10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes 4.0

Lesson 16

Creating a Database and Documents

In this lesson, you learn to create a database, create documents, and delete a document.

Creating a Database

You can create your own database in which to store documents for your personal use on your local drive, or for use on the network. As creator of the database, you can choose the document types that go into the database, and you can compose any or all of the documents in your database. To create a database, follow these steps:

In your workspace, choose File, Database, New. The New Database dialog box appears (see Figure 16.1).

Figure 16.1 Create your own databases and documents.

In the Server drop-down list, choose the local drive or the network drive to which you want to save the database.
In the Title text box, enter a name for the database. Notes automatically fills in the File Name text box as you enter the title.
In the list at the bottom of the dialog box, choose a template on which to base your new database. (Table 16.1 describes the available templates.) Click the Template Server button to view templates the Notes administrator may have created for your use.
Click OK. Notes creates an icon on the current workspace and opens the new database for you.

Need More Template Choices?

You can click the Show advanced templates check box in the New Database dialog box to access more templates from which you can choose.

Table 16.1 Common Database Templates

Template	Description
Blank	Creates an empty database you can use to create anything from documents to views to the design of the template. (I do not recommend that you choose this unless you’re experienced with creating databases.)
Discussion	Creates a database you can use for discussion groups for specific groups of people—such as instructors, salespeople, or advertising agents. (See Lesson 14 for details on discussion groups.)
Document Library	Creates a database in which you can store reference documents such as handouts, financial statements, or product descriptions. This is for access by a workgroup.
Personal Address Book	Creates a personal address book for your local drive.
Personal Journal	Creates a database that contains documents in which you can enter any data you want, including notes, To Do lists, and other topics of interest.
Reservation Scheduler	Creates a database in which workgroups can reserve and schedule the use of such company resources as meeting rooms, company cars, and office equipment.

Need Help?

To learn more about any template, click the About button in the New Database dialog box to view the About document on the selected database. Choose Close when you finish with the About document.

Creating an About Document

When you first create a database from a template, the About document appears. The About document describes the database template and its uses and provides other relative i nformation about it. Figure 16.2 shows an example of an About document.

Figure 16.2 The About document describes the template’s uses.

You can leave the information in an About document as it is, or you can edit the document and enter your own information. When creating an About document, you might want to enter such information as:

Descriptions of the documents
The names of groups or users who can edit or access the documents
Guidelines to follow when using the documents
The name and e-mail address or phone number of someone who can help users with the database

To create your own About document, follow these steps:

In the About document that appears when the database opens, right-click anywhere in the document and choose Edit.
Click anywhere in the document and enter, edit, or delete the text.
When you finish making changes, choose File, Save to save your changes to the About document.
Choose File, Close to view the new database.

Composing a Document

You might need to create a document for your own database or for a database you’ve accessed over the network. For example, you might create reports or articles in your own database that you wan t to share with your co-workers, or your company may require you to submit status reports or other information to a public database.

Public Database

A database that is accessible to anyone on the network. Some databases may be marked as private or completely inaccessible, and others may have limits set by the network or Notes administrators that enable only certain groups to access them. In a similar way, you can create a private folder in a database and limit access to that folder an d the documents it contains, and you can encrypt certain documents within a database. However, those topics are beyond the scope of this book. For more information, see Que’s Special Edition Using Lotus Notes.

Whether you’re adding a document to an existing database or creating your own database documents, the procedure is the same. Follow these steps to create a document.

In the database view, choose the location for the new document from the view pane. You might choose to place the document in the All Documents view or in a specific folder, for example.
Click the New Document button on the tool button bar. A new document like the one in Figure 16.3 appears.

Sound Familiar?

The process of creating a new document may sound familiar to you because it’s similar to creating a message in a discussion group database (which you learn ed about in Lesson 14). You also can import and export data in a database document just as you would with mail (see Lesson 9).

Figure 16.3 Enter your own document title and text.

In the first set of brackets, enter the title for the document. This title will appear in the document window of the database view.

For the category, you can leave Miscellaneous as the selection, or you can click the down arrow to reveal the Select Keywords dialog box (see Figure 16.4).

Categories

Categories are main topics into which you organize your documents. Some example cate gories might be Quarter 1 and Quarter 2, or Expenses and Income. Categories appear in the database view with the associated documents listed below them.

Figure 16.4 Select a keyword to use as the category, or enter a new keyword.

In the Keywords list, click on a category. A check mark appears beside it to show that it’s selected. To deselect a marked keyword, click on it, and the check mark disappears.

If there are no categories, or if you do not see a category you want to use, enter the name of a new category in the New Keywords text box.

Choose OK to apply the keyword.

Click inside the third set of brackets and enter the document text.

Formatting a Document

For more information about formatting—applying fonts, text characteristics, and so on— see Lesson 18.

Saving a Document

When you’re finished creating a document, you must save it to the database. To save a document, choose File, Save. You can then close the document by clicking the Close button in the tool button bar. When you close the document, Notes returns to the database view.

Oops!

If you try to close the document without saving it, Notes prompts you to save your changes. Click Yes to save the document, click < I>No to abandon the changes, or click Cancel to return to the document.

Deleting a Document

If you no longer need a particular document, you can delete it from the database view. Simply right-click on the document and choose Cut from the shortcut menu that appear s. The document disappears from the database, but it’s not completely gone. Notes moves the document you cut to the Clipboard, which means you can paste it back into your database for as long as it remains on the Clipboard. A cut or copied document r emains on the Clipboard until you cut or copy another item. To retrieve the cut document, choose Edit, Paste.

In this lesson, you learned to create a database, compose a document, save a document, and delete a document. In the next lesson, you will learn to work with text fields.