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Elements of Notes®
The HCL Notes® user interface is comprised of views menus, toolbars, navigation panes, and a sidebar that you can use for easy access to some frequently used applications.
Using the sidebar
The sidebar provides constant access to your HCL Sametime® Contacts, Calendar, Feed Reader, and Activities. You can change which of these applications displays in your sidebar. However, depending on your organization, you may not have all of these applications in your sidebar.

Elements of Notes®
The HCL Notes® user interface is comprised of views menus, toolbars, navigation panes, and a sidebar that you can use for easy access to some frequently used applications.
- Using the Open list
  Use the Open list to open HCL Notes® applications, documents, bookmarks and bookmark folders. The Open list displays icons and a brief description for each item.
- Toolbars
  Toolbars work with all the applications in your workspace. Some toolbars are context sensitive, which means that they change depending on the task you are performing.
- Using the sidebar
  The sidebar provides constant access to your HCL Sametime® Contacts, Calendar, Feed Reader, and Activities. You can change which of these applications displays in your sidebar. However, depending on your organization, you may not have all of these applications in your sidebar.
- Status bar: current state information
  The status bar appears at the end of the HCL Notes® main window. As you work in Notes, system messages and features appear in the status bar.
- Working with window tabs
  Window tabs make it convenient for you to switch from one open document or application to another in HCL Notes®.
- Preferences
  You can customize HCL Notes® so that it runs and displays just the way you want it to using Notes preferences.

Using the sidebar

The sidebar provides constant access to your HCL Sametime® Contacts, Calendar, Feed Reader, and Activities. You can change which of these applications displays in your sidebar. However, depending on your organization, you may not have all of these applications in your sidebar.

About this task

The sidebar has three view states: open, thin (the default), and closed. The first time you open HCL Notes®, the sidebar is in the thin state. The following image shows a comparison of the sidebar in the thin state and in the open state.

Sidebar showing only application icons and with applications open

Use any of the following tasks to manage the sidebar. In addition to using the View menu, you can manage the sidebar using the application menu in the sidebar, or using right-click menus.

Table 1. Tasks used to manage the sidebar applications
Task	Steps
Open or close the sidebar	Click the View > Right Sidebar.
Select which applications display in the sidebar	Click the View > Right Sidebar Panels.
Open a sidebar application in its own window	Click the application's panel menu, and then choose Open in New Window. To return the application to the sidebar, simply close the application window.

Note: The first time you open a sidebar application, it may take a little longer to load than usual. This should not be the case the next time you open it.