Backing up Ceartain Parts of Your Notebook

[SRP]

I know onenote automatically backs up your entire notebook and you can sync
notebooks across computers, but what i want to do is just manually backup the
notebook to a file(or a series of files) and put them on my desktop. I use
onenote primarily on my laptop, but would prefer to back things up to a
desktop where i have much more space. Ie at the end of the week i'd like to
backup my entire notebook, and put on the desktop.

Also, i know this is a little tricky but, is there anyway to take parts of
the noteboook out on my laptop and back them up to the pc ? The reason i
want to do this is because i have a class section where i put different
quarters notes. Problem is since i use audio notes each quarter can eat up a
few gigs worth of notes. I'd ideally like to take the entire quarter and put
it on my desktop when i'm done and remove it from my laptop. Is there anyway
to do this? Would i have to use notebook synchronization for this or can i
manually do this with one note features? Ie i'd ideally like to be able to
view all my class history on my desktop where space is not an issue, but only
the quarter i'm working on while i'm using my laptop.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

OneNote 2003 or 2007?

Patrick Schmid

 

[SRP]

Onenote 2007. I should add that i basically want to strip out a section that
contains many folders from my notebook.

Ie

Classes (Notebook level)
->Spring 2006 (has various folders)
->Summer 2006 (has various folders)
->Fall 2006 (has various folders)

Basically i want to strip out the spring 2006 part of the notebook so its
only on my desktop and only keep the quarters im currently dealing with.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Here is what I would do:
- close all notebooks in ON. Then close ON
- move all your notebooks to your Desktop. Basically move the entire
OneNote Notebooks folder to your desktop. Don't leave any notebooks
behind on your laptop. Make sure the folder on your desktop is shared.
- Spring, Summer and Fall are section groups? If yes, promote them to
Notebooks. To do so just move them on the Windows folder level on which
Classes is currently on. Sync works on a notebook level, so the only way
to sync individual quarters is by making them notebooks. Then delete the
empty Classes folder
- Using File, Open Notebook on your laptop open all the notebooks that
way
- ON will take its sweet time to load all the content for the notebooks
as it has to sync several GB. Give it that time

Now you get the best deal possible. Your laptop has all ON content only
once (in the local cache) instead of twice as currently (local cache +
original files). You use the cheaper hard drive space of your desktop
instead. You can open all notebooks via ON on your desktop and all
changes made on either one will be synced easily. If you don't want a
notebook on your laptop anymore, simply close it and ON will remove all
the content from the laptop hard drive.

Patrick Schmid

 

[SRP]

I'm a little confused, wait so first thing i do is move all my notebooks to
the desktop after closing them in one note. Then at this point i promote
spring 2006 to a notebook by moving it to the directory with all my other
notebooks(Ie classes, general, organizer)? At this point i share it(am i
sharing it on the desktop or the laptop) and then i "open" and "close"
notebooks as i need them on my laptop? Ie lets say all 3 quarters use 6 gb,
if i sharet hem from my desktop once i 'close' them on my laptop it'll only
use 4 gb?

Is it possible for me to just say copy a spring 2006 folder outright and
then put it on my desktop? Will this way preserve all the audio
synchornization or no? All i want is the current quarter on my laptop, and
everything else on my desktop where space is less of a concern.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

As I understood, you currently have all your notebooks on your laptop?
So yes, the first thing you do is move all the notebooks to your desktop
after closing them on your laptop. (using Windows Explorer)
Then you promote it to where you said. (again using Windows Explorer)
Then you are sharing the folder on your desktop that contains all your
notebooks (so the folder above classes, general, organizer, spring 2006)
using the Windows folder sharing feature.
After that, you can just use File, Open (in OneNote) on your laptop to
open the Spring 2006 notebook on that network share.
It will then sync the entire spring 2006 notebook onto your laptop.

Let's say your spring 2006 notebook is 2 GB big. When you open it on
your laptop, ON will download the full 2 GB from your desktop and store
it locally. After the initial download, it will keep the original files
on your desktop in sync with the copy cached on your laptop (you don't
have to worry about editing the same page on both machines, OneNote will
sync whatever you edit together rather niftily). When you close the
notebook on your laptop, the 2 GB will be fully removed from your laptop
again.

Is this a bit clearer?

Patrick Schmid

 

[SRP]

Yes, i think it does. My question is though will audio sync remain? I know
a lot of the audio files are stored in a cache folder in application data or
something to that extent..

 

[Patrick Schmid]

But they are natively stored somewhere in your notebooks folder. ON just
copies them to the cache folder and will continue to do so once you
moved your notebooks to the desktop.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rainald Taesler]

Patrick Schmid <[email protected]> shared these words of
wisdom:

SRP and Patrick, pls permit my jumping in (just working on almost the
same problem):

When you close the
notebook on your laptop, the 2 GB will be fully removed from
your laptop again.

A how to go when I want to *KEEP* things on the notebook (to have them
with me "on the road")?
How to sync items changed or added while out of the house and no
network-connection to my desktop at home?

Almost always I am not shutting down my notebook (TabletPC), sending
it into hibernation instead. But it happens that I have to shut it
down. And this would include "closing" ON too.

Pls excuse me in case the abvove is as dumb as I feel it was :-( :-(
I guess I have completely misunderstood the concept [siiiigh].

Rainald

 

[Patrick Schmid]

A how to go when I want to *KEEP* things on the notebook (to have them

with me "on the road")?
How to sync items changed or added while out of the house and no
network-connection to my desktop at home?

I think Chris Pratley has a nice post explaining the basics on syncing.
The gist is that your notebook is synced to your laptop hard drive when
you open the notebook. This is not like opening a file in Word or so,
but rather ON opens multiple notebooks and they appear in your
navigation pane until you close them explicitly (if you close ON and
reopen it, it appears exactly with the same notebooks opened and on the
same page you left it). So closing ON doesn't imply closing a notebook
as closing Word would mean closing all opened Word documents.

Hence the beauty is that you can open a number of notebooks in ON, close
ON, shut down your computer and open ON again with no network connection
at all and you don't even notice a difference. The only thing you really
need to be mindful of is to open OneNote when you have the network
connection to your desktop again, because ON needs to be open to sync.
Basically that means, when your tablet is at home, just leave ON open
there. Work on your desktop with ON then and if you wait roughly 30
seconds to 1 minute after making the last edit in ON on your desktop
(with ON open on your tablet), you are virtually guaranteed to have that
edit on your tablet while the tablet is offline later as well.
If you want a 100% guarantee that the notebooks on the tablet are fully
up to date, hit F9 on the tablet or just close ON. Both actions trigger
a full sync.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rainald Taesler]

Thanks a million, Patrick.
Fantastic explanation!

Will check in Chris Pratley's blog too.

Thanks again
Rainald