OneNote / Office 2007 Beta2 coming soon!

[Daniel Escapa [MS]]

http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/



Sign up now to get an email once Beta2 is available for download.



We would like you all to test out the new version and let us know what you
think. Thanks!

 

[Kent]

How does one get a OneNote 2007 Beta prior to the official release? I am
using GoBinder, and it crashes way too much. The reason I switched was
because OneNote 2003 didn't allow linking, but looks like 2007 will.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Kent,

You can't. You have to wait till the official release of Beta 2 (like
everyone else). There are a few people in this group (including myself)
who have pre-Beta 2 versions of OneNote 2007. We are part of the small
technical beta group (about 10,000 people worldwide) of Office 2007.

Patrick Schmid

 

[EMRhelp.org]

The reason I switched was
because OneNote 2003 didn't allow linking, but looks like 2007 will.

The Linking in OneNote 2007 is superb. It works as it should. Which
is rare for OneNote. Many similar apps to OneNote have not been
successful in good internal/external linking. Kudos to OneNote 2007.

 

[Jonathan]

All,
I will use OneNote for next year's teaching - the kids come back July 25th,
but I have to get a lot of the structure ready in OneNote before that. I own
OneNote for both my current machines and have a Toshiba tablet on order to be
the classroom management "hub". This new unit comes with OneNote bundled (I
don't know if it is pre-installed and waiting for a key or just on a CD
included in the packaging...)

As I plan to participate in the public 2007 beta, should I avoid installing
the 2003 if it is not yet pre-installed? Do all of you recommend that I back
up everything into 2003 on one of my other computers in case something goes
wrong due to unforseen (after all it's a beta) conflicts? Perhaps the data
formats are not backwards-compatible.

After the school year starts there just isn't time to "switch" to the 2007
and build processes based on the better linkages, etc., of 2007. I do want to
have close linkage between OneNote and Outlook.

(I have posted on this here in a separate question, but, where are forums or
sites which lay out/discuss OneNote systems and organization ideas in deep
detail?)

Jonathan

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Jonathan,

As I plan to participate in the public 2007 beta, should I avoid installing
the 2003 if it is not yet pre-installed? Do all of you recommend that I back
up everything into 2003 on one of my other computers in case something goes
wrong due to unforseen (after all it's a beta) conflicts? Perhaps the data
formats are not backwards-compatible.

Data formats are not backwards-compatible. Once you have upgraded your
notes to 2007 (or made new ones with 2007), that's it. There is NO way
to go back.
It is real beta software. This is NOT some small scale program that is
just labeled as beta for whatever reason, but has the same stability as
non-beta software. This beta version does have bugs. You should expect
occasional, random crashes, things that are supposed to work that are
not working, or other things that are major annoyances. Microsoft has
done a great job since the first beta in addressing and fixing a lot of
issues, but there are going to be bugs in B2 that already existed and
were identified in the current beta version which MS just hasn't fixed
yet. This is REAL beta software. The warning that you should not use
beta software for critical work does apply here and you should only
switch to OneNote 2007 for real work, if you:
a) are willing & prepared to put up with minor and major annoyances that
won't be fixed for months and for which there probably is no workaround.
b) understand that you won't have access to personal Microsoft support.
Microsoft employees will pop into the public newsgroups now and then,
but no one from MS will help you directly and personally in identifying
and solving an issue. If you need help, then most likely your only
source for help will be the few participants in the technical beta that
frequent this newsgroup. The members of the technical beta will continue
to have direct access to Microsoft and MS will continue to work with us
on specific issues and help identify workarounds. We will try to help
you as best as we can, but there are limits to what we can do.
c) make frequent backups. I personally back up all my onenote notebooks
every night automatically
d) are willing to take some gambles. I have had occasions when something
(quite a lot) was gone on my tablet, but it turned out it was still
there and ON for some reason only showed it after syncing. If you can't
put up with the heart attack of first thinking you lost data and then
second with trying whether syncing will get it back, then you shouldn't
use the beta for real life work.
I have been using ON 2007 since November exclusively and I have yet to
lose any (serious amount of) data. I had my fair share of crashes,
annoyances, minor data loses (last few words I wrote before a crash
e.g.), etc, but ON 2007 has been good besides that. I also haven't heard
of anyone with a major data loss.
If you choose to use ON 2007 Beta 2, you should keep in mind that you
will have to buy the retail version eventually. Beta versions have an
expiration date. You will be able to upgrade your files from B2 to the
retail version.
I don't want to discourage you from using ON 2007 B2, because I think ON
2007 is a great product and you will probably be fine. However, I want
you to clearly understand the risk you'd be taking.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Jonathan]

