Reading Lotus Notes Mail using Emacs

As of emacs version 21, emacs is able to fetch mail from multiple sources. The instructions below will arrange to fetch mail from both your Unix inbox and the Fordham Lotus Notes system. It should be clear how to apply the same method to fetch your mail from a commercial ISP as well, so long as that ISP supports the POP protocol.

In this example, your Lotus Notes user name is taken to be juser, and your Unix account name is taken to be joeuser. You should make the appropriate changes in the example, to substitute your actual user names in each place. Also, the mail server is given as mail-l.fordham.edu. You should substitute the first letter of your Lotus Notes user name in place of j.

To configure emacs to fetch your mail from the Lotus Notes mail server using the POP-3 protocol, add lines like these at the end of the file .emacs in your home directory:

(set-variable 'rmail-primary-inbox-list
   (quote ("po:juser:mail-j.fordham.edu"
           "/var/spool/mail/joeuser"
   )))
(setq rmail-pop-password-required t)

For your convenience, the file /usr/local/adm/def.emacs-pop contains this example, as well as some alternatives and other customizations. You can insert this file into your .emacs file, making the appropriate changes for your usernames and preferences.

Now, when you use the emacs rmail command, it will start up reading the old mail in your RMAIL file. When you give the command to get new mail (the g key), it will prompt you for your password on the Lotus Notes server. Then it will fetch the mail so you can read it. Note that emacs deletes the messages from the server, saving them to the RMAIL file unless you delete them or file them elsewhere.