It started with a call from a user who was trying to read email using DWA iNotes. He reported a syntax error problem and provided this screenshot:

Note: The users template is still version 8.0.2.

Soon other users called in reporting a formula error when trying to read mails using Lotus Notes Client.
If could reproduce the issue when trying to open the users maildatabase from the admin client.


I tried a fixup first:
01/29/2009 14:46:30 Database Fixup: Started
01/29/2009 14:46:30 Performing consistency check on mail/claudia.nsf...
01/29/2009 14:46:37 Recovery Manager: Assigning new DBIID for /data/mail/claudia.nsf (need new backup for media recovery).
01/29/2009 14:46:38 Completed consistency check on mail/claudia_brandlehner.nsf
01/29/2009 14:46:39 Database collection open error: /data/mail/claudia.nsf: Formula Error
01/29/2009 14:46:39 Database Fixup: Error fixing view 27230 in mail/claudia.nsf: Formula Error
01/29/2009 14:46:39 Database Fixup: Shutdown

So obviously there is some issue with a view. I used the manage views tool from the admin client and found two populated views in the database.


Tried to purge the Inbox:


But again, the formula error.


Looking for a larger weapon I issued a compact -D mail/claudia.nsf. Another fixup showed that the broken view is now history.
But, trying to open the database still/again fails.

Ytria ScanEZ allows me to open the database, I try to delete the profile documents that affect how Notes/Domino build a view. I delete "colorprofile", "calcolorprofile". After that I could open the database but some views soon start to throw the formula error again. I got even more aggressive and deleted all profile documents except the calendarprofile and the archive profile. That did it. Now the database works just fine again.

I decided to continue exploring and took the next user on the list. After compact -D the list of profile documents is (screenshot taken from Ytria ScanEZ):


This time I delete "colorprofile", "inotesprofile" and "inotesviewprofile".

This solves the problem for this user. Not sure what the real root cause is for the problem but I am happy for now that we can fix the databases.


Update: Soon after fixing the issue the problem reoccured for users using DWA/iNotes. I found some related problem posted in the Notes/Domino 8 Forum which was caused by attention indicators.
I think the problem I see was caused by an incorrect message indicator formula AFTER the Domino 8.5 upgrade because pevious version of DWA/iNotes did not support Policies. Now with 8.5 the Policies on that server, meant to be used for Notes Client users, did also apply to DWA/iNotes users.



Giveaways:
When upgrading to Domino 8.5, disable the Recipient Indicators (see screenshot from policy settings doc above) BEFORE upgrading.