Q.  I am unable to setup the Activities sidebar in the Lotus Notes 8.5 to connect to the Lotuslive Activities server because the Activities preferences are greyed out when trying to edit the sidebar.

A.  If the Activities Preference is greyed out, it means the Activities sidebar was in Local/Offline mode at a time the server became unreachable.

The Activities sidebar in Notes 8.5 is deliberately designed so that if you are working off-line, the Activities Server Settings cannot be modified and greyed out. This design causes problems when your password on the server is changed while in Local/offline mode and the server is no longer accessible..

The work-around to this scenario:
-Close the Notes client.
-Edit the following file in a Text editor: \workspace\.metadata\.plugins\org.eclipse.core.runtime\.settings\com.ibm.openactivities.client.common.prefs
-Set the following parameter: user.is.offline=false
-Start the Notes client, the Activities preferences should now be available.