Lotus smartsuite and Windows - This works for me under Windows 10; will it, should I upgrade to Windows 11?

Jon, thank you for taking the time to reply. I do not know what website to go to for Lotus / IBM Smartsuite queries such as this, hence my request for any results of real, live users of Organizer / Word Pro......fingers crossed that some exist. I'd prefer to hear of such users, to give me confidence to make the leap from Windows 10 to 11.

Rodrigo,

thank you for taking the time to be helpful.

Your reply does give me hope (and I like "hope"!),

but

it does not give me the "virtually nailed on" confidence that I ideally seek, BEFORE embarking on what might prove to be an abortive upgrade to Windows 11, that the versions of Word Pro and Smartsuite that I have installed on my new PC, WILL function with my existing (and mostly OLD!) Word Pro and Organizer files; it sounds as though, recently, you downloaded a version of these 2 of the Smartsuite programs (from somewhere, presumably for free?), and saw that you could create a new organizer file / Word Pro document, which I feel is not the same situation that I am in?

thank you, again,

William

I had some success installing Lotus Smart Suite Millenium Edition on my Windows 11 computer. This Smart Suite was designed for Win 95, Win 98, and Windows NT 4.0. My computer is a Dell XPS8940 running Windows 11 Home Edition 64-bit version 21H2 OS Build 22000.556.

I put the Lotus CD in the DVD drive. Don't run Autorun -- it led to this message: "This app may not work correctly" ; instead, right click on the DVD drive icon and choose "Open in New Window".

I think Install.exe and Setup.exe bring you to the same place. At some point I needed to click on the blue and yellow Windows Shield and "Allow... unknown publisher."

The first time I clicked on Install, I chose the network option -- that gave me trouble. To undo the trouble, I had to delete all the files Lotus made, and I had to go to Task Manager to" End Task" a file called "remind32.exe". I rebooted and Installed again, this time without the network option.

When given a choice of what stuff to install, I chose not to install the "Screen Cam". After installing Lotus, I rebooted. At first, I had a problem saving a Word Pro file to the desktop -- so I saved the file in a Documents subdirectory -- but after another reboot this problem seemed to clear up.

I hope that helps.

March 27, 2022

Thank you so much for your response. However, a few weeks ago, I took the nuclear response and decided to to sift through every single Lotus Smartsuite file I have, individually, and either delete it or convert it, individually, to a Microsoft format file. I am still progressing along that road, but once I complete this time-consuming (understatement) exercise, I will delete Lotus Smartsuite and then upgrade to Windows 11, hopefully having future-proofed all of those converted files.

I don’t have a job, so this time-eating route should be doable, and became my preferred route in the face of the “forever” fiddling and uncertainties associated with maintaining my use of Lotus.

However, again, I thank you, sm_live, for your assistance.

I have been using Approach to run my business since it came out. I have just recently updated my server to RDS 2016 and my companies laptops to Windows 11. To get Approach to work on either platform I had to do the following

1. compatibility mode - Windows XP (service Pak 3)

2. Use 'Cutepdf' as the default printer. Without this printer I could not print (in many cases a crash occurred) crosstabs and reports.

3. the only function that does not work is the send key macro or lotus script.

I am now good to go till Windows RDS2016 or me goes end of life ;-0

If you want to retain the full functionality of Lotus Smartuite the best option is to use VirtualBox (free for personal use) and install one or more virtual machines for the OS you need. You can then install your applications into the OS they were designed for confident that they will run without unnecessary issues. Virtual machines can be configured to share folders and other resources such as printers. You can also enable sharing the clipboard between the host and guest. Whilst it is possible to expose any virtual machine to the internet it is best not to do that for security reasons.
Using VirtualBox enables me to retain fully functional access to some very ancient applications and is highly recommended.