Depending on *how* Notes 9 has fixed the issue below -- it could be involved. Worth a check.

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21615747

The technote says that the apparent hang is hard to reproduce while the OP seems to be saying that the problem seen on the Mac is easily reproduced by clicking on the To: field.  It would be worthwhile, however, to generate an NSD when the client hangs to see if the crash stack has any similarities to the one shown in the technote.

Hi.

Thanks for the responses.

Indeed, the issue happens every time the user clicks on "To:"

Something else the user pointed out: when she opens her names.nsf, goes to "My contacts" and clicks on "Browse for contact", it freezes her client.

So, the issue is with that names selection dialog box.

I gave her access to my mail file. Opened my mail file, created a new mail, clicked on "To:"... Notes froze... so it is a problem on her client.

I made a new copy of the names.nsf, closed Notes and renamed it so that Notes will use it as the mail contacts db. Unfortunately, it did not solve the issue.

Made a copy of Notes Preferences, deleted it, restarted Notes and this time it worked!

The user has a second screen connected to her Mac (extended screen).

I realised that if the Notes client is on her Mac's physical screen, it works.

If I drag the Notes client to the secondary screen and click on "To:", it works once. If I click on it again, it freezes Notes. Even if I drag the client back to the primary screen, clicking on To: freezes the client.

I deleted Notes Preferences, restarted Notes and it is working again... We asked the user to keep the Notes client on the primary screen as a temporary workaround.

I looked at the contents of the original Notes Preferences and here are some weird entries:

SelectAddressesDialogSize=64576,64576,65341,65341,

SelectNameDialogSize=64242,64910,65341,201,

FindPeopleDlgSize=64576,64576,65341,65341,

It looks like Notes is trying to create a dialog box that is way bigger than the screen resolution...

If I compare with values from my notes.ini (I am on a windows laptop, but I also use an extended secondary screen), here is what I see:

SelectAddressesDialogSize=171,1195,134,632,

SelectNameDialogSize=418,947,134,508,

FindPeopleDlgSize=392,974,134,495,

Is there a definite solution to this?

If the user exits the Notes client, renames their names.nsf, and then starts the client, do they have the same issue?  I saw a recent example of someone reporting slowness (not a hang) when creating an email but before selecting an address, and the problem was found to be with their local Contacts.