Naming a view or folder

Naming tips

Keep these things in mind when naming views:

• The name is case-sensitive and can be any combination of characters, including letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation. Note the following:
  • _ (underscore) means that the following character is the menu shortcut key. For example, "By _Name" means that N is the menu shortcut key.
  • \ (backslash) designates the view hierarchy in the outline and menu. For example, "Requests\by Item No." means that the user sees Requests menu with sub-entries including "by Item No."
  • | (vertical bar) is used to separate the title of the view from its aliases. For example, "Contacts|People" means that the title of the view is "Contacts" and its alias is "People".
  • If the name is enclosed in parenthesis -- for example, (LookupKeys) -- the view is hidden from the end user and does not appear in menus.
  • Control characters (codes less than Unicode 32 decimal) may not be used.
• The full name, including all aliases, can have up to 64 characters.
• Views appear in alphabetical order in the View menu in Notes® and in the View lists on the Web. To force names to appear in a different order, number or letter them. For example:

  1. Zebra

  2. Antelope

  Note: Using an outline to organize views gives you greater control over the order in which views display.
• If you start a name with a hyphen (-), the name appears before both numbers and letters.
• When possible, assign a name that indicates how the view sorts documents -- for example, By Company Name or All by Category -- or specifies which documents it includes, for example, New Customers.
• Use consistent names across databases to make it easier for users to recognize views.

Aliases

An alias is another name, or synonym, for a particular view or folder. Use an alias to change or translate the view name without causing lookup formulas that reference the view to stop working if the view name is changed. Aliases follow the same naming rules as view names.

Enter an alias in the Alias field of the Info tab of the View or Folder Properties box. You can append more than one alias by entering the vertical bar symbol (|) followed by the alias. Make sure you keep the original alias last in the text list.

Main View | Top View | View1

Hidden views

When you surround a name with parentheses -- for example, (All) -- the view does not appear to Notes® users in the Notes® View menu or to Web users or Notes® users in the list of folders and views.

Shortcut keys

Windows™ users can type shortcut letters to select a view or folder. The default shortcut, an underlined letter in a view name, is the first letter in the name that has not already been used by a preceding name on the menu. But if views or folders begin with the same letter, the default shortcut is the first letter that has not already been used by a preceding name. If views or folders begin with the same letter, the shortcut letters may be difficult to see and remember. For example, the shortcut letters (underlined) for these views are

By Author
By Date

You can rename the views or folders and omit the repeated word, but in some cases the word is needed to make the names understandable.

Authors

Dates

If you can't change the names, you can specify a shortcut by typing an underscore before a letter to make that letter the shortcut. For the By Date view, you can make the letter D the shortcut in this way:

By _Date

Cascading views

Creating cascading views lets you arrange lists of views in a hierarchy; that way, a group of related menu items are organized under one item. A user clicks on the higher-level name to display the cascaded list. You probably want to cascade views when you have long lists of views or when you have related views that should be grouped together.

To create a cascading view, enter the name you want to appear on the Create menu followed by a backslash (\), and then add the view name. For example, the Personal Address Book template has two views related to servers:

Server\Certificates
Server\Connections