We've been getting quite a few questions and concerns about the "Print to OneNote" print driver that comes with OneNote 2007 not being supported on 64 bit OSes. I just wrote the following in response to a blog post and some comments about it on the GottaBeMobile site. I'm posting it here too for reference. It explains some of the context behind where we're at on this, and why. We fully understand how important the print to OneNote feature is, and we apologize that the print driver for this that shipped with OneNote 2007 doesn't work on 64 bit OSes. We plan to address this in the next version of OneNote.

Sorry. We broke your OneNote.

In mid December Office 2007 SP1 was released on Microsoft Update. It contains lots of good improvements and a few for OneNote. However, it turns out we also broke something with one of the fixes. You can't create notebooks on a Windows file share that is also running WebDAV. This is what we call a "regression" (when in fixing something you break something else). We feel very bad about this and we're working hard to address it.

Please leave a comment below if you have hit this problem. We'd like to get a sense of how common this is and any affected configurations beyond the ones we know. Prevalence affects how urgently we can get a fix through the pipe. And please mention anything you know about your server (what the server OS is, whether it's also running SharePoint or some other web server etc.).

Here are the details and a work around.

Issue: can't create notebooks on Windows file share running WebDAV

• If you try to create a new notebook on a Windows file share server that also runs WebDAV then you will fail to create the notebook.
• For example if you try to create a notebook called notebookname at \\fileservername\filesharename you'll get an error message like: "OneNote cannot create a new notebook at: http://fileservername/sharename/notebookname"

Workaround:

To work around this follow these steps.

1. Go to the folder where you want the notebook in Windows Explorer (e.g. go to \\fileservername\filesharename )
2. Create a new folder with the name you want the notebook to have (e.g. notebookname )
3. Right click that folder and choose "Open as Notebook in OneNote"
4. The folder will open up as a blank notebook in OneNote. Then click on the message in the middle of the screen to create the first section and you're good to go.
5. Alternatively: instead of step 3 above you can start OneNote then go to "File"->"Open" -> "Notebook" and then select the folder you created in step 2.

Background:

• For the curious, the bug is related to how we check the folder path and decide under the covers which client side file redirector will handle the remote file access when working against web servers. When you're actually trying to access the plain Windows file share on the server with a UNC path, and the server is also running a WebDAV server then this logic has a flaw in it that causes it to try the WebDAV redirector (UNC paths can be valid WebDAV paths...).
• This won't affect many people in larger companies where Windows file servers and Web servers or SharePoint servers are usually kept distinct for clear role separation.
• It is more likely to affect small business scenarios where a server may play multiple roles and is potentially acting as a web server as well as a file share. Examples might be Windows Small Business Server depending on how it's configured.

Continuing from my previous post about OneNote Shared Notebooks on Windows File Shares, this one will focus on OneNote shared notebooks on SharePoint servers. The advantages, disadvantages, and troubleshooting tips.

Notebooks on SharePoint Servers

Overview

• SharePoint is a great team repository,  a place to share documents, lists, calendars, and so on.
  • You can access documents from a browser with more context than just a file list on a file share.
  • There are lots of nice features for custom solutions like workflow support, metadata support, search and query by metadata across an entire enterprise and so on that I won't go into.
• Many teams  have all their shared documents on SharePoint servers for these benefits.
• In that case, it makes sense to have your OneNote shared notebooks in the same place on SharePoint.
• Internet access to your notebooks is one significant benefit
• SharePoint is accessible via http over port 80.
• It can be made available more easily across the internet.
• Many service providers offer SharePoint hosting services
• If you have a OneNote shared notebook on a publicly hosted SharePoint server you will be able to access it with OneNote from anywhere, and collaborate with people anywhere.
• Note: you still need OneNote to access the notebook, not just a web browser. However, you can optionally publish an html web view of your notebook using the OneNote Web Exporter PowerToy.

Performance and Reliability

More things can go wrong when syncing OneNote notebooks to SharePoint vs syncing to a Windows file share. As there is more complexity and variety in the components and configurations involved.

