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How to create custom Selection Tree titles for documents based on their content—for a sort of ‘view-on-the-fly’

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Views are used to see and access data in a Lotus Notes database—for anything not shown in an existing view, it means creating a new view and changing the application design. But as is often the case in the real world, the application is already in production and you won't have access to its design when and wherever you want.

Views use selection formulas and can only show you what is inside a document—since @DBLookup or @GetDocField are not allowed. You may even resort to changing the documents themselves to see them in a view. This works, but is far from ideal (what if you have thousands of documents?).

Also, it's simply impossible to see things in a database using only views. In some cases you must create agents or generate reports (it could take a day's work just to see the data you want).

In this tip you will see how you can use scanEZ's Change Displayed Title capabilities to get around view limitations—giving you a quick way to collect and organize large sets of note/document data the way you want to see them (like a view "on-the-fly" but much more).

First make sure scanEZ is running. If it's not, select any Lotus Notes database (email, personal address book, application etc.) on your workspace, and click the scanEZ icon on your Lotus Notes client toolbar.

Select a category of documents in the selection tree of scanEZ. By default documents are shown by their form name—so lets change this.
In the scanEZ menu go to Document > Change Displayed Title (Ctrl+T) or use its corresponding toolbar button:
A window appears with a few Title Options:

Default: Uses scanEZ's default display settings: form, title, or name depending on the type of note you are looking at
Field name: Choose a field and display its value for the document—the list of the fields proposed are taken from the first document of the current selection. The "Other..." button will list all field names used in the database.
Formula: Create a formula and display its result for the document—formulas that cannot be used in a view can be used here: @DbColumn, @Dblookup, @GetDocField (used with $REF can give you information from a parent) and @Environment. @DbColumn and @DbLookup can also be performed on a database different from the current one.
Column Value: Choose a column from a view/folder and display its value as a title—the document must be in the view (otherwise an error will be shown). It's a good idea to use this option with the Quick Retrieve Contents of View or Folder command since it uses the existing view index and no documents need to be loaded. This means that it's fast even when working on thousands of documents.

Choose how you want to display documents (Title Options)

Select the Title Option that you would like to see as a document title. Keep in mind that if you select the Field Name option you will need to choose a field, if you select the Formula option you will need to create a proper (simple or complex) formula, or if you select Column Value select a view column. By default, the last one used is offered here.
Once your Title Options are finalized, click OK. The selection tree in scanEZ now displays documents by your selected Title Option (see sample below which displays the result of @Modified formula).

Documents displayed by your Title Option

Congratulations! You are now finished displaying documents in a Lotus Notes database—without creating a new view or changing the application. Especially when using the Formula option there are countless ways to display the information you want from any design, profile or document using scanEZ. Use this elementary feature to quickly set up a title and use it as often as necessary to help organize a set of documents (often in preparation for a mass-modification, or move to a Notes folder etc).

[Bonus tip 1] scanEZ provides alternate means to change the Title with the Use Field as Title button. It allows you to select a field in a document and use that field's value as the Title source for a category of documents.

[Bonus tip 2] You can also quickly select documents via check boxes using the "automatic" CheckBox selection methods: CheckBox Selection > Select using Regular expressions... or CheckBox Selection > Select All with Identical Displayed Title... to help you select many documents for large scale actions.

Watch a short Flash tutorial for a quick overview of scanEZ and all its features.

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