OneNote, Templates, and Using Up Quotas

[John Haverty]

We have OneNote installed on our PCs across the campus. We have a quota on
roaming profiles using Microsoft Active Directory. When students log into
their Active Directory accounts, OneNote creates a folder called Templates.
This folder uses a lot of their space and causes problems for them saving
other files they are working on.

Is there a way to disable the Template folder from being created from
OneNote? Either a registry setting or something that we could push out from
Active Directory to disable this setting?

Any help would be appreciated as we continue to receive reports of people
over their quota and it is from the Template folder being created by OneNote.

Thank you!

John

 

[John Haverty]

Bumping to see if anyone can help with this problem....

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

We have OneNote installed on our PCs across the campus. We have a quota on
roaming profiles using Microsoft Active Directory. When students log into
their Active Directory accounts, OneNote creates a folder called Templates.
This folder uses a lot of their space and causes problems for them saving
other files they are working on.

Is there a way to disable the Template folder from being created from
OneNote? Either a registry setting or something that we could push out from
Active Directory to disable this setting?

In which folder is the Templates folder being created?

Ilya

 

[John Haverty]

Ilya,

In which folder is the Templates folder being created?

The files are showing in the "My Documents" of each person that logs into
the PC. Of course since we use Active Directory, these preferences move from
computer to computer. Many of the people do not use OneNote, but we have it
on all systems across the campus because some do.

I am logged in as the administrator on this PC to see where the
files/folders are stored for OneNote. I am checking on a student account to
make sure it is in the same spot. Anyway, the folders are being stored here:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\OneNote Notebooks

Is there anyway to disable OneNote to not save these OneNote Notebooks? I
would guess that this problem is related to the printing problem we are
having that I posted in another thread.

Can this be disabled or are these two problems related? I will post the
path to one that I check on a student account when I get that information.

Thank you!

John

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

Ilya,



The files are showing in the "My Documents" of each person that logs into
the PC. Of course since we use Active Directory, these preferences move from
computer to computer. Many of the people do not use OneNote, but we have it
on all systems across the campus because some do.

I am logged in as the administrator on this PC to see where the
files/folders are stored for OneNote. I am checking on a student account to
make sure it is in the same spot. Anyway, the folders are being stored here:

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\OneNote Notebooks

Is there anyway to disable OneNote to not save these OneNote Notebooks? I
would guess that this problem is related to the printing problem we are
having that I posted in another thread.

Can this be disabled or are these two problems related? I will post the
path to one that I check on a student account when I get that information.

I'm confused - is the folder that is being created "My
Documents\Templates", "My Documents\OneNote Notebooks", or something else?
If it is "My Documents\Templates", it is not related to OneNote.
If it is "My Documents\OneNote Notebooks", it will be created any time a
user runs OneNote for the first time. If they are accidentally printing
to OneNote instead of the desired printer that would count as running
OneNote, and would explain why the notebooks folder is being created
even though the user does not think they're running OneNote. I'll ask
some people on Monday to see if anyone knows why the OneNote printer
might be re-registering itself as the default printer.

Ilya

 

[John Haverty]

Llya,

I'm confused - is the folder that is being created "My Documents\Templates",
"My Documents\OneNote Notebooks", or something else?

It appears that the files are going in as part of the My Document folder
under One Note Notebooks.

If it is "My Documents\Templates", it is not related to OneNote.
If it is "My Documents\OneNote Notebooks", it will be created any time a user
runs OneNote for the first time. If they are accidentally printing to OneNote
instead of the desired printer that would count as running OneNote, and would
explain why the notebooks folder is being created even though the user does
not think they're running OneNote. I'll ask some people on Monday to see if
anyone knows why the OneNote printer might be re-registering itself as the
default printer.

It also does appear that the OneNote Notebooks folder is created because
the default printer switches to the OneNote printer. Students do not
notice this when printing and it tries to go to the OneNote printer which
causes the "templates" to be created in their account.

Let me explain how we have one particular lab set up to shed a little more
light on the problem.

We have this lab set up so that who ever logs into the computers the
printer in the lab is set as their default printer. This is done through
scripts that run at log on for the Microsoft Active Directory PC. If they
have another printer set, then the script will remove it as the default
and set the lab printer as the default.

Our printers across the campus are set up on a printer server. So
printers follow our customers where ever they log in. We use the script
to set the default printer in labs because students typically do not set
up the lab printers; instead, they expect us to set it for them which we
do through a script.

Until we had OneNote on the PCs that was requested through a faculty
advisory committee, we did not have a problem with running the script and
setting the default printer. It simply worked. After we set up OneNote,
now the OneNote printer is the default printer. The students go to
print and it generates the OneNote files in their account which uses up
their quota.