• Sync times are much longer on SharePoint
• OneNote syncs every 10 minutes to SharePoint, whereas it syncs every 30 seconds on Windows file shares.
• The worst case time between making a change and others seeing it is 20 minutes (vs a minute on a file share).
• A change to a OneNote section file on SharePoint requires the whole file to uploaded or downloaded
• On Windows file shares, OneNote can read/write just the bits in the file it needs to update. This is very efficient.
• However, file access on SharePoint uses WebDAV
• WebDAV does not support byte range read/write (also known as Partial Get/Put)
• Thus OneNote must upload or download the entire file.
• This uses more bandwidth, hence the reason for the 10 minute sync interval.
• This is also the reason why Embedded files are stored alongside the section file in a thicket folder on SharePoint (whereas they are stored inside the .one file on Windows file shares).
• Authentication is a common problem area
• SharePoint supports multiple authentication types - including Windows Integrated (Kerberos or NTLM), Basic, Digest, Forms, and in some cases Windows Live ID.
• They each have some unique characteristics, and subtleties in behavior
• Vista vs XP client makes a significant difference
• Vista has a completely new improved WebDAV stack that OneNote uses
• Vista's WebDAV uses WinHTTP instead of WinInet. WinHTTP is new in Vista, it has some different behaviors to WinInet. Some calls to SharePoint (like file enumeration) still use WinInet. This introduces some complexities in things like authentication when the two networking stacks behave differently.
• On XP, Office uses a technology named"Rosebud" (also known as MSDAIPP, often referred to as "Web Folders") to access files on SharePoint. It's a very complicated mix of technologies, and frankly prone to issues ... not my favorite and we're transitioning away from it as of Office 2007 and Vista in favor of WebDAV. It uses something called "Microsoft Office Protocol Discovery" [scroll down halfway to 'Understanding Microsoft Office Protocol Discovery] to talk to the server. It attempts to discover what services the server supports then decides whether the user should have read only browse access, or read/write access. It determines if it can use WebDAV or Web Extender Client (WEC), otherwise it falls back to HTTP GET and read only. In general when talking to SharePoint Rosebud uses WEC which talks via FPSE (Front Page Server Extensions) to SharePoint and avoids the XP WebDAV stack altogether.
• See my earlier post on SharePoint - Access Denied for some more details on differences between behavior on XP and Vista
• [there's a lot more technical background information I could write here, but that's enough for now, and if I get many questions I'll add further clarifications later...]

Troubleshooting Tips

The most likely problems you'll see with OneNote notebooks on SharePoint are related to authentication.

• Getting "Access Denied" infobar prompts
• Getting password prompts that keep popping up
• Failing to open a notebook (possibly after getting password prompts)
• Having read only access to the notebook (you can't type anything)

Below are some steps that commonly solve these issues:

1. Install Office 2007 SP1. It's available through Microsoft Update (so you may already have it installed) or for direct download. You can check if you have this installed by clicking "Help" -> "About Microsoft Office OneNote" in OneNote. The version number at the top should be 6211.1000 and say "SP1" in it. It has some relevant fixes to improve this.
2. Confirm that "Auto Detect Settings" is on in Internet Explorer if you're using Vista.
3. Install Vista SP1 (if you have Vista) from Microsoft Update as soon as it's available (soon). It has some relevant fixes.
4. If your SharePoint site uses Basic Authentication (some hosting service providers use it) then you must use https:// for the URL path.
5. Confirm whether you have write access to the SharePoint document library where the notebook exists. Go there in your browser, and try to make an edit to a non-OneNote file.  If you can't edit any files then it's possible you don't actually have correct write permissions to that location and should speak to the administrator about the permissions.

[Sorry, it took a while to get around to part 2. I was out on vacation.]

Shared notebooks are a key feature of OneNote that have been described as "near magic". They allow you to share notes across machines with yourself, or with a team of people. OneNote lets multiple users write in the same notebook, even on the same page at the same time and it just takes care of syncing and merging everything in the background. It's a great way to share information, it's very seamless, and once you've set it up it just works. Except when it doesn't...

Sometimes things go wrong, or you have trouble setting it up in the first place. Mostly due to issues in the underlying file system chosen. Not all file storage systems are created equal. Some are great, some are not. Some are great for some purposes but not others. I'm going to write a series of posts as a comprehensive overview. I'll explain each, and include pointers to trouble shooting potential issues. I'll update this over time as I get questions and may add links to more details.

The key deciding factor in sharing your notebook is the location you choose to share it from and the technology used to access that. These include.

1. Windows File Shares (otherwise known as SMB or CIFS shares)
2. SharePoint servers
3. USB drives / SD cards / other removable drives
4. Windows Home Server
5. WebDAV servers
6. Peer replication technologies like FolderShare or Groove
7. Other web storage services (Sky Drive, Office Live, etc.)

I realize this list makes things look complex. In the basic scenarios things just work. But there's a great diversity of file sharing technology options out there that at least some people somewhere are using and it's worth being comprehensive.

There are sub categories within each of these. I'll go over each in a separate post. This one will cover Windows File Shares.

Windows File Shares

Overview

• Windows File Shares are generally the best performing, fastest and most reliable place to share OneNote notebooks (I use them mostly)
• Work very well on home networks, or work networks
• Usually not available over the internet (although they can be with VPN software like Hamachi)
• Use the SMB (otherwise known as CIFS) protocol
• Available on Windows Servers (common in work environments), or personal Windows XP or Vista machines
• Mac OS and Linux also provide support for Windows File Shares using SMB
• On Linux SAMBA is the technology most often used to provide Windows File Shares using SMB
• Home network hard drives that are small Windows Files Share/SMB servers are becoming more popular and are cheaply available under brands like Western Digitals "My Book", iomega, Maxtor, Buffalo, Linksys, DLink etc.  Technically these are NAS devices, and are usually small servers inside running Linux and SAMBA. I don't recommend these for reasons discussed below.

