OneNote 2010 - regarding future web, mobile, and Android access
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Monday, November 23, 2009 8:16 AMI have been excitedly trying out OneNote 2010 and am currently faced with the difficult choice of bringing over all my personal info from Evernote into OneNote.This is especially tough because not that long ago, I moved my data from OneNote to Evernote. Why? Because I can access this info nearly *anywhere*.- I can access it when visiting my parents by simply logging onto the web. It's my understanding this'll be supported with OneNote sometime next year, right?- I can access my Evernote data on the web via my Android smartphone. Will this be possible?- I can use a really cool official Evernote Android App to quickly search for, view, and edit my data. Will Microsoft allow folks to make an Android app for OneNote? Or even consider making one themselves?Thanks in advance for clue'ing me in here :-)
- Moved by VijayKR Wednesday, April 28, 2010 8:42 AM Forums Consolidation (From:OneNote 2010 Beta (to be retired))
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009 9:31 PM OneNote has a 3 screen solution with the 2010 release. We will have the desktop app, the web app and a mobile app all which sync to the same place in the cloud to Windows Live. This will allow you to do all of the same things you mention above. So when you are at your parents you can use the browser to view your notes (IE, Firefox & Safari). You can also view your notes in the Android browser on your phone and finally I hope there is a OneNote app for the Android in the future. For example there is a 3rd party group which has released an iPhone solution for OneNote 2007 even without all of these web services we are adding in Office 2010.For each person you would need to look at which solution works best for you...hope this helps and if you have more questions please let us know.
- Proposed As Answer by Simon Jones [MSDL]Microsoft Community Contributor Wednesday, November 25, 2009 8:17 AM
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009 9:15 AMDaniel, that's very helpful and reassuring! Thank you for the detailed info! If you have (or can point me to) any tentative timeline for the web access in particular, that'd be super. and/or any videos / docs detailing how OneNote will look and work on the web. :)
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Saturday, November 28, 2009 3:22 AMWell first of all I would recommend this website: http://blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/ which is the main blog for the Office Web Apps, you can actually see some of them now, details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/officewebapps/archive/2009/09/17/9896401.aspx
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Thursday, January 14, 2010 5:27 AMAny word on when we might get OneNote Mobile 2010 added to the Office Mobile 2010 Beta?... There are rumours that the OneNote Mobile product may even be delayed even further or canned altogether. This is a big hole in my productivity setup and I know a few folks who have gone back to Evernote because of it
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010 10:58 PMHi Daniel -
Is the OneNote 2010 sync implementation an actual sync (ie changes made to one copy sync to the others) or is it that the content is centralized in the Windows Live cloud?
Additionally, I know that the OneNote 2010 web app beta isn't yet released but what about Windows Live cloud sync for OneNote 2010 clients?
Thank you. -
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 11:11 PMLast I checked the Windows Live sync for OneNote 2010 clients on the desktop was not quite ready for public use. I would hope it's ready before OneNote 2010 actually releases to manufacturing this summer though.
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:43 AMThanks Ben, is the OneNote 2010 sync implementation an actual sync (ie changes made to one copy sync to the others) or is it that the content is centralized in the Windows Live cloud?
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Thursday, February 25, 2010 2:55 AMI'm not sure from that description what the distinction is. :) But it's a sync just like shared OneNote notebooks in 2007 (with some enhancement).
OneNote writes your changes to the local cache file and syncs them, when it can, to the Windows Live storage. You can have multiple users editing the same notebook at the same time and their changes all get synced back to the Windows Live storage.
More commonly you have OneNote at work and at home, for example, and you store your personal notebook on Windows Live. Whether you open from home or work, assuming you have Internet connectivity, you'll get the same notes in both places without any special efforts on your part.
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Monday, March 01, 2010 2:10 AMHi Ben - I re-read my question and I agree I could have written it better. :)
So clarifying, do I have any other options for syncing 2010 notebooks other than by putting them on a shared file location, since the Windows Live-based sync isn't ready yet? And was there any other way to sync 2007 notebooks than by putting them on a shared file location?
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Monday, March 01, 2010 2:21 AMHi Matt, At the moment, I am syncing Home, Work and Mobile by using the Mesh Client. This way an update on one is copied to all the others...
From what I understand, this will be the model that comes in the 2010 version, being that each OneNote client has it's own local cahce and that any changes will get synchronised to all the others. Essentially multiple clients with mutliple home locations all synchronised with each other.
It isn't quite the situation you seem to be asking about where the Notebooks are situated in the cloud and each client connects to that notebook, being multiple clients connected to a single home location in the cloud...
I'd prefer the latter but I would be happy with the former... As long as I can use Mobile, and multiple locations to add data and finally get my GTD working the way I'd like... -
Monday, March 01, 2010 3:47 AMWell, ultimately they have to be on some kind of shared file location - whether it's Skydrive or Live Mesh or USB or SharePoint or a Windows File Share or ....
