Beta 2 Technical Refresh - please read all of it!

[Patrick Schmid]

Beta 2 Technical Refresh will be released today, September 14, at 9 am
Pacific Time. It can be downloaded from the Office Preview Site (same
location where Beta 2 was/is available). It will be free of charge for
everyone who already has Beta 2. Please read all of this post before you
install B2TR.

Here are some release notes from Daniel Escapa
(http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/archive/2006/09/14/753074.aspx):
* It is a patch update, that means that you _must_ have Office 2007
Beta2 installed on the system.
* The patch for OneNote will include the patch for all of Office so you
don't need two downloads.
* Since it includes both products (as well as others) it will be big!
~495 megs (English version) so be ready with your downloads
* It will be free, no charge for the download
* Make sure that you install the newest version of WDS so that search
works great in OneNote & Outlook
* Make sure to download the PDF+XPS addin if you want to publish to
those formats;
* Per usual you can open notes created in OneNote 2007 B1, B1TR, B2 &
B2TR but once you open the notes in OneNote 2007 B2TR they will be
updated to the newest version of the OneNote 2007 file format. You will
not be able to open B2TR files in B2, so if you are really cautious you
might want to make a backup of your files before opening OneNote 2007
B2TR for the first time. I don't do this but then again I am not that
cautious as some of your are and I don't store my class notes in OneNote
: )
* If you open for the first time since OneNote 2003 then it should take
of upgrade automatically however if you ran OneNote 2007 Beta2 at any
point then the first boot reg key will still be set.
* Log bugs for issues that you have!
WDS3 Beta 2:
http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/archive/2006/08/22/713234.aspx
XPS & PDF add-ins:
http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/archive/2006/09/14/752951.aspx
Office preview site:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/default.mspx
Log bugs at: http://connect.microsoft.com/onenote/

There are a few more very important things:
* The patch itself cannot be uninstalled. You can only remove Office &
OneNote 2007 in their entirety, but you cannot revert back to the Beta 2
level.
* Once the patch is installed, you cannot install any Beta 2 program
anymore. That means if you e.g. only have OneNote 2007 Beta 2 installed,
but want to take a look at the rest of Office 2007 later on, you will
have to install Office 2007 Beta 2 before you install the B2TR patch.
Once the patch is installed, you basically can't add any 2007 programs
to your computer.
* Keep the beta 2 downloads and the B2TR download somewhere on your
harddrive. Any reinstallation will require you to install Beta 2 first,
followed by the patch.
* You should focus on reporting bugs that are showstoppers. Microsoft is
aiming to lock down OneNote 2007, so only bugs that have serious
negative impact for users will be fixed.
* Synchronize all notebooks first before installing B2TR. You will have
to install the patch on all your computers with ON 2007 as well before
you can really use ON again.

* There have been important changes made to OneNote 2007
synchronization. These changes affect you if your OneNote notebooks are
contained in a folder that is held offline by Windows XP Offline Files.
This is mainly the case, if your OneNote Notebooks folder is contained
in a redirected My Documents folder. If you are in this situation, then
OneNote B2TR will no longer synchronize your notebooks with its own
mechanism, but rather leave it up to Windows Offline Files. That means,
that you no longer benefit from the ability to edit the same section at
the same time on two or more computers and have all the changes merged.
Instead, it is a file level synchronization. Microsoft had to take this
step, as they couldn't get ON synchronization to work well with Windows
Offline files. I suggest therefore to use the following approach for
upgrading to B2TR:
1. Make sure that all notebooks are fully synced (open ON and press F9
on every computer, then wait till you see all notebooks with a
checkmark) and there are no errors.
2. Before installing B2TR (on all computers), uncheck Tools, Options,
Synchronization, "Disable Windows Offline Files". Don't reboot yet. This
option has been removed in B2TR, which means that the changes it makes
to Windows can't be easily undone after B2TR is installed.
3. Close all notebooks on all computers.
4. Reboot all computers.
5. Install B2TR on all computers.
6. Move the .one files on the server (the computer that holds the
non-offline copy of them, prob. your desktop) into a new folder that is
not kept offline anywhere. For example, I moved my "OneNote Notebooks"
folder to the root of one of my drives, as it was beforehand under My
Documents. Share that folder in Windows.
7. Open ON on your server. It might create the ON default notebooks. If
it does, just close them all.
8. Open ON on your other computers, open all your notebooks and adjust
the destinations for the filing rules (Tools, Options, Filing Rules).
9. Now you should be all set to go with B2TR and still enjoy the
benefits of the great ON synchronization mechanism.

