Linking Notes and Domino directories and application

A very powerful feature in linux is linking files and directories. Used in the right way it can save you a lot of space and keep thing often used or changed in one directory structure to be easily find.

All Administrators knows the feature in the Admin client where you can create links to directories and nsf files. For some developers it may be new! For some admins and developers it may also be new that it works really well within the notes client on the local machine.

You can easily create links to directories and nsf files which is then resolved by the notes client.

Personally I try to keep a folder structure on my PC where important stuff is located under one directory.
Doing a back of the machine is then much easier and the number of folders to consider in a backup set is greatly reduced.

So how does it work!

1. Create a text file in the domino/notes data directory and name it eg.  BackupedData.txt.
2. Open the text file in your preferred text editor and type in the path to the source directory eg. C:\Documents and Settings\Tomas\My Documents\DominoData.
3. change the file type from .txt to .dir. (“BackupedData.dir”)

The linked folder will be shown as “BackupedData” when browsing for files in the Notes client.

This can also be done on single NSF files. Instead of naming it .dir change it to .nsf and the content in the file should contain the full path to the target nsf file.

Step by step guide linking nsf file:

1. Create a text file in the domino/notes data directory and name it eg.  myApplication.txt.
2. Open the text file in your prefered text editor and type in the path to the application eg. C:\Documents and Settings\Tomas\My Documents\DominoData\myApplication.nsf.
3. change the file type from .txt to .nsf

The link files can be  put anywhere in the data directory structure!