As part of getting familiar with the capabilities of the Lotus Notes 8.5 client I was reviewing the available sidebar plug ins. This one jumped out as a simple idea done well. This addin called File Navigator allows access to the file system (remember Notes is multiplatform – Windows Mac and Linux) and facilitates dragging and dropping files into the current Notes document or email etc – fields permitting.
You can pick it up from here http://openntf.org/catalogs/a2cat.nsf/topicThread.xsp?action=openDocument&documentId=2DFAACEB82DE7876852576480020247F – again use the cog icon and drag that into your open my widgets panel. Restart the Notes client as directed and enjoy dragging files into apps – even easier than file / attach.
One note though – if you have a lot of network mapped drives and you don’t need to access files on them – consider “disabling” them using the preferences menu you get when right clicking on the File Navigator panel heading – then local drives option. I found it made getting the files I regularly access much easier.