Patrick,
I really appreciate your thoughtful and carefully crafted response. I am
the kind of computer user that can absorb a lot of glitches, but I will think
carefully before commiting the classroom structure to 2007. I love working
out at the edge, though.

Some of the benefit I want comes from interoperability with Outlook 2007 so
that would introduce another layer of flakiness to work with *two* betas
conjoined! I don't even know if there is a B2 for Outlook, and that's taking
risks with my contact database.

Again, thanks.

Jonathan

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Jonathan,

The B2 for Outlook and OneNote will be released at the same time. The B2
that will be released is that of Office 2007 of which OneNote and
Outlook are both part of.
I have been working solely (with exceptions, namely when bugs wouldn't
allow me) with Office 2007 since November. That means Access, Excel,
Outlook, OneNote, PowerPoint, Word, SharePoint Designer (one of the two
successors of FrontPage). Add to that that I have Internet Explorer 7
Beta as well (quite a few of the technical beta members are also in the
Vista beta, so they run the Office beta on the Windows Vista beta...).
I wouldn't worry too much about your Outlook contacts. Simply make
regular copies of your Outlook PST file and you should be fine. The
Outlook 2007 PST files can be opened in 2003 as well.
For backups/regular copies, I'd highly suggest to use the
grandfather-father-son principle, meaning have three different copies
and overwrite always the oldest one.

Patrick

 

[Andrew Watt [MVP]]

Jonathan,

In terms of saving "real life" data to beta products I am a little
more cautious than Patrick sounds.

ON 2007 offers other ways forward too, in the unlikely event that the
worst came to the worst with any data you collected in Beta 2. You
can, for example, save OneNote 2007 sections as PDF or as Word
documents so the chances of data being "stuck" in any way in OneNote
2007 are pretty small in my view.

Andrew Watt MVP

 

[Jonathan]

Andrew, Patrick,
Are there automated methods (either under ON or Office in general, or
third-party) to ensure that whole sections of OneNote are saved out into
these other formats, then transferred out to another drive/media? I haven't
used Office macros in years, but that's what it sounds like I would need. I
would be willing to keep a USB-fed HD in an enclosure in my bag and hook up
on a daily? weekly? basis.

The .doc format would be more easily deconstructed and recreated as OneNote
info if it had to be the source of a restore, right?

Perhaps the format change is something I would have resign myself to do
daily and one of the many back-up tools can do the rest easily.

Thanks for continuing the discussion.

Jonathan

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Jonathan,

OneNote doesn't have VBA built-in like Word or Excel. You'd have to
write a COM Add-In using e.g. Visual Studio.
If your ON data went south, you could always print a PDF or Word
document back into OneNote. You'd keep the content & look, but it would
be simply images inside ON. I suppose Word might be easiest to
reconstruct from. However, I'd suggest that you try it first. So try
backing up a section with real life content and then restore it before
you commit yourself to a particular method.
Andrew is right that I personally am more willing to take a risk with
beta software. I have to admit though that with another Office 2007 beta
program, I fell flat on my face with crucial data. It took me hours to
restore what I had lost in a complicated manner.

Patrick

 

[ricochet]

Jonathan,
Check out www.foldershare.com -- it's a terrific product, and it
provides a poor man's automated backup service. It can sync multiple
machines, and it does it on the fly. That is, you update a OneNote
file, or other document, Foldershare sees it, and updates it on the
other machine. Instant backup. I set this up between my work machine
and my home machine and I also use Mozy to keep an offsite copy stored
in encrypted form.