Performance and Reliability

• Performance is very good.
• OneNote can access only the parts of the file it needs. It does not have to update the whole file when syncing.
• Syncs every 30 seconds.
• Generally very reliable, with the big exception of all SAMBA based shares (see below) and some issues if you're using Windows Offline Files

Troubleshooting tips

Below are some potential issues, explanations and resolutions.

1. Can't write to the notebook. Can't create it or save it to the windows share.

   • Confirm you have permissions
   • As a simple test copy a small file (text file or something) up to the same folder location as the notebook using Windows Explorer.
   • If this fails you don't have permission to access the share or file system. You need both share permissions and file system permissions (that's the most confusing aspect for some people). Here's a technical article about the distinction between Share permissions and File System permissions. I'll try and post a simpler guide later [TODO]. In general, if you setup a Share on Vista the normal way, then it takes care of these two types of permissions automatically (I think XP SP2 does too...).

2. On your networked hard drive or SAMBA share sections disappear (and other issues including possible corruption)

   • This applies to things like the Western Digitals "My Book", iomega, Maxtor, Buffalo, Linksys, DLink  networked hard drives.
   • Recovery: If you look in the folder on the network share, you'll often see an extra file with a name like "foo~RF12345678.tmp". Rename this to "foo.one" then open OneNote and sync and you'll probably have your file back.
   • Details on this (and why I don't recommend SAMBA shares) below. I'd suggest you consider storing your OneNote notebooks somewhere else.
   • Most of the network hard drives use a small Linux OS and SAMBA to provide the file share
   • Many versions of SAMBA are badly behaved and don't fully and correctly implement SMB
   • In particular many SAMBA implementations seem to have problems with ReplaceFile failing, which OneNote uses
   • SAMBA, like much open source, has many different versions (100s) that have been picked up by the various different hardware manufacturers (running on multiple trimmed down variants of Linux), they've individually tweaked them, forked the code, and do not necessarily update them. The result is that while some of the latest versions of SAMBA do seem to implement ReplaceFile correctly, many of the networked hard drives seem to use versions that don't implement ReplaceFile well. Such is the nature of open source. [Whereas if you have a Windows Server, XP or Vista machine and you stay fully up to date on your Windows Updates they are all the same (well each OS is) and known to work and be reliable. ]
   • This tends to hit OneNote more than other apps, because most apps don't use ReplaceFile. Most apps just open a file, with an exclusive lock on it, then save it and release when they're done. Because OneNote has multiple simultaneous users on a notebook things are a little more complicated. Also we use ReplaceFile to safely do operations like optimizing the file (we optimize a copy then replace the original, ReplaceFile is supposed to be atomic and safe). Other applications that tend to behave a little more like OneNote are Money and Quicken and things that have database type continual access. So these apps will often exhibit issues working against these networked hard drives too.
   • Basically the most common and therefore well tested aspects of the SMB protocol and file system semantics work fine on these devices. But if you have an app that uses a broader set then they can run into trouble.
   • Because of these issues above I'm not sure how much I'd trust these SAMBA hard drives, given other things that aren't well tested (like ReplaceFile) may be buggy too. We've seen other issues on SAMBA shares, including corruption.

3. Password prompts

   • You may get an infobar on the notebook (yellow message bar at the top of the page) saying that you need a password.
   • Click this and then enter the user name and password for the notebook on which the server is located
   • If you check "remember this password" then you won't get asked for it in future and OneNote will just be able to automatically sync. Otherwise you'll need to reenter it every time you restart.
     

4. Windows Offline Files causes duplicate copies of sections if edited from more than one machine, or edits from one machine don't seem to be showing up or are lost.