So you are right that it sounds like the problem lies with the system
defaulting to OneNote printer. Were you able to locate any information
about how to disable that feature? Is there a registry setting that we
could change on the computers? Or something that we could do through
Active Directory to not allow the OneNote to be the default printer?

Any direction would be appreciated as it is a problem with the OneNote
files being created and using up the students storage. We can try various
suggestions.

Thank you!

John

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

How exactly are you configuring the default printer? Are you explicitly
setting a printer as the default printer, or just removing the existing
printer and adding a new one?

If you remove the default printer without explicitly setting some other
printer to be the default, Windows will probably pick one of the other
printers to be the new default. If the only other printer installed on
the machine is the OneNote printer, it will become the default. When you
add a new printer it will not be autoconfigured as the default since
there already exists another default printer. The fix is to explicitly
set your new printer as the default printer after adding it.

If that does not fix the problem, could you create a simple script that
would reproduce the problem?

Ilya

 

[John Haverty]

Ilya,

How exactly are you configuring the default printer? Are you explicitly
setting a printer as the default printer, or just removing the existing
printer and adding a new one?

We are setting the default printer using a script at log on for the lab.
We do this through Active Directory. Prior to having OneNote installed
there was no problem with this set up. Anyone could log into a PC in the
lab and the default printer would be set for them. These are networked
printers and when someone logs in the network printer is added to their
profile and set as the default. Since having OneNote on the computer now
when someone logs in the printer is still added, but OneNote is left as
the default printer.

If you remove the default printer without explicitly setting some other
printer to be the default, Windows will probably pick one of the other
printers to be the new default. If the only other printer installed on the
machine is the OneNote printer, it will become the default. When you add a
new printer it will not be autoconfigured as the default since there already
exists another default printer. The fix is to explicitly set your new printer
as the default printer after adding it.

Is there anyway to simply remove the OneNote printer? We do not need it
on our campus computers. We have tried removing it and after a upgrade is
pushed out the OneNote printer appears again. We have not found a way to
completely get rid of the printer. Is there anything that can be done in
the registry, via SMS, etc., so that OneNote does not show up for the
user?

If that does not fix the problem, could you create a simple script that would
reproduce the problem?

Yes, I can see about getting a copy of the script. Although the problem
appears to be that the OneNote printer is on the system and we do not need
it available to people using our computers. Let me know if you would
still like to see the script that is setting the default printer at log on
for the labs.

Thank you!

John

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

We are setting the default printer using a script at log on for the lab.
We do this through Active Directory. Prior to having OneNote installed
there was no problem with this set up. Anyone could log into a PC in
the lab and the default printer would be set for them. These are
networked printers and when someone logs in the network printer is added
to their profile and set as the default. Since having OneNote on the
computer now when someone logs in the printer is still added, but
OneNote is left as the default printer.

Have you tried adding code to the logon script to make the newly added
printer the default?

Yes, I can see about getting a copy of the script. Although the problem
appears to be that the OneNote printer is on the system and we do not
need it available to people using our computers. Let me know if you
would still like to see the script that is setting the default printer
at log on for the labs.

That would be helpful. You can either post a snippet here, or email it
to me.

Ilya

 

[John Haverty]

Have you tried adding code to the logon script to make the newly added
printer the default?

I think that the printer is being set as the default, but I am confirming.
Another area wrote the script and we helped to test it.

That would be helpful. You can either post a snippet here, or email it to me.

I am checking to see about getting a copy of the script.

John

 

[John Haverty]

Ilya,

We are apparently not doing a script to set the default printer. We are
instead using a group policy. So it is different than what I thought they
were doing. Note that before OneNote was installed it was working without
any problem.

Any ideas on how we could use a group policy to set our printer and not
have OneNote become the default printer?

Thank you!

John


---- Forwarded Message ----
Date: Wed, 02 Apr 2008 09:53:28 -0500
From: Michael C.
To: John Haverty
Subject: Re: OneNote, Templates, and Using Up Quotas (fwd)

We are not using a custom script; we're assigning them using group
policy. A two-part description is found here:

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Managing-Printers-Group-Policy-Part1.html

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

Any ideas on how we could use a group policy to set our printer and not
have OneNote become the default printer?

I don't know much about managing group policies. Have you tried asking
in another group that might have more group policy experts?

Ilya

 

[John Haverty]

Ilya,

I don't know much about managing group policies. Have you tried asking in
another group that might have more group policy experts?

I just subscribed to another group for Active Directory to see if they
could assist with this problem. I will see what I can find out from the
Active Directory newsgroup.

Thank you!

John