Your Contacts file is the file in which all of your contact entries are stored. By default, the file is called names.nsf, and is created for you automatically.

When you address a message to a person, IBM Lotus Notes looks in your Contacts file (names.nsf) for the person's mail address. You can create a new Contacts file to use instead of this default file. You can also create additional contacts files. Then, Notes will search all of your contacts files for an e-mail address. If the information is not in one of your Contacts files, Notes checks in the Domino directory on your home server.

Creating a Contacts file

You can create another Contacts file if you want to [what?]

To create a new Contacts file, follow the same process for creating any Notes application, and use the Personal Address Book template (pernames.ntf) . To keep all of your contacts files together in your data directory, use a variation of names.nsf (such as names2.nsf) as the file name for any additional contacts files you create.

Deleting a Contacts file

You can delete a Contacts file as you would delete any file, but make sure that you always have at least one Contacts file or Notes will not run.
****Never delete your only names.nsf file****

If your names.nsf file becomes corrupted

If your names.nsf file becomes corrupted, ask your administrator for assistance in creating a new one and retrieving as much information as possible from the corrupted one. Back up your Contacts file frequently.