   • Windows Offline Files might deserve a post all of its own... see this article on Windows Offline Files  for an overview.
   • Windows Offline Files provides cached access to network file shares when you're offline from them. Note that OneNote also has its own cache that enables it to work offline, and do things like multi-user edit, sync and merge automatically.
   • Windows Offline Files is great for things like work laptops that connect to your network share at work, and you want access to the same files while traveling or out of office. It's used when you have your Documents folder redirected to a network share for example.
   • However, it means that when you are offline, OneNote is working against a local cached copy of the file (cached by Windows separate to the OneNote cache). This interferes with OneNote's ability to merge changes from multiple machines. Basically machine A and B both sync to a Windows Offline Files local cache copy. To OneNote it looks like it wrote to the server (because the Windows Offline Files cache is meant to be transparent in this respect). Then later when you're online Windows Offline Files replicates these two (now different) files up to the server. Windows Offline Files doesn't know anything about how to merge OneNote files, so it just gives you the option to keep both copies or replace one with the other.  Depending on what you choose you'll either end up with duplicate section files in the notebook (that are slightly different) or losing one set of changes. And on Vista if you don't resolve the Windows Offline Files conflict (it shows up in the Sync Center in the taskbar) then you'll be continuing to work against the local copy in the Windows Offline Files cache and won't even see the changes from the other machine at all.
   • How to avoid this:
     • If it's only you accessing the files (e.g. laptop and desktop both pointing to the same server Documents folder), then before switching machines and making edits:
       • Make sure OneNote is in sync (F9 on the keyboard will force sync) on the machine you're leaving
       • Make sure Windows Offline Files is in sync (can force sync from the sync center in notification area on Vista)
       • Then when you get on the other machine make sure Windows Offline Files is in sync there before starting to edit in OneNote
     • If multiple people are sharing the files
       • Don't use Windows Offline Files on this share. Or move the notebook to another  file share.
       • On Vista, you can check which shares Windows Offline Files is syncing from the Sync Center partnerships.
   • I personally choose to keep my OneNote notebooks on shares that don't have a Windows Offline Files partnership syncing it (I use Windows Offline files for other shares). OneNote does a fine job caching, syncing and merging all by itself. And multiple layers of syncing and caching tend to get in the way of merge technologies like OneNote's.
   • There a bunch of useful information online about managing Windows Offline Files like:
     • How to make folders available offline (and conversely if you reverse this you can stop Windows Offline Files from syncing a folder)
     • Windows Offline Files sync conflicts, how they occur, and how you resolve them
     • Windows Offline Files sync errors (problems with sync rather than conflicting file changes)
       

5. Windows Offline Files on Vista causes corrupt OneNote files

   • There was a bug in Windows Vista's new Offline Files implementation that could cause corruptions in OneNote files (and some other like Money)
   • It has been fixed in Windows Update. It's a "recommended" update because it's not a security fix. So you have to choose to install it. Having said that, you really should install it when you see the list of issues it addresses.
   • Details of the fix are here http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938979 
   • So if you're using Vista, OneNote and Windows Offline files make sure you have installed all the latest Windows Updates.

OneNote notebooks on SharePoint coming up in the next post...

If you have a OneNote notebook on SharePoint you may have seen something like the following errors at some time:

• An 'infobar' appears at the top of the page in OneNote saying you don't have permission to sync to that section file
• You may have failed to create a new notebook on that SharePoint location
• You may have failed to open the notebook

One obvious reason you might get this is that you don't in fact have permissions to write to the SharePoint location. You should check that first, for example, by trying to write a simple text file there. But there could be other causes for this, most of which should be quite rare*. But if you're running on Vista there is one very simple reason that is likely to be quite common.

Automatically Detect Settings needs to be on

• You need to ensure that "Automatically Detect Settings" is checked on in the "Internet Options" settings in Internet Explorer, as shown below.
• You can get to this from Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings

• If this option doesn't work for you because it messes with your browsing in Internet Explorer then go back to your original settings and read the rest of the nitty gritty in this post for other ways to possibly fix this.

* there's actually another possibly common cause, depending on your network conditions you may get time outs when connecting to your server that get falsely reported to OneNote as permissions denial. We have made some changes to address this issue that you'll see in a future service pack soonish. This should be intermittent though (unlike the auto detect settings issue) and likely fixed just by restarting OneNote once the network condition has improved.

Why do you need Automatically Detect Settings on?

There's a lot of details behind this that may be hard to follow if you don't know much about HTTP etc. I'll try and explain it briefly.

Background

• "Automatically detect settings" talks to a server on your network to get basic configuration information like proxy server
• In XP HTTP traffic goes over a protocol stack called WinInet
• In Vista there is also a new network stack called WinHTTP for HTTP traffic. This is a much improved HTTP specific stack. It was originally created for Windows Server 2003.  WinInet still exists on Vista for backwards compatibility.
• WebDAV (a protocol for accessing files over HTTP) was re-written in Vista to use WinHTTP. This was a significant improvement over the WebDAV stack in XP.
• However, many applications still use WinInet because they haven't been re-written to use WinHTTP on Vista. Internet Explorer for example still uses WinInet. And many parts of Microsoft Office still use WinInet. Parts of OneNote included.
• So on Vista when OneNote is accessing files on SharePoint it makes some calls to check on things like which files have changed and so on, that ultimately end up using the WinInet stack. But when it actually tries to write up changes to the file it uses WebDAV which uses the WinHTTP stack.
• Now there is a subtle difference in behavior between WinInet and WebDAV over WinHTTP. WebDAV on Vista has a rule that it never proactively sends your credentials over the wire unless you have auto detect settings on (because that's how it gets configured to know when to send your creds proactively and when not to). WebDAV defaults to assuming you're on open public internet when this is not set and doesn't send credentials proactively at all.
• Note: that your credentials are always encrypted anyway, so I'm not talking about plain text transmission here. WebDAV still thinks it's a good idea not to send them unless needed on public internet. It's good surface minimization.
• In theory, if WebDAV gets a permission denied response the user will be explicitly prompted for the credentials and WebDAV will then proceed to send them and you'll successfully connect.
• The reason for the difference in behavior is that inside a work environment people generally expect to just be able to connect to all their server resources without having to enter credentials for each server.

