How to see and delete private views in a database

As you may already know, private views and folders are in fact protected by a Reader field. With scanEZ we use two ways to get the list of design elements in a database: the quick way and the hard way.

1- The quick way uses the internal Design Collection (a view, in fact). It is fast and efficient, but it does not list all designs elements: you won't see any private design elements, nor the special Agent Data elements.

2- The hard way uses a basic NSFSearch query. It will show you all that you are allowed to see, but on big databases this can take a lot of time.

You can delete the private views if you can see them. However, you can see them all (even the ones that are not yours) only if you access the database locally. Obviously, due to Notes security you must be working on a local copy of the database to be able to see everything.

If the database is on the server you will only be able to see your own private views/folders. A replica of a database on the server will not provide private views that are not yours since the server filters them out.

If the database is on a server, then using a Full Administrator Access will give you the ability to replicate everything (absolutely everything) locally, then you can work with scanEZ locally and then replicate back. Currently, scanEZ does not have the Full Administrator Access ability.

Update 1: Support for Full Access Administration was added to scanEZ version 6.0.

Update 2: Since this tip was written, Ytria has released a tool called databaseEZ, a server-wide Lotus Notes database analyzer. Included among its features is the ability to scan databases for the number of private class notes.

In scanEZ, the private views and folders are identified with a red letter "P" in the explorer tree as you browse through the views and folders. Or you can use the Search by Formula to find them for you. To delete them you select them with a checkbox and press the delete button on your keyboard, or from the menu delete button. You can literally delete them in seconds, with a few mouse clicks.