IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search

1. What e-mail systems does this tool support?

IBM® OmniFind Personal E-mail Search supports Lotus® Notes® (Version 6.0 and above) and Microsoft® Outlook (Version 2003 and above).

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2. What Web browsers can I use to work with IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search?

IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search supports Mozilla Firefox (Version 1.5 and above) and Internet Explorer (Version 5.0 and above). Although the IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search pages may work on other browsers, they are not explicitly supported or maintained. In order to use the IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search Firefox plug-in, you must have Firefox Version 2.0 or above.

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3. Need I do anything after installing the tool in order to get it to work?

You need not do anything to start IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search. At the end of the installation process, a Web page will open in your default browser showing that IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search is initializing and customizing itself for your machine (see below):

This initialization is a one-time process that can take anywhere from 10-25 minutes depending on the load on your machine. After that process is completed, you will be directed to the main search page and indexing will begin.

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4. How do I start IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search? Will it run every time I start the machine or do I need to start it explicitly?

IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search is configured to automatically start every time you reboot the machine. In order to search your e-mail, simply point your browser to the main IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search search page. A shortcut to this page has been placed on your desktop by the installer. The same shortcut has also been created in the Start Menu > Programs > IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search folder as shown in the screenshot below:

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5. How do I stop IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search from temporarily indexing my e-mail but continue to use it for searches?

Go to the main IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search search page as described in the previous FAQ. You will see a screen such as the one shown below:

Click on the link that shows the number of e-mails indexed. That will take you to the indexing control page shown below.

Move the slider bar to the lowest position to turn off indexing. Whenever you wish to restart indexing, visit the same page and move the slider bar to any of the other positions.

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6. How do I shut down IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search and restart it later?

Because IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search is designed to automatically reduce its memory usage if it has not been used for a while, there should be no reason to explicitly stop the tool. However, if you must do so, go to Start Menu > Programs > IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search > Manage Server and click on the shortcut marked Stop.

In order to start the tool again, navigate to the same folder and click on the shortcut marked Start.

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7. Can I use the tool to do searches while it is still indexing my e-mail?

Yes, you can use IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search to search your e-mail even as indexing progresses.

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8. Can I use the tool to search all the files on my desktop?

No. Currently, IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search is designed only for search of personal e-mail and does not index other files on your desktop.

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9. (Applicable only to versions downloaded before December 2008:) How do I use the tool to create my own taggers?

Launch the tool's main search page (see FAQ 4) and click on the link named Tag in the top righthand corner of that page. This action will launch the tagger utility in a separate window, as shown below:

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10. (Applicable only to versions downloaded before December 2008:) Where can I learn how to create my own taggers using IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search?

The tool includes a tutorial that describes how to create and share custom taggers. In order to read this tutorial, launch the tagger utility (see FAQ 9) and click on the Tutorial link in the top righthand corner.

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11. What can I get a list of the concepts that the tool supports?

Launch the main search page (see FAQ 4) and click on the link See All Sample Queries.

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12. I installed IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search and indexing has begun. However, the number of e-mails indexed has remained unchanged for a long time.

There are three possibilities:

1. All the e-mail databases that you selected during installation have been completely crawled, processed, and indexed.
2. E-mails have been queued up for indexing, but, because IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search is operating in "gentle mode" and you are actively using the machine, the tool has refrained from doing any processing. To see whether IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search is indeed in gentle mode, visit the indexing control page (see FAQ 5). The page will list the number of e-mails queued for processing and will also show the current indexing mode. Note that the tool supports five distinct indexing modes -- off, gentle, medium, aggressive, and full. You can use the slider bar to control how much in resources the tool can take up and, consequently, how fast indexing will progress.
3. In rare circumstances, IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search might be stuck establishing a connection for fetching e-mails. In such cases, the problem can be solved by stopping and restarting the tool's server (see FAQ 6), logging off and logging back in to Windows, or in rare cases, shutting down the machine and restarting Windows.

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13. When installing IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search for Lotus Notes, I ran into one or more of the following problems: The installer rejected my Lotus Notes password even though I know that I typed the exact password that I use to log into Notes. After I entered the Lotus Notes password and clicked on Next, the installer screen froze and I could not continue with the installation. In the screen that lists the Lotus Notes databases, when I clicked on the Add Notes Data Files button, the installer screen froze and I could not continue.

Abort your existing installation attempt and verify the following:

• Ensure that you shut down Lotus Notes when requested to do so by the IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search installer. If you are not sure that Notes was indeed shut down, then cancel the installation, ensure that Notes has been shut down, and once again launch the IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search installer.
• If you had any version of Lotus Sametime® Connect instant messaging software running during your failed installation attempt, please shut down Sametime and retry the installation.
• Check to see if you have a file named nlsxbe.dll in your Lotus Notes installation directory (usually C:\notes\). If so, check to see if you have another copy of nlsxbe.dll in C:\Windows (or in C:\Windows\system32). If so, please delete the copy of this file in the Windows directory and retry installation.

If none of these steps solve the problem, log off from Windows and log back in before re-trying the installation.

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14. The IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search Firefox plug-in does not work. What should I do?

Verify that your Firefox browser version is 2.0 or above. Also ensure that, after installing the IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search plug-in, you have restarted your browser at least once.

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15. During installation, I received the following error message: Error 1609. An Error occurred while applying security settings. How do I fix this?

This error message is an indication that you are running the installer as a user with insufficient privileges. To install IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search, you must be logged in as a user with Administrator privileges.

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16. (Relevant only to Lotus Notes version:) All my Lotus Notes e-mail is on a remote server. Can I still use IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search to search my e-mail?

IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search only indexes Notes databases that are present locally on your machine. To use this tool for e-mail search, you must first set up a local replica of your mail database. Instructions for setting up such replicas are included in the Help files associated with your Lotus Notes mail client.

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17. (Relevant only to Lotus Notes version:) When installing IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search for Lotus Notes, the installer rejected my Notes password even though I know that I typed the exact password that I use to log into Lotus Notes. What do I do?

Verify that you shut down Lotus Notes before launching the IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search installer. If Notes was not shut down, then cancel the installation, ensure that Notes has been shut down, and once again launch the IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search installer.

If this does not solve the problem, check to see if you have a file named nlsxbe.dll in your Lotus Notes installation directory (usually C:\notes\). If so, check to see if you have another copy of nlsxbe.dll in C:\Windows (or in C:\Windows\system32). If so, please delete the copy of this file in the Windows directory and retry installation.

If none of the above steps solve the problem, log off from Windows and log back in before re-trying the installation.

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18. (Relevant only to Lotus Notes version:) I have already started indexing. How do I add more Lotus Notes e-mail databases for the tool to index?

Go to Start Menu > Programs > IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search and click on Add Notes Data Files.

This action will launch a window that lists all the local Notes databases that IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search has been able to detect (see screenshot below).

Select any additional e-mail databases from the displayed list. If you don""t see a particular database in the list, click on the button labeled Add more mail files to the list and browse your local hard disk in order to select additional mail databases. When you are finished, click on the OK button in order to register your changes with IBM OmniFind Personal E-mail Search.

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