The problem

• OneNote syncs in the background relatively frequently. It's not just saving when the user hits save. OneNote is also syncing potentially several notebooks on different servers.
• That means OneNote can't just pop up random dialogs asking you for credentials every time it syncs, otherwise you might be working on one notebook, and get bothered by credential prompts randomly popping up from a second notebook syncing in the background. That would be pretty weird.
• So as a result, OneNote makes file access calls in a 'UI-less' mode. The layers under OneNote are told not to show credential prompts if there are permissions failures. The various networking layers below OneNote return "permissions denied" error codes. OneNote should then display an infobar saying you need to enter a password and give you the option to click it to enter the password. This is less intrusive than random cred prompts. And this infobar only shows when you're on the relevant notebook.
• However, in the situation above, the initial WinInet calls all succeed (checking the notebook is there, checking for which files changed etc.) and only writing the file up fails. This messes with this workflow a little and you get a slightly different infobar just telling you that OneNote got an access denied failure. This isn't very helpful...

This affects other apps too

• This problem manifests in different ways for different apps
• It's slightly less of a problem for traditional apps. Because they generally save in response to a specific user command only, and do it synchronously. They make all file access calls and network calls requesting full UI showing. This allows the underlying network stacks to just pop credential prompts whenever needed (it's also the reason they can hang while you're saving to a slowly responding network server...).
• So for many apps this manifests as you getting one to three credential prompts while trying to open a file. Sometimes these may fail and you'll end up with a read only copy of the file open.
• See this post on the SharePoint team blog for more details on this
• By the way I would NOT "stop and disable the WebClient service" as suggested as one of the possible solutions on this blog post. It turns off WebDAV which will break OneNote syncing, and likely other apps too. And the "install Web Folder and run in XP compatibility mode" option has some unpleasantness too... Look to the bottom of the post for "Problem Description" and "Potential Workarounds" for other options.
• Note, that in theory the result should just be that you get a manual cred prompt and entering credentials should succeed. However, in practice I have noticed that there appear to be occasions and configurations where even after entering the credentials the access fails with other apps too. Still investigating.

What's being done to address this?

We're paying lots of attention to this issue. And here are a couple of things that are being done among others:

• There are hot fixes coming from the Windows team to help deal with this as mentioned on the SharePoint team blog post. The hotfixes are KB941853 and KB941890. These fixes are only available through support right now (e.g. if you're a corporate customer) but should be available in a future service pack after further testing and work.
• OneNote will also be doing work to have a better response to this particular kind of partial failure in the network calls, so the user gets more helpful information in the infobar and OneNote can prompt appropriately where possible.

You can make template pages in OneNote with background images so that you can always have new pages that look just how you want them to. It can be a little confusing as to how to do this. Here's some instructions below from a mail I sent a user.

Here are the steps.

1. Create a new page
2. Put the picture that you want to be the background on the page (not in an outline but directly on the page).
1. When you paste the picture on the page it will default to being in an outline
2. Drag it out of the outline (grab the four way handle to the left of the picture and drag it out onto the page surface outside the outline)
3. Move the picture or resize it on the page to get it where you want
4. Configure and arrange whatever other content you want on the page
3. Right click the picture – choose “Set Picture as Background” (although depending on your purpose you may not need to do this) – note this option will only appear if the picture is on the page and not in an outline.
   
4. Then you can make this page a template:
1. Format (menu) -> Templates
2. From the bottom of the task pane on the right choose “Save Current Page as a Template”
3. Give it a name
5. You can create pages with this template from the drop down arrow next to the new page button, here
    
6. You can even set it as the default template for the current section so that all new pages in the section appear that way.

We've met a number of users who use MindManager for mind maps. It's still a small niche of people, but they tend to be creative and enthusiastic visual thinkers, who are enthusiastic about OneNote too. They often wish for a better connection between OneNote and MindManager. Well our friends over at Mindjet have delivered a cool tool to do just that. The OneNote 2007 + MindManager tool provides three functions:

• OneNote 2007 Send To MindManager
• OneNote Hyperlinks in MindManager
• OneNote Notebook Hierarchy Mapping

In their own words, you can:

• From MindManager, easily map out the OneNote Notebooks, Sections, and Pages, including hyperlinks to the notebooks, sections, and pages:
• From MindManager, send the current map to OneNote as an image that you can sketch on and annotate:
• From OneNote, send a page to MindManager as a hyperlinked topic:

There are some screenshots on the site that give you a better idea of what it does. And you can download it for free to try it out if you have MindManager.

