn’t “stick”, so you’ll need to do it every time …

So, we can start here:

This is the “default” month calendar in Notes 8.5x.

But, people liked the “old” month calendar. By hitting Ctrl-Alt before you click “Month”, you can get the old calendar:

And, better yet, this view scrolls, so you can have a month view that includes a couple weeks from one month, and a couple from the next. Note where July 1st falls in this screenshot:

But wait, there’s more!

In addition to being able to get the old view back, you get the old functionality back, meaning you can view a month (a whole month), or you can view a “work month” (meaning as full month, but not showing weekends).

By clicking the dropdown at the Month tab, you can select “Work Month”:

And the result is a scrolling month, with no weekends:

Wish my real-life calendar was this empty!!

I want my OLD inbox back!

We know that the UI guys at Lotus spent countless hours trying to make the Lotus Notes inbox as usable as possible, and, bluntly, as much like that “other” product as they could.

And, frankly, kudos to them. From a strictly personal point of view, I like the new look and feel.

Not everyone does.

As Lee and I were rolling out the new client this winter, there were two “what happened to” complaints that we heard over and over. The first was the “what happened to my bookmark bar” question (actually, usually phrased as in “what happened to the icons I used to have on the left side of my screen?”). You can get it back – we addressed that one HERE.

The OTHER complaint was about the inbox. It was a two-fer: what happened to the red text and what happened to the checkmarks.

The guys at Lotus probably got tired of the whole “your unread documents will be red, meaning the color red, not read” conversations.

So, the default for the 8.5.1 mail template is unread messages are in Bold Black, and the checkmark column is gone.

Well, Virginia, you can have those back too!

First, the checkmarks.

Go to File > Preferences > Basic Notes Client Configuration

At the bottom of the “Additional Options” window in the middle of the dialogue is an option that says “Show checkmarks in margin for selected documents.” Click that on, and you’ve got your checkmarks back:

Meanwhile, while you’re there, you can get your red text back also, if you want that.

This time go to Files > Preferences > Fonts and Colors.

Select “Plain Red Text” from the drop down, and click OK:

Simple enough, right?

MANY of the new features in 8.5.1 are optional – I’m not aware of ANYTHING that has been taken away from prior versions.

What else are you missing?

Where did my bookmark bar go in Lotus Notes 8.5?

What happened to my bookmark bar?

I don’t like this Open button. For those of us who don’t like change and miss that bookmark bar on the left hand side with all our icons on it, there is hope, you can get it back!

To get your bookmark bar back right click on the OPEN menu icon and choose “Dock the Open List” or you can go to VIEW then then second last from the bottom choose “Dock the Open List” there. VOILA you now have your good old trusty Bookmark Bar with all your icons on the left hand side.

Note that the Bookmark Bar and the Open button are mutually exclusive – you can have one or the other, but not both at the same time.