Friday, December 9, 2011

Andy Donaldson and the case of the missing LotusNotes853.itw

So if you've been following my manic tweets lately, you may have picked up that I'm doing a session at Lotusphere 2012.  My session stems from a document I wrote up, and have tried to keep updated, several years about about InstallShield Tuner for Lotus Notes.  Great app, free, learn all about at my Show -N- Tell.  Since I am putting together the session slides, I have to go through and do step by step screenshots.  Not a big deal.  But, when you're using InstallShield Tuner, one of the required files you need, LotusNotes853.itw, is missing from the 8.5.3 Standard client installation download.  But of course, I didn't know that since I had not put one together yet for Notes 8.5.3.

So picture this if you will.  Our hero, a strapping figure of a man, Andy, sitting at his downstairs desk working away madly on trying to come up with awesome content for a Lotusphere slide deck.  A bead of sweat at his brow as his works madly into the night.  Screen shot here, document there. "I've got a good pace going!", he excited says to himself.  "Okay, now click here, do this, look for the file LotusNotes853.itw.......look for the file LotusNotes853.itw......WHERE THE HELL IS THE LOTUSNOTES853.ITW!?" he yells out into the cold, December night.  He hastily unpacks the download installation files again, missing from there too.  Off to Google he goes to find the answer.  Yup.  It's not in the download package.  Harrumph.  But, as glimmer of hope appears as he reads that the file is available from IBM Fix Central!  Away with great speed he went to the site, selected the following options


Clicked continue, clicked continue again and beheld before his tired eyes, the missing file!


Hazzah!  He was once again victorious and continued on with his assigned tasks!  The End!

But the moral to this story kids, is IBM seems to have overlooked placing the LotusNotes853.itw file in the installation package and if you use InstallShield Tuner for Lotus Notes, you're going to need that file.  But, IBM Fix Central has what you're looking for.




3 comments:

Unknown said...

Looks like you are going to have to add a dozen slides to your presentation just to show everyone how to navigate through the minefield that is the IBM website to get to Update Central

Lars Berntrop-Bos said...

Or you could just google for LotusNotes853 (in Chrome: doubleclick LotusNotes853 to select word, right click that and select "Search Google for 'LotusNotes853') and pick the first or second hit to go directly to the tech note containing a direct link to the file.

Andy Donaldson said...

Excellent, Lars! Thanks for sharing that!