I am working with a vendor to debug an issue with a Lotus Domino 6.5 application. The vendor had originally asked me to make a copy of the application by going to File > Database > New Copy > Design Only, and then to copy some sample documents (with sensitive info removed) from the original database to the new database. But when I copy documents in this way, the views do not display correctly.
I then tried making a copy of the application by going to File > Database > New Copy > Design and Documents, and then deleting all but a few documents. When I copy documents in this way, the views display correctly, but the database size is huge, which makes me think that the original documents have not really been deleted. For privacy reasons, all deleted documents need to be unrecoverable.
My question: How can I purge documents that have been marked for deletion in this way?
While in the database, choose File - Application - Properties from the menu, click the last tab (the propeller-hat) and deselect these two database properties if they are selected:
Once you've done that, choose File - Replication - Options for this Application..., click the "Other" tab, and change the date/time to the current date/time. This gets rid of the "deletion stubs" which remain for a time so that, if replication occurs with a different machine, that machine learns that the document was deleted rather than telling yours "Oh! Here's a brand new document!" This is completely unnecessary unless you want to ensure that even the count or internal ids of deleted documents are removed. The actual content will be gone.
After that, compact the database because you'll have free space or, if you want to be really paranoid, create a copy of your copy.