I got the following question recently, and thought the answer might be valuable to others.

Question:

I have a notebook called customers, containing about 40 sections (one for each customer). I also have a SharePoint site for each customer. I'd like to track my customers through OneNote and store customer notes in each of my customer SharePoint customer sites. Right now, the only way I can see to do this is to have a separate notebook for each customer. Is there a better way to accomplish this?"

Answer:

There is a power user feature which meets your needs. It takes a little setup though. You need to use Windows file shortcuts. You want a notebook folder that has file shortcuts in it that point to section files (.one files) in each of the SharePoint sites. This acts like a “virtual notebook” that aggregates these sections.

The OneNote 2007 file format is quite different to the 2003 format. Here are some details on the implications of this and the reason behind the difference.

Impact of this difference on interactions between OneNote 2007 and 2003 clients

• OneNote 2007 can open OneNote 2003 files read only. This is the default. In this case the format will not be changed and the files will still be editable and viewable by another OneNote 2003 client, and they can be viewed in OneNote 2007 but not modified.
• OneNote 2007 can UPGRADE OneNote 2003 files. The user is prompted and asked before doing this and it is explained that OneNote 2003 clients will no longer be able to open them. In this case, the file is now fully editable by all 2007 clients but no 2003 clients.

Why is the file format different?

The simple reason is to support new features. OneNote is still a relatively young app and we made some dramatic improvements in 2007 (our second release). In particular we added a pretty unique sharing capability that allows multiple users (or same user with multiple machines) to interact and edit the same notebook at the same time without getting locked out by each other or writing over each other. OneNote automatically handles merging and so on. To do this while retaining high performance, and autosave required some significant innovation in the file format. Among other things, we need to support multiple clients writing to different parts of the file at the same time through range locks rather than a whole file lock. This kind of interaction between OneNote 2007 and 2003 clients (which were not designed for it) was simply not possible, and would not have been possible among 2007 clients without changing the file format. Hence we concluded pretty early the need for a file format change.

In addition to that, we have a lot of new features that weren't supportable in the OneNote 2003 format. Among other things, they include:

• Tables
• Embedded files
• Internal hyperlinks
• Outlook task flags
• New note tag types
• Drawing tools
• Document printouts (because we do them differently now)
• Shared notebooks and merging (as noted above) 
• Merge conflict pages

We understand this issue will cause inconvenience for some, and trust me we did not take this decision lightly. It was a very difficult and painful decision. We do think the improvements in OneNote 2007 are pretty dramatic and compelling and were worth the change. Thankfully many of our beta users seem to agree. Also the upgrade pricing for OneNote is reasonable, so given the compelling improvements we expect as most people upgrade (particularly those who want to share with other machines), this will quickly become less of an issue.

On a final note, rest assured that we are very committed to file format compatibility as a goal for future OneNote versions.

Many people have wondered how OneNote 2007 and Groove work together (or not). Your experience will depend on whether you're using a Groove Workspace or a Groove Folder Share. Here's a brief summary. I'll write more later, but suffice it to say we're aware of the limitations and have grand plans for dramatic improvements in the future...

OneNote experience with Groove Workspaces will be limited / problematic

• Groove Workspaces will work for individual OneNote section files sort of like a Word doc would, with all the associated potential for conflicts.
• Groove Workspaces will not work very well with OneNote notebooks, because OneNote notebooks are folders and require us to open the folder. Groove Workspaces aren’t exposed that way. When you open a document in a Groove Workspace, Groove copies it from their store (hidden and not something we can directly access) out to the temp directory and calls the app to open it from there. Consequently we only see one file (the section file) at a time in the temp directory.

OneNote experience with Groove Shared Folders will be much better but still have conflict issues

• Groove Shared Folders will work better for OneNote notebooks. These function much more like regular windows shared folders. OneNote can see all the files in it at once, you can open the folder as a notebook in OneNote. And basically OneNote notebooks will work there.
• However, you will still have conflicts if two people edit the same section at the same time (and you’ll end up with two copies of the section file), because Groove disintermediates OneNote's ability to do merge.

Basically Groove works okay for single file document model (but still has conflicts) but it can be quite problematic for data that is represented by sets of files. OneNote Notebooks are an example, Front Page webs would be another example (although obviously less frequent).

Given the time remaining from the point at which Microsoft acquired Groove until the release of OneNote 2007 and Groove 2007 we were unable to do more to make this better in this release because it requires some architecture changes. But it's high on our list to make much better in the next release.

Do you want a OneNote notebook synced between two computers but don't have a network connection between them, or don't want to create a file share? A simple solution is to store a notebook on a USB drive, an SD card or other removable media. We specifically designed for this scenario with OneNote 2007.

