How can I recover my Notes User ID?

If you lose your User ID, damage it, or forget your password, and you do not use an ID vault, you can recover your User ID only if your administrators set up recovery information for you. Your User ID contains recovery information if the "Mail Recovery ID" button on the Security Basics panel of the User Security dialog box is enabled.

About this task

Note: The procedure described in this topic is not necessary if your User ID is stored in an ID vault. In that case, if your ID is missing from your workstation or if you delete a damaged copy of the ID from the workstation, a new copy of the ID will be downloaded from the vault automatically if your client is connected to a server. If you forget your password, your administrator provides instructions in the Notes® login window describing how to get it reset. To determine if your ID is stored in a vault, click File > Security > User Security (Macintosh OS X users: Lotus Notes > Security > User Security).Then in the Security Basics tab look for the text "This ID file has been backed up into vault <vaultname>." If you do not see this text, your ID is not stored in a vault.

Once you have recovery information in your User ID, and your administrator has ID recovery set up, IBM® Lotus Notes® will help you when your ID file is modified in certain ways. For instance, when you acquire a new public key, accept a name change, accept or create a document encryption key, or perform other types of User ID operations, Lotus Notes automatically sends updated encrypted backup User IDs to the centralized database.

If you already have recovery information set up for your User ID, go directly to "To recover your User ID." If you do not have recovery information set up for you, you must set it up before you can recover your User ID.

Results

To set up recovery information for your User ID

About this task

If you plan to use a Smartcard, you must set up recovery information for your User ID before you enable Smartcard login.

Procedure

Contact your administrator to let him or her know you want recovery information set up for your User ID. If recovery can be set up for you, your administrator will do this and then send you an e-mail with recovery information attached.
Open the e-mail that contains the recovery information from your administrator.
Click Actions > Accept Recovery Information.
In the "Backup ID File" dialog box, click Send to send an initial backup User ID to the recovery database.

Results

Note: An encrypted backup copy of a User ID cannot be used with Lotus Notes unless it was recovered by you or your IBM Lotus® Domino® administrator(s).

To recover your User ID

About this task

Procedure

If your administrator has already set up recovery information for you, contact your administrator to have him or her send you the password(s) needed to recover your User ID. The recovery password is randomly generated and unique to each recoverable User ID and administrator.
Note: If you do not have access to your User ID, contact your administrator who can provide you with an encrypted backup of your User ID. Once you have the backup User ID, continue with the following steps.
Once you have your recovery password(s), restart Lotus Notes. In the Password dialog box when you first login to Lotus Notes, click OK without entering your password.
Click Recover Password in the wrong password dialog box. (You may need to wait a short while until the Backup ID File dialog box appears.)
Select the User ID to recover in the Choose ID File to Recover dialog box.
Enter the password(s) given to you by your administrator(s) in the Enter Passwords dialog box, and repeat until you have entered all of the passwords and you get prompted to enter a new password for your User ID.
Enter a new password for your User ID, and confirm it when prompted.
CAUTION:
If you do not enter a new password, you will need to recover your User ID again.
Replace all backups of your User ID, and copies of your User ID that you are using, with the newly recovered User ID.