You can share them in almost any manner that you can share any other kind of file - USB stick is not a terrible option if you can pass the stick back and forth. The way *I* do it is with a plain 'ole Windows file share on a server at the office and connect to that via VPN. We have half a dozen people sharing a few notebooks that way.
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Tuesday, March 02, 2010 2:39 AMChaps71 -
<< At the moment, I am syncing Home, Work and Mobile by using the Mesh Client. This way an update on one is copied to all the others... >>
I've tried syncing OneNote 2007 files using a similar method - I happened to be using SugarSync but the process is identical. The problem is that just opening a notebook causes the file's timestamp to be updated, even if no new data is saved to the file. As a result, I keep having older copies of notebooks overwriting the newer ones.
How do you get around this?
This problem is why I was looking for a "native" sync implementation, controlled by OneNote itself. Does 2010 address this? -
Tuesday, March 02, 2010 2:42 AMhi Ben
<< Well, ultimately they have to be on some kind of shared file location - whether it's Skydrive or Live Mesh or USB or SharePoint or a Windows File Share or .... >>
If the files are sync'd around between hosts (e.g. PC1 <--> cloud <--> PC2 and so on), then each PC is accessing the file locally. What I meant by my "shared file location" statement was if the notebooks were stored in a single place (e.g. cloud) and then accessed remotely (rather than sync'd locally, and then accessed locally) from each client.
Please see my response to Chaps71 above - is the problem I state there solved, or am I looking at it incorrectly?
Thanks -
Tuesday, March 02, 2010 2:54 AM
hi Ben
<< Well, ultimately they have to be on some kind of shared file location - whether it's Skydrive or Live Mesh or USB or SharePoint or a Windows File Share or .... >>
If the files are sync'd around between hosts (e.g. PC1 <--> cloud <--> PC2 and so on), then each PC is accessing the file locally. What I meant by my "shared file location" statement was if the notebooks were stored in a single place (e.g. cloud) and then accessed remotely (rather than sync'd locally, and then accessed locally) from each client.
Please see my response to Chaps71 above - is the problem I state there solved, or am I looking at it incorrectly?
Thanks
OneNote since 2007 always locally caches all notebooks (even locally stored ones) and does all of the work on the cache file. So even if you've got your notebook stored on a shared location, OneNote is actually caching it to a local file on the hard drive and working from the local copy. OneNote never works directly on the notebook - whether local or remote - but rather always on the cached copy (which is then transparently sync'd in the background whenever it's available).
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Wednesday, March 03, 2010 1:06 AMHi Ben - Thanks for the explanation on this.
Please see what I wrote about the notebooks getting overwritten. Regardless of how OneNote operates on the files, I've found that the mere opening of a notebook (even if I don't add or change any content) updates the file's timestamp, so any file sync software sees it as newer and copies it on top of the "good" copy.
Am I missing something?
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Wednesday, March 03, 2010 1:29 AM
Hi Ben - Thanks for the explanation on this.
Please see what I wrote about the notebooks getting overwritten. Regardless of how OneNote operates on the files, I've found that the mere opening of a notebook (even if I don't add or change any content) updates the file's timestamp, so any file sync software sees it as newer and copies it on top of the "good" copy.
Am I missing something?
I don't like to use sync software to copy OneNote files - I prefer to let OneNote manage its own sync. I can't say specifically for OneNote 2010 but I think the experience on older versions was that sync software (like Windows Offline Folders) tended to cause problems with OneNote files.
With SkyDrive there should just be the master copy of the Notebook on the SkyDrive share. OneNote will then create local caches of that file and will sync changes back up to the SkyDrive copy as necessary/possible. When you start doing 3rd party sync you're actually creating multiple files and then caching multiple files and that makes me nervous. If the sync software isn't OneNote-aware especially.
So I guess with that in mind Live Mesh wouldn't be my first choice of Notebook-sharing tool (though I know of people who say they've used it successfully). Live Mesh probably works best in the scenario where the Notebooks are only opened sequentially - i.e. you use OneNote at home and make changes, then you go to work and open OneNote and make changes, then you go back home... In that instance Live Mesh has time (while you're traveling from home to work and back) to sync the changes made in one location before any changes should have a chance to be made in the other. Of course that relies upon you having an active Live Mesh connection on both sides.
I don't think it would work as well if you were sharing a notebook with multiple users who might have intermittent Mesh access. Then you could have conflicting changes which Live Mesh would have to try and reconcile and I'm not sure how well it does that on OneNote notebooks.
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Wednesday, March 03, 2010 4:56 AM
Live Mesh probably works best in the scenario where the Notebooks are only opened sequentially - i.e. you use OneNote at