sync problem

[tony]

I have just begun using ON and am running into difficulties setting up a
simple sync between my desktop PC (XP) and my notebook PC (XP). The notebook
PC ON seems to sync ok to the files on the desktop in a shared directory
created for this purpose. HOwever, the desktop ON shows its sync commands as
greyed out, as if it is not configured to sync the files. This is the case
even when I create a new shared notebook with the desktop computer ON wizard.
Can you help?

 

[HancR]

I guess you shared a local folder on your Desktop PC. It doesn't need to
sync then (synching is done solely by your laptop)... thus the greyed out
sync-button. It would have the sync option if you had a third PC (server)
involved that hosts the original notebooks

BTW: ON 2007 sync beats the heck out of ON 2003 synching (via mobsync)...
probably the greatest improvement in ON 2007 imo!!

 

[tony]

Thanks for your response. That makes sense. However, something is still
wrong. Based on what you said, I created 2 ON notebooks on my desktop PC in
a shared directory. The first was configured "I will use it on this
computer". The second was configured "I will use it on multiple computers".
Then I opened these same 2 ON notebooks in ON on my notebook PC. The notebook
PC shows the sync Icon on both notebook tabs. So far so good.

Now, when I enter data on the notebook PC into either of these ON notebooks,
that data does not appear on the desktop PC after I select "sync now" on the
notebook pc. Likewise, if I enter data on either ON notebook (on the desktop
pc), that data does not appear on the notebook PC after I have synchronized
ON (on the notebook PC). The sync icon on the notebook PC ON tab appears to
update, but I don't get a check mark on the icon. Also, If I try to close the
notebook PC ON notebook, I get the error message that "the notebook that I
tried to close contains changes that have not been sync'd."

I seem to be missing something....

 

[HancR]

Hi tony. I can't tell you right away why it's not working, but I can tell
you how I got it working:

Step 1:
On Desktop PC: Created a share with complete access permissions for the "my
documents" folder ("my notebooks" folder is in there).
On Laptop: Navigate to the shared folder and map it to a drive (for example
drive "Z:"). In case you don't know how to map a drive: Either right-click
on the shared folder and choose "map drive" or use the Tools-menu in
Explorer. This drive gets mapped automatically every time I start the laptop
(There is the "reconnect on startup" option when you map the drive).

Step 2:
On Laptop: Navigate to the new drive (it's in "My Computer") and check if
you have the necessary access permissions to write and modify a file in the
"my notebooks" folder (copy some txt-file there and see if you can edit it).
If not, then check your ntfs security settings for that folder on your
desktop PC (if you are using ntfs). If access is restricted to certain
accounts it will usually prompt you to log in when you try to access the
share/mapped drive. I simply logged in with my Desktop's admin account and
told the laptop to remember the password (you can use any account that
exists on your desktop, as long as it has the necessary permissions for that
folder).

Step 3:
Once you established that your laptop can access and write/modify on the
mapped drive that points to your shared folder (this might work differently
as well, but since I never tried it any other way and it worked for me so
far):
I modified the default notebook location in my laptop's OneNote
(Tools/Options/Save) to the "my notebooks" folder on the mapped drive. But I
guess it should work if you just open the notebooks from the mapped drive
and leave the default notebook location in a local folder.

As soon as you open a notebook from the mapped drive it should start
synching right away.

Hope that helps

 

[tony]

That was a big help. The key step that made the difference was your
suggestion to verify that my notebook PC actually could modify files on the
Desktop shared drive by sending a txt file and changing it. It turns out that
for some reason the notebook pc could save files to that shared drive, but it
could not modify them once it put them there. The notebook PC reported that
"another user had the file open" when I tried to modify it, even though I had
not tried to open it anywhere else. The solution? A reboot of the desktop.
Something in the desktop network config must have been corrupted. Go Figure.

Thanks very much for your posts-- they did the job!