A quick recap of OneNote syncing is in order (the paragraph version not the hundreds of pages of specs version). OneNote always works from a cache file. This is stored in the Local Settings folder, similar to an Outlook cache. OneNote syncs between the cache and your notebook files. The notebooks could be on your local hard disk in My Documents (yes we still cache notebooks that are on local disk for many good architectural reasons), they could be on a network file share, or they could even be on removable media like USB drives. When the location of the notebook files is not available (e.g. network disconnected, or you removed the USB drive) then the notebook is still available in OneNote and you can continue to edit it. When the location of the notebook files is available again (e.g. network reconnects, or you plug the USB drive back in), OneNote will sync to it, and merge in any changes you had.

The consequence of this is you can use a USB drive just as you would a network file share as a sharing location for a OneNote notebook between two machines. You can even view and edit the notebook when the USB drive is not available. If you went home but forgot to take the USB drive or SD card home with you, no problem, just edit the notebook at home and bring home the USB drive the next day and OneNote will sync and merge in the changes.

There's one catch here that we had to address. USB drives can get different drive letters assigned each time you plug them in. The first time you plug it in it may show up as the E: drive, but the next time you plug it in it shows up as F: drive. Or you could plug in some other USB drive that shows up as the E: drive. Our solution to this as that we use a unique ID on the removable drive to identify it and map that to the right notebook. So even if it changes drive letter everytime it gets connected we'll sync the right notebook to it.

Step by Step Instructions:

1. Plug in the removable drive (USB drive, or SD card ). Note the drive letter.
2. In OneNote 2007, create a new notebook on the drive.
   • File - New - Notebook
   • Give it a name and click next.
   • Choose "I will use it on this computer" and click next.
   • Click the browse button and browse to the USB drive and optionally a folder where you want the notebook stored. Click create.
3. Add any content you want to the notebook (section, pages etc.)
4. Remove the USB drive at anytime
   • Don't close the notebook in OneNote. There's no need. And by leaving it available in OneNote you'll be able to continue to edit it even when the USB drive is out and attached to the second computer. You can close the OneNote application, and next time you open it OneNote will still have the notebook available from its cache.
   • You might want to give it 10 seconds or so after your last edit, or wait for the drive to stop flashing before removing it. OneNote will sync quickly.
   • Depending on the type of drive you might want to use the Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" tool to shut it down and flush the drive first. This is not required by OneNote and if you don't normally need to do it for your drive (depends on its settings) then there's no need.
5. Connect the USB drive to the second computer
6. Open the notebook in OneNote on the second computer
   • File - Open - Notebook
   • Choose the folder with the notebook name that OneNote created on the USB drive above.
   • You should now have all the notebook contents available on the second machine.
7. Again, you can remove the drive at anytime, without closing the notebook in OneNote. You can close the OneNote app at anytime and when you start OneNote again the notebook will be available from the cache.

In this way you can move the USB drive back and forth among multiple machines (2 or more). You can have the notebooks always available on any machine even if you don't have the USB drive with you. And you can even make edits on multiple machines at the same time, OneNote will handle syncing and merging the edits to the USB drive when it's available.

There's one privacy caveat you should know about if you're using removable media to store notebooks. If you plug it into a public computer and then you open the notebook, the notebook will be stored in OneNote's cache on that machine. So if someone using that public machine after you were to look for it, they could potentially see that data. You could minimize likelihood of this by closing the notebook on that machine before leaving the machine. There could still be residue of that notebook data on that public machine, just as with any other document you may have looked at (e.g. in the Windows paging file) but it certainly reduces the likelihood.

I've been on a quest for the perfect task/ time management system for years. I concluded quite some time ago that the goal will always remain elusive but the questing is valuable. Although many trials of new systems get discarded, I tend to keep the bits that work for me and incorporate them into my ongoing personal system.

I commonly hit two issues: most systems (e.g. GTD) seem overly rigid, and flat task lists, even with categories, don't support the way my task list grows. My tasks often grow hierarchically. The task starts life as something like "Draft plan for perpetual motion machine". But as I start working on that task it spawns sub tasks like ""Review past work in this space", "Meet Fred re: his Project X work" and so on.

Hierarchical task management systems do exist but are rare. I have used ListPro, and I have used MS Project quite a bit. Project is a good hierarchical task manager but its features are overkill for most personal task lists. They both have their own rigidities, and don't integrate with Outlook in the right way. Ultimately I actually want my tasks to show up in Outlook. Because I want to see them along with my calendar and be able to allocate them to slots on my calendar, get reminders etc. Outlook 2007 rocks for all this now but it still doesn't do hierarchy...

With the combination of OneNote 2007 and Outlook 2007 I now have a system that works very well for me. Here's how I manage my task list and workflow now.

