Lotus Notes, an email client for end users in corporates, has a collaborative nature, and has a large number of areas for implementation. However, its NSF files are prone to corruption, thus leading to corruption of Lotus Notes client. Corruption occurred owing to various reasons which include, but are not limited to, virus attack, operating system issues, application problem, NSF file header corruption, unexpected system shutdown, checksum mismatch, or lotus notes interacting with incompatible program. Owing to these reasons all the business critical data saved in NSF files becomes inaccessible, and thus calls for a NSF File Recovery using a clean and updated backup. But in case of absence of a backup, one has to opt for Lotus Notes Recovery software to repair and restore corrupt notes.

Every time a user tries to access files, he/she may encounter error messages similar to:

Database is corrupt -- cannot allocate space

Error compacting Mail\x\xxx.nsf: Database is corrupt

NSFDbOpen: File 'file_name.nsf' is CORRUPT - Now Read-Only.

Other error messages that may appear while using 'Fixup' tool to repair a damaged nsf file include:

Database fixup process started Performing consistency check on mail\filename.nsf... Document NT00000AAA in database is damaged: Field length stored in document is incorrect (Field Body, Datatype 0001) Document NT00000AAA in database has been deleted

Document NT00000AAA in database is damaged: Document has invalid structure Document NT00000AAA in database has been deleted

These error messages can be ignore, and data can be accessed from the backup, provided, an updated and clean backup is available. However, in case a backup is not available, then you need to opt for a third party Lotus Notes recoverysoftware for a comprehensive recovery of all the lost content of client-side of Lotus Domino server, including e-mails, attachments, calendars entries, personal address book templates, contacts, to-do, and journals. There are a good number of software available in the market that repair Lotus Notes files, but care should be taken before zeroing in on one.

Stellar Phoenix Lotus Notes Recovery is a highly reliable NSF File Recovery tool that repairs damaged and corrupt NSF files created in IBM Lotus Notes 6.x and 7.x. Compatible with Windows 7,Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, NT4 (SP6), the application also has a free demo version. The demo version can be used to get an idea about the repair status of the NSF files, and allows viewing five items in each folder. A user can later buy the full version online, to recover all the items from each folder.