How to Remove Password from Lotus Notes Database in Easy Steps

Approved By Aswin Vijayan

Published On August 22nd, 2017

Reading Time 4 Minutes Reading

NSF database file in Lotus Notes stores emails, calendars, contacts, appointments, etc. The file can be protected by a password to secure your data from anyone’s access. But if somehow a user lost his password then he cannot access his database. A password is a key to open the database items. You cannot open your mailbox without this key. The following article guides you to remove password from Lotus Notes database. A user asked:

“Hey! I am Lotus Notes user. My mailbox is password protected and now I forgot my password. I have very important emails of my company. But I can’t access them. Please get me a solution to unlock Lotus Notes database file, so that I can access my emails. Thanks in Advance!”

It is important to know the location of Lotus Notes NSF file in your system. Then only you can remove password from Lotus Notes NSF file. So, browse the location of the file through the following paths for different operating systems.

For Single User
1. Windows: C:\Programs Files\IBM\Lotus\Notes\Data

For Multi User
1. Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Lotus\Notes\Data
2. Windows Vista: \Users\AppData\Local\Lotus\Notes\Data
3. Windows 7: \Users\Username\AppData\Local\Lotus\Notes\Data
4. Windows 8: \Users\Username\AppData\Local\Lotus\Notes\Data
5. Mac OS: ~/Library/Application Support/Lotus Notes Data
6. Linux: / {$HOME}/Lotus/Notes/Data

Lotus Notes provides great security features. If any file is protected by any password, then it is not possible for any user to access them without credentials. The email application is highly secure that if anyone tries to access the password protected Lotus Notes database file, then he may get several error messages like:

You are not authorized to perform that operation.
You are not authorized to access that database.

Methods to Remove Password from Lotus Notes

If Domino server installed in the system
1. Open Lotus Domino and switch the user from Administrator to the local server.
2. You will get a file list. Choose the database from the list then click on Properties >> Encryption Settings.
3. Select Do Not Encrypt locally and then click on OK button.
4. After that, you need to select the default location and then click on OK button.

Unlock Lotus Notes Database if there is no Domino Server
1. You need to copy the database file of Lotus Notes to the notes\Data directory.
2. Then open the file. It will ask you to log in using your credentials.
3. Your database is now open. Now click on Properties. Select Do Not Locally Encrypt and then click on OK button.
4. Now open command prompt and run the compact disk locally in Lotus Notes.

Unlock NSF File if password is applied with the help of ACL(Access Control List)
1. Replace the user.id file with the user.id of NSF file.
2. Now open Lotus Notes and open the NSF file to remove the password from the NSF file.
3. Click on View >> Advanced Menus.
4. Now select the file you want to access by clicking on File >> Application >> New Copy.
5. Save the NSF file in the new location with a new name and uncheck the Access Control List.
6. Click on OK button. A new NSF file is created which you can open without any password.

Alternate Solution to Remove Password Security in Lotus Notes

Above methods can help you in accessing your Lotus Notes database that is locked by a password. As the process is quite complex, a user may not be able to unlock NSF file. So, in that case, one can opt for the easy solution that can help a user to remove Lotus Notes password to access the NSF file data. The above approach is a bit time-consuming as you have to check few things to proceed with the steps. But using this solution, you can open and view NSF files by removing the password from the database file.

Wrapping Up

In this blog, manual and automated solutions are mentioned that can help a user to remove password from Lotus Notes database file. You can save your time and data by using an alternate solution as discussed above. You can go through above solutions to overcome error and helps a user to access Lotus Notes database files without any password.