1. I created a ToDo page in OneNote in my general section. This always contains my current to do list and grows and evolves as my tasks change.
2. I have a direct keyboard shortcut to this page, Ctrl-Alt-T, so that I can instantly go to this page whether OneNote is running or not. This works from anywhere. See my post on Keyboard Shortcuts for Favorite OneNote Pages for how to do this.
3. I write each task on a line.
4. I hit Ctrl-Shift-1 to mark that item as an Outlook task for today (or Ctrl-Shift-2 is tomorrow, 3 is this week, 4 is next week, Ctrl-Shift-K pops up the Outlook task dialog for custom date and fields). This process gets the tasks roughly distributed on my calendar correctly.
5. That line gets flagged as an "Outlook Task" in Onenote. It gets added to the task list in Outlook, and there is two way sync between them. If it gets marked done in Outlook it shows up as done in OneNote and vice versa.
6. There's also cross linking. A link is created in the Outlook task that will jump you directly back to this item in OneNote. Or you can right click the flag in OneNote to open the matching task in Outlook.
7. I add hierarchy to the task list and manage the structure and priorities of my tasks in OneNote by indenting lines. Or change order and priorities by moving things up and down. Alt-Shift + left arrow, right arrow, up arrow, or down arrow are great keyboard shortcuts for doing this easily and quickly.
8. I manage my time on the Outlook calendar. The tasks show up in the "task well" below each day on the calendar. I can drag the task onto a slot on the calendar to schedule it. I can drag it out to a different day if I want to defer it. This is very quick time management.

Now my work flow typically looks like this:

1. Hit Ctrl-Alt-T, I can look at my task list and get an overall view.
2. Move things around with Alt-Shift arrows, for example to bring important stuff to the top.
3. I can mark things done. I can add new things. I can add additional context and links to references or details I'll need to refer to when doing the task.
4. I also see my tasks show up in the “ToDo bar” on the right of Outlook whenever I’m in Outlook. So they’re always in front of me.
5. And I see them distributed across date in the Outlook calendar and allocate time accordingly.
6. I can update the status in either place.
7. I leave "done" tasks on my OneNote page for a while (they are flagged as done), but as I work on the parent task I can quickly see which of the sub tasks are done and what's left to do. Periodically I delete the done tasks from the ToDo page, for example when the parent task is complete. I always have a permanent record of them in Outlook. Ctrl-A once, followed by delete is a fast way to delete a task line.
8. Also sometimes I add tasks out of context of my OneNote ToDo page. For example, if I'm taking notes in a meeting. I can use the same process to flag any item in the meeting notes as a task to do. I don't have to switch contexts, and later when I link back to the task I'll see all the information from that meeting that might relate to the task.

If you're like me you probably have a few OneNote pages or sections that you use frequently. For example, a to do list, daily log, team notebook homepage, or project status page.

I like to have instant access to those things with a simple keyboard shortcut, whether OneNote is currently open or not. It really improves my workflow. I do that by creating windows shortcuts directly to those pages as follows:

1. In OneNote right click on the page tab, or section tab that you want the shortcut to go to.
2. Choose "Copy Hyperlink to Page" or "Copy Hyperlink to Section"
3. Go to your windows desktop (Win-D will take you straight there) and right click on the desktop. Choose "New" -> "Shortcut".
4. In the location box, press Ctrl-V to paste the OneNote hyperlink.
5. Click next. Then give the shortcut a name. For example "ToDo List".
6. Click Finish. You now have a shortcut on the desktop. You can move it anywhere you want, like mydocs.
7. Now right click on the shortcut icon and choose "Properties"
8. You will see a "shortcut key" textbox. Click in there, and then press the key combination you want for the direct keyboard shortcut. For example: Ctrl-Alt-T is what I use for my to do list. The shortcut key needs to be Ctrl-Alt-, Ctrl-Shift-, or Alt-Shift-. Try to avoid any known keybaord shortcuts you might use in apps.

Voila. You now have a direct keyboard shortcut to that page or section in OneNote. Close OneNote and try it out. Just press the keyboard combination and OneNote should open up to that page, no matter what app you're in. It's even useful while you're actually in OneNote but on another page.

Vista bonus

If you're using Vista, there's a nice bonus feature here. You can hit the Windows key on your keyboard. This will pop the start menu and you'll have your cursor in the search box. Type the first few letters in the name of your shortcut. For example: "ToDo". Vista should instantly search (assuming it's already indexed) and your shortcut should pop right to the top. When it's selected, hit enter and it will immediately launch OneNote straight to that page. I find this handy if I have a lot of page shortcuts and it's hard to remember keyboard combinations for all of them. I can just hit the windows key, type a couple of characters, then hit enter.

You could even have a naming convention for your OneNote shortcuts, such as "ONZ1 ToDo List" and "ONZ2 Project Status" etc. If they all started with ONZ, then you could just hit the Windows key and type in "ONZ" and then Vista search would instantly show all the shortcuts with that in it. You could see the list and then just hit the number to narrow to the particular shortcut, or just arrow key through them and pick one.

Of course, if you don't have Vista but have some other desktop search tool that could work too.