one note synchronization

[jchris]

Will there be a way for me to share notebooks with a PC that cannot connect
to the network. Such as a flash key or other media. My current tablet pc
which I use for notes in meetings cannot access the network because it is not
approved by my network administrator. With Onenote 2003 I have to manually
synchronize/copy files which doesn't work if I change more than one version
of onenote.

 

[Chris H.]

Have you tried using a USB memory stick? If the machines can't be
networked, that probably would do the trick.
--
Chris H.
Microsoft Windows MVP/Tablet PC
Tablet Creations - http://nicecreations.us/
Associate Expert
Expert Zone -

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Have you tried storing a notebook on a USB stick with ON 2007? If not,
give it a try and open it on a different computer.
Please let us know what you see when you do it.

Patrick Schmid

 

[jchris]

Can you give me more details. I am using a memory stick to copy the file
from one machine to another, but that is not the same as synchronizing. The
problem is if I make changes to the notebook on both machines they don't
reconcile. Will 2007 address this?

 

[David Tse [MS]]

Yes, USB keys are a viable way to setup shared notebooks between computers
(for OneNote 2007). Just create a notebook on the USB drive and open it as a
notebook from each of your machinese.

We remember the unique ID of the drive, we sync to it, and cache the
notebooks locally on each machine so when you pull the drive out it’s still
available in OneNote. You can make edits to it etc. Put the USB drive back in
and we automatically sync back to it. In this way you can move a USB drive
between machines and share content, and even if you don’t actually have the
USB drive with you at some particular point in time you can just continue
using the notebook on the machine, and next time you plug it in it will sync
the contents and merge with changes from the other machine. The nice thing
about our solution is because it’s based on the Volume ID it doesn’t matter
if the USB drive gets mapped to a different drive letter when you plug it in.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Short answer, yes they should. The USB stick scenario was specifically
addressed in 2007.

Patrick Schmid

 

[jchris]

thanks!!! I haven't tried yet because my work machine has office 2000 and
insn't compatible with ON 2007. I will try on two laptops.

 

[jchris]

awesome! Thanks, once they upgrade my office machine to XP I'll try. In the
meantime I can only use ON 2007 on my tablet PC.

 

[David Coyer]

I am doing just that. I have a USB stick that has my "main" notebooks on it.
I am accessing that stick from two different computers. Works great. Two
issues I have found, though:

1. When you use the print to one note feature, it does not work if you do
not have the USB stick available. It seems that this feature wants to write
to your Master file location and not the cache. I can't find any way to
change this.

2. Similar to one, if I try to use a quick note or use the SEND TO ONE NOTE
from Outlook or IE, I get an error message stating that One Note cannot find
my Unfiled Notes file. If I stick the USB device back in, everything starts
working again.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi David,

Go into Tools, Options, Filing Rules. Take a look at those filing rules
there. These rules specify where printouts or other send to onenote
items end up in OneNote.
In order for this to work while you are offline (running off the cache),
you need to make sure that you have the notebooks specified in the
filing rules open. The cache only works with opened notebooks. Once you
close a notebook its contents are removed from the cache.
If the notebooks are open, printing and other send to onenote items
should work while offline.
Please let me know if this isn't the case for you.

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid

 

[David Rasmussen [MS]]

Patricks right (as usual.. )
And just to clarify one thing David. If you were closing the notebook before
moving the USB drive, you don't actually need to do that. That's the beauty
of our sync model. Just open the notebook from the USB drive in OneNote.
Leave it open. Pull out the USB drive at any point without closing notebook
(you may want to hit F9 to force a sync before doing it, but it's not
necessary as we save every 30 seconds or so and we'll merge the changes
later even if you missed the last 30 seconds). Then you can move USB drive
to the other machine. You can continue to make edits on both machines when
USB drive isn't in one of them, we'll just merge those changes into the
notebook the next time the USB drive is plugged in.

 

[Stick]

WOW! The way y'all have chosen to do synchronization is incredible! Other
companies should take note (so to speak). Keep up the good work!

-a reformed and converted (ex-)user of GoBinder

 

[bluespapa]

Patrick,

This needs to be clearer on the help website!

Sharing notebooks with a flash drive turns out to be an incredibly powerful
tool, but one that is not at all clear on the help menus available. What it
doesn't make clear on the help menues is that I don't have to have the flash
drive sticking out of my laptop everytime I want to open OneNote. It doesn't
make clear that the open notebooks are cached on disk, meaning, I can turn
the computer off and go home, work without the flash drive, and next time I
insert the flash drive and open ON, it syncs that work.

I didn't know it did that until I read about it on a comment from you on
Chris Pratley's blog. I really was going crazy thinking about all the time I
was going to spend having to move files around, or else have to have the
flash drive sticking out of my computer everytime I wanted to pull it out and
take notes.

 

[Evan Easton]

David,
Is it possible to tailor the 30 second interval for SMB shares? Here's why:

I tried running against a non-IIS WebDAV server to share some work with
buddies of mine. Despite all my best efforts to configure it to work
correctly, the whole setup is just unstable. So now I've set up VPNed access
to a samba share on a personal machine.

Suffice to say, due to cable upload speeds, access to the SMB shares is
pretty slow. So slow that OneNote ALWAYS indicates that it is synching with
the share. It'd be nice if I could tweak the registry or something to tell
it only to ping the server every 10 minutes or so.

Is this possible?

Evan

Dan E - I cross posted this here in case you're experiencing a deja vu
moment
http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/archi...ow-onenote-storage-and-replication-works.aspx