Sharing notebooks offline w/ Vista & XP & SharePoint (and SSL on X

[bphillips]

Hello,

I do love the capabilities of OneNote 2007. That is the only reason I've
gone through all the pain it has taken to figure out how to setup OneNote
2007 to share notebooks from Windows XP and from Vista using SharePoint
Document Libraries.

But I did get that to work pretty well apparently (only been testing it for
one day so far). It was really tricky without ANY concise documentation
about the necessary steps. It took me a long time to figure out that OneNote
2007 on Vista needs to access SharePoint via SSL (https) only. I believe
the Webdav update for Windows also helped but I'm not 100% sure now because
that was before implementing SSL on the SharePoint services I use (v2 from
www.1and1.com).

Here is the first question - can OneNote 2007 on Windows XP also use https?
I can only seem to get it to access the notebook on the SharePoint Document
library via http which means everything (notebook content and passwords) are
going in the clear?

Here is the second question - some of the machines using the notebook are a
laptop. This is offline some of the time (on the airplane for example).
I see that OneNote caches everything and it actually works just fine AS LONG
AS you keep OneNote running and do not close the Notebook. This doesn't
seem a feasible assumption though...

If you do close it, I do not find anyway to open the cached copy? The only
workaround that I have been able to figure out is to use the Notebook
Properties item on the File menu to "change location" to a folder on the
local drive. Then you can close it, open it, make changes, and when you
want to synch it with the copy on SharePoint, then you "change location"
again to the document library in SharePoint and everything synchs up.

This seems a little cumbersome though, isn't there an easier way? Why can't
you just tell OneNote 2007 to synch up a NoteBook that is on a local folder
with a copy of the Notebook on the SharePoint server without having to change
location? It is either always online or always offline if you don't change
location. Or am I missing something?

This really needs some documentation!

Thanks for any help.

Brent Phillips

 

[Rainald Taesler]

I confess to be totally illiterate as far as SharePoint is concerned.
Therefore pls permit a really dumb question:
Do you really *NEED* to work with SharePoint in as far a OneNote is
concerned?

Using the notebooks sitting on my desktop PC (running under Vista) and
my laptop as well as my TabletPC (both under XP) works pretty fine with
nothing but a network share for the folder where the notebooks are
stored.

Rainald

 

[Josh Einstein]

SharePoint synchronization has some ugly limitations. When synchronizing a
section, it has to send/receive the whole section. This means that updates
can take a very long time if you have lots of pages (or pages with lots of
ink or images, files, etc) in a section. The other problem is that OneNote
can't resolve conflicts as well because changes to the .one file cannot be
merged on SharePoint.

Generally speaking, you shouldn't *close* notebooks that you are working
with unless you don't plan to work with them for a while. But if there are
unsync'd changes, OneNote will tell you and I believe it puts them in a
misplaced sections folder.

I'm not sure what options you have with your environment, but as Rainald
alluded to, sharing notebooks over a file share offers far better
performance and security. Additionally, because notebooks shared over file
shares are synchronized at the object level, not the section level,
synchronization conflicts are very rare and even if a conflict did occur,
only minimal data loss would occur. To get around the problem of having to
be on the same LAN to synchronize (which may not be a problem for you) you
could use Hamachi (www.hamachi.cc) which is a free peer-to-peer VPN solution
that works very well. Instantly sets up a VPN over the internet.

The downside is, the machine that you shared the notebooks from needs to be
on the internet most of the time or else the others won't get to sync as
frequently. If you installed Hamachi on the server (or have another VPN
solution or you're sharing from a desktop that is always on the internet)
then this isn't an issue. My desktop is on a broadband connection so it's
usually available to sync. Even if it's not, it's not offline for very long
and the cache ensures there's no interruption.

I do it this way and it has never failed me.

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

Here is the first question - can OneNote 2007 on Windows XP also use https?
I can only seem to get it to access the notebook on the SharePoint Document
library via http which means everything (notebook content and passwords) are
going in the clear?

You should be able to access your notebook from XP as well.

Here is the second question - some of the machines using the notebook are a
laptop. This is offline some of the time (on the airplane for example).
I see that OneNote caches everything and it actually works just fine AS LONG
AS you keep OneNote running and do not close the Notebook. This doesn't
seem a feasible assumption though...

You do not need to close the notebook before closing OneNote. If you
just keep the notebook open, it will be there when you start up OneNote
again. You should only close notebooks when you no longer need to use
that notebook (or you can just keep all notebooks open forever).

If you do close it, I do not find anyway to open the cached copy? The only
workaround that I have been able to figure out is to use the Notebook
Properties item on the File menu to "change location" to a folder on the
local drive. Then you can close it, open it, make changes, and when you
want to synch it with the copy on SharePoint, then you "change location"
again to the document library in SharePoint and everything synchs up.

The cached copy will be opened automatically, if you don't close the
notebook. So just keep your notebooks open and it'll work much better.

Ilya

 

[Ilya Koulchin]

The other problem
is that OneNote can't resolve conflicts as well because changes to the
.one file cannot be merged on SharePoint.

Actually, OneNote can merge files just fine on SharePoint. While it may
be slightly more likely that you'll encounter conflicts due to the
slower sync interval, OneNote is still able to merge changes that do not
conflict.

Ilya

 

[bphillips]

Thanks to Ilya, Josh, and Rainald for the responses.

I would like to use Sharepoint because there are multiple machines in
multiple locations that are on different networks and Sharepoint seems to be
an elegant (although not as fast) solution to that problem.

It seems to work fine, I was just surprised there was really no way to tell
it you want a completely local copy that replicates to a shared version on
Sharepoint.

We will have a number of different notebooks (at least 6) which is why I was
thinking of closing them from time to time (especially when going through one
with someone looking over my shoulder who is not privy to another one). But
not too big of a deal.

 

[Josh Einstein]

Oh thanks for the clarification! I thought that the sync was at the section
level because of the fact that OneNote has to move the whole section up and
down in SharePoint. So basically it pulls the .one, merges in the changes,
then sends it back up?

Sorry to undeservedly crap on OneNote's SharePoint behavior.

 

[Josh Einstein]

Good luck with your setup.

I still highly recommend looking at Hamachi (you'd think I'm earning
commission, huh) because it's just an overall great way of setting up ad-hoc
distributed workgroups (for example, Windows Vista's Meeting Space) and you
will find that sync works much better over file share than SharePoint.

 

[Rainald Taesler]

Sorry to undeservedly crap on OneNote's SharePoint behavior.

... which AFAICS is not what many (should I say "very many" <?>) users
expect ..

IMHO this a point where something has to be done right now; AFAICS
that's one of the major problems and the solution must not be postponed
until Office 14 may arrive.

Therefore:
Daniel and Ilya Hurry up!

Rainald

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

OneNote's SharePoint behavior is a limitation of SharePoint...not OneNote.
You need to go urge on the SharePoint team.


--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/onenote.htm

 

[Ben M. Schorr, MVP]

Thanks to Ilya, Josh, and Rainald for the responses.
It seems to work fine, I was just surprised there was really no way to
tell
it you want a completely local copy that replicates to a shared version on
Sharepoint.

Well, in a manner of speaking there IS because OneNote is working from a
locally cached copy and not from the shared master file on the SharePoint
site.

If you are looking for a more separate local copy then you might be able to
just create the file locally and use something like SyncToy to synchronize
it to SharePoint.
(http://blogs.tamtam.nl/mart/SharePointTipSynchronizeDocumentLibrariesWithSyncToy10.aspx)
That's going to be a little trickier though.


--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com/sharepoint.htm