Now we only need to wait till it is 9 am Pacific Time to get it! (I
don't have B2TR yet either).

Patrick Schmid

 

[Patrick Schmid]

You can download it now from:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...87-01cf-4bc3-821a-0bb10e7a59fa&DisplayLang=en


Patrick Schmid

 

[halfempty]

Uhhhhhhh......

Am I reading this right and that I must have OL2007 to download this?
I'm using OL2003, and cannot switch.

David

 

[Patrick Schmid]

No, this is a patch for 2007 applications. So if you have Outlook 2003
and OneNote 2007, it will only patch OneNote 2007.

Patrick Schmid

 

[EMRhelp.org]

My Lord Patrick you are thorough.
Great post for B2 --> B2TR tips-

I like the use of CAPS on microsoft.com,

"This is NOT a single click update."

not < NOT < *NOT*

 

[Rainald Taesler]

Am I reading this right and that I must have OL2007 to download
this?
RightyRight!

I'm using OL2003, and cannot switch.

So you have leave that out and wait until the "Final" and upgrade then
(if at all) or just install the "VM" (see below) and install ON2007
Beta 2 and the path in there.

Furthermore:
If I understood Daniel's explanations (see the link to his Blog in
Patrick's announcement) right, there is no need to install other
Office 2007 applications in order to update just OneNote.

BUT (there always is a "but" <g>):
As the current patch works for *ALL* Office 2007 applications, after
having installed the patch you will not be able to install any other
Office 2007 Beta applications later.
This IMO is a most important issue <!!!!!!>

So you'd have to make decisions *right*now* <!!>:
Either
(a) install the patch right now;
This would mean to block the install of any other Office 2007 Beta
application;

or

(b) install *all* of the Office 2007 Beta applications right now and
then apply the patch.

The decision might be made ways easier when using a "Virtual Machine"
and installing the Beta applications within that.
The new MS Virtual Machine (MS VM) which is available for download on
the MS website works really great and using this instrument one can
test things without endangering the production environment.
Safe as safe can be.

HTH
Rainald

 

[Patrick Schmid]

I packaged it into a blog post: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/14/42

For everyone downloading B2TR who has other 2007 programs beside
OneNote, PLEASE READ: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/14/43

There are some major issues with Word B2 files in the new file formats
with B2TR that you need to look at prior to installing B2TR. I have been
told that the official download pages won't include some clear warnings
until tomorrow the earliest.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rainald Taesler]

I packaged it into a blog post:
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/14/42

For everyone downloading B2TR who has other 2007 programs beside
OneNote, PLEASE READ: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/14/43
Thanks!!

There are some major issues with Word B2 files in the new file
formats
with B2TR that you need to look at prior to installing B2TR.

Too late for poor me :-( :-(
Downlaoded and installed everything meanwhile :-(
Not tried out anything, however.

I have
been told that the official download pages won't include some clear
warnings until tomorrow the earliest.

[grrrrrhhhh]

Why do they need additional messengers for distribute bad news??

Rainald

 

[Patrick Schmid]

I have

been told that the official download pages won't include some clear
warnings until tomorrow the earliest.

[grrrrrhhhh]

Why do they need additional messengers for distribute bad news??

It seems that too many people are involved in making the beta available.
In addition to the actual Office Beta team (those are the ones who get
yelled at by tech beta members if things go wrong with the beta), there
are the people for the many MS websites (microsoft.com, MSDN, MS
downloads, etc), marketing people (e.g. B2 was released at the same time
as Gates giving a speech on a conference), etc. So the end result is
things not working well for the first few days. In addition, MS likes to
give the beta to everyone at the same day instead of releasing it to the
tech beta members a few days earlier. Many issues could have been fixed
or at least the warnings for them improved on the download pages, if MS
had given B2 and B2TR a day or two earlier to tech beta members. Most of
the things I posted on my blog are taken straight from discussions in
the private beta newsgroups as tech beta members encountered all these
problems.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Grant Robertson]

* Make sure that you install the newest version of WDS so that search
works great in OneNote & Outlook

Which newest version. The one I am finding on the MS WDS site is 2.6.5
but the WDS beta I have installed now is 3.0. Is there a new WDS beta
3.0 somewhere? How do I get it?

* Make sure to download the PDF+XPS addin if you want to publish to
those formats;

Where do I get these other addins? Do I need this addin if I have the
full version of Adobe Acrobat 7.0? What is XPS? Do I need to install
Microsoft's version of the PDF addin (instead of Adobe's) in order to
publish to the XPS format?

 

[Grant Robertson]

Which newest version. The one I am finding on the MS WDS site is 2.6.5
but the WDS beta I have installed now is 3.0. Is there a new WDS beta
3.0 somewhere? How do I get it?

I found the latest version of the WDS 3.0 beta 2 here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917013

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Check my blog post version of these ON B2TR notes:
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/14/42
Links to everything you are looking for are there.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rainald Taesler]

It seems that too many people are involved in making the beta
available. In addition to the actual Office Beta team (those are the
ones who get yelled at by tech beta members if things go wrong with
the beta), there are the people for the many MS websites
(microsoft.com, MSDN, MS downloads, etc), marketing people (e.g. B2
was released at the same time as Gates giving a speech on a
conference), etc. So the end result is things not working well for
the first few days.

The good old "How many people does it need at MS to chnege light

Most of
the things I posted on my blog are taken straight from discussions
in
the private beta newsgroups as tech beta members encountered all
these problems.

Thanks a million again for your most valubale continuous support.
What would poor we ON users be without you???

Rainald

 

[Patrick Schmid]

The good old "How many people does it need at MS to chnege light

bulb?" issue <bg>

I have a blog post actually titled this way..It points to a blog post
from an MS employee with exactly that title...

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rainald Taesler]

I have a blog post actually titled this way..

Herad you quoting it ;-) but did not viist the blog lately.

It points to a blog post
from an MS employee with exactly that title...

That's why I quoted it <gbg>
Ilya had posted a link to that in a reply to me a while ago.
It's areally great article and I immediately saved it in notebook.
Will for sure become a part of my teaching material.
The more as there are anough jokes with the basic pattern in German
("Wieviele Manner braucht man in Otsfriesland um eine Glübirne
auszuwecheln?" oder - nicht ganz politically korrekt - aus der Zeit,
als wir noch tausende von GIs hier hatten: "Wieviel Bulle braucht mer
um en Neeecher se verhafte? Vier. Aaner fer de Mann, drei fer de
Kassedderecordder" <gbg>).

Gruss
Rainbald

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Ilya had posted a link to that in a reply to me a while ago.
That's where I picked it up too!

It's areally great article and I immediately saved it in notebook.
Will for sure become a part of my teaching material.
The more as there are anough jokes with the basic pattern in German
("Wieviele Manner braucht man in Otsfriesland um eine Glübirne
auszuwecheln?" oder - nicht ganz politically korrekt - aus der Zeit,
als wir noch tausende von GIs hier hatten: "Wieviel Bulle braucht mer
um en Neeecher se verhafte? Vier. Aaner fer de Mann, drei fer de
Kassedderecordder" <gbg>).

LOL. Wir haben noch immer tausende von GIs...

Patrick Schmid

 

[Rainald Taesler]

LOL. Wir haben noch immer tausende von GIs...

LOL
And still the huge Ghettoblasters?

Rainald