There is a great piece of software called nlconverter . It’s a tool designed to convert Lotus Notes’ .nsf files to mbox . It rely on win32’s COM/DDE API so it can only be used on Windows.

If you want to extract mails out of your .nsf database, this might be the tool you’re looking for. Bonus point: it’s written in Python! ;)

Installing nlconverter and its dependencies

Here is how I installed nlconverter on a Windows 2000 (SP4) machine:

  1. First I downloaded and installed the official Python builds for Windows ( 2.6.6 precisely  ):

    Python 2.6.6 Windows installer asking whether to install for all users or just the current one, with all users selected

    Installer destination step keeping the default Python26 directory at the root of the C: drive

    Feature tree of the Python installer with all five subfeatures selected, including Tcl/Tk, documentation and the test suite

    Python installer part way through copying new files

    Final installer screen thanking Mark Hammond for the Windows expertise behind Python for Windows

  2. Then Python for Windows extensions ( build 214 for Python 2.6 in my case  ):

    pywin32 setup wizard opening on the package description for build 214 by Mark Hammond, its buttons in French

    pywin32 setup having found Python 2.6 in the registry, targeting the Python26 directory on the C: drive and its site-packages directory

    pywin32 setup copying files, currently on a win32com test script

    pywin32 post-install log reporting registered DLLs and confirming the extensions were successfully installed

  3. Finally I had to download the latest icalendar archive , then extract the \iCalendar-1.2\src\icalendar folder to C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\ :

    7-Zip window open on the iCalendar source archive next to an Explorer window on Python's site-packages, where the extracted icalendar folder now sits

  4. Next step is to download nlconverter itself and extract it:

    7-Zip showing the 13 MB winnlc-alpha-1 archive next to an Explorer window on C:, where the extracted winnlc-alpha-1 folder is highlighted

nlconverter GUI

First thing you have to do is to create an export of your mails as a .nsf database . Follow the previous link to get the instructions.

Now let’s convert this nsf to a mbox . nlconverter’s FAQ tells you to run the gui.exe program to perform the conversion.

Unfortunately it didn’t work for me:

Lotus Notes Converter on Windows, its log repeating Could not connect to Notes and Could not find and register the dll

So I tried the alternative approach by using the command line.

nlconverter command line

Again, most of the things I’m writing here are based on nlconverter’s FAQ  :

  1. First, we have to download the notes2mbox.py script from nlconverter’s mercurial repository , as this file is not distributed in the winnlc-alpha-1.zip archive I unzipped previously. Let’s put notes2mbox.py in C:\winnlc-alpha-1\ :

    Firefox on the Google Code page for notes2mbox.py, with a save dialog pointed at the winnlc-alpha-1 folder

  2. Now we’ll modify the notes2mbox.py script to set the password (via the notesPasswd variable) and location ( notesNsfPath variable) of the .nsf file. Here are the modifications I applied: 

    --- notes2mbox.py.orig	2010-09-02 13:49:58.000000000 +0200
+++ notes2mbox.py	2010-09-02 13:51:24.000000000 +0200
@@ -14,8 +14,8 @@
 import NlconverterLib

 #Constantes
-notesPasswd = "foobar"
-notesNsfPath = "C:\\archive.nsf"
+notesPasswd = "XXXXXXXXXXXXX"
+notesNsfPath = "C:\\winnlc-alpha-1\\kevin-notes-big-backup-part-1.nsf"

 #Connection à Notes
 db = NlconverterLib.getNotesDb(notesNsfPath, notesPasswd)

  3. Before running the script, we have to register a Notes DLL used by nlconverter: 

    regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\Notes\nlsxbe.dll"

    Command prompt after running regsvr32 on nlsxbe.dll, with a dialog confirming DllRegisterServer succeeded

    And make the Python interpreter available system-wide: 

    C:\winnlc-alpha-1>SET Path=%Path%;C:\Python26

  4. Now we can run the notes2mbox.py script: 

    C:\winnlc-alpha-1>C:\Python26\python.exe notes2mbox.py

    If you’re lucky, you’ll get a nice mbox at the end of the process.

    But I was not and the notes2mbox.py ended up with the following error: 

    Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "notes2mbox.py", line 21, in <module>
    db = NlconverterLib.getNotesDb(notesNsfPath, notesPasswd)
  File "C:\winnlc-alpha-1\NlconverterLib.py", line 43, in getNotesDb
    session = win32com.client.Dispatch(r'Lotus.NotesSession')
  File "C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\win32com\client\__init__.py", line 95, in Dispatch
    dispatch, userName = dynamic._GetGoodDispatchAndUserName(dispatch,userName,clsctx)
  File "C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 104, in _GetGoodDispatchAndUserName
    return (_GetGoodDispatch(IDispatch, clsctx), userName)
  File "C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\win32com\client\dynamic.py", line 84, in _GetGoodDispatch
    IDispatch = pythoncom.CoCreateInstance(IDispatch, None, clsctx, pythoncom.IID_IDispatch)
pywintypes.com_error: (-2147221231, 'ClassFactory ne peut pas fournir la classe demand\xe9e', None, None)

As you can see, I tried hard to make nlconverter working, without any success. But this should not stop you to try. In fact I suspect the Lotus Notes installed on my machine to be crippled or corrupted (can’t really tell). So you may be more lucky than me. In any case, feel free to report any success or failure in the comment section below!

19 archived comments

Comments are closed. These were posted on Disqus, and are archived here.

  1. Kevin Deldycke Author

    BTW, the exception message above is translated in french as it was the language used by default in my environment. With a little help from Google, here is the english version of that exception:

    pywintypes.com_error: (-2147221231, 'ClassFactory cannot supply requested class', None, None)
    1. Kevin Deldycke Author

      FYI, the traceback error was reported in nlconverter's bug tracker.

  2. zanko

    Thanks for this tutorial, I managed to get all mails and calendar stuff from that Lotus crap to my beloved Kmail !

    Don't know why it doesn't work for you but I can confirm that the procedure you followed is correct (I just had to uncomment line 31 of notes2mbox.py).

    1. Kevin Deldycke Author

      @zanko: I just got from the original author of nlconverter the right to commit in the Mercurial repository. I've pushed the change you made in revision 3c07939b39. Thanks for your comment ! :)

  3. Marc

    From @vostweets: Mail is converted just fine! I got it via the GUI - I found out that you cannot have Lotus Notes running at the same time - you have to quit Notes completely before you can use nlconverter or any other.

    I found two important issues:

    1. no folder structure is retained.
    2. Instead internet email address, the Notes email address is output.

    Because of (1) and a little bit (2), I find Transend Migrator better, although you have to pay for it. But when I collect 6 months of mail and categorize it in various folders...

    1. pastix

      Hello, thanks a lot for this nice and useful tutorial.
      Like Marc above, I miss the folder organization I had within my .nsf file.
      Unlike him, I don't wanna pay for 4 licences, since my archives are splitted in different files (and I feel like I won't get a rebate).
      Would there be any chance that the folders can be maintained when exporting a .nsf file to a .mbx format ?

      1. leorthur

        Hello,

        Thanks for this tutorial, I managed to make it work but e-mails in mbox files are empty (it might be because I use the demo version) and it doesn't save the folder tree.
        As Pastix said would be nice to maintain folders.

        1. hugues

          hello,

          it should be possible to maintain the directory structure, it was just not fitting in my workflow when I wrote nlconverter.

          I will try to have a look. Maybe you could open a ticket on the bug tracker ?

  4. Kevin Deldycke Author

    BTW, if you get the following error:

    C:\Python26\lib\site-packages\icalendar\prop.py:980: DeprecationWarning: object.__init__() takes no parameters
  unicode.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

    it means that you're using an old version of the icalendar library. To fix this, get the latest version from PyPi.

  5. Kevin Deldycke Author

    Another error you might encounter, is this one:

    python.exe - Entry Point Not Found

The procedure entry point ?PyWinGlobals_Ensure@@YAHXZ could not be located in the dynamic link library pywintypes26.dll

    It may appear when you try to run the notes2mbox.py script within the nlconverter's main folder. This is due to precompiled libraries conflicting with the ones present on your system.

    The fix for me was to delete all *.pyd and *.dll files located in the C:\winnlc-alpha-1\ folder.

  6. Meek

    Hi guys.. the nlconverter source/site is gone... all links on Google point to the same location... Is there an additional site where I can download the tool?

    /Meek

    1. Meek

      It seems that when I logon with my google account I get an access denied:

      Your client does not have permission to get URL /p/nlconverter/ from this server.

      isn't it supposed to be downloadable for all?

      1. Kevin Deldycke Author

        @Meek: I have the same issue right now. I've just contacted the original author to get more info.

        1. Meek

          Perfect, I'll standby then....

          1. Kevin Deldycke Author

            @Meek: The Google Code link seems to work now ! :)

    2. Meek

      Actually I found another way of doing it which also proved a lot easier....

      http://tech.niques.info/projects/lotus-notes-email-export/

      I now have 5 years of Notes Email safely stored within Thunderbird ;-)

      1. Kevin Deldycke Author

        @Meek: a friend tried this method a year ago but the agent was prone to crash past several hundred mails. It also crashed hard on strangely formatted mails (like calendar sharing requests). He finally managed to use that migration method by carefully selecting messages he exported. I'm not sure this extra-manual work is bearable on large corpus of mails...

  7. pstrg

    Conversion went on quite smoothly (Python 2.7.2).
    Next, Thunderbird (with addon: ImportExportTools) was able to import the resulting mbox correctly (complained a few times about a script).
    Compliments for the article!

  8. plm

    Worked fine with python 3.2.2, pywin32-217 for py3.2, winnlc-alpha-1. No error messages. No config files or paths was edited. Converted over 4 Gb of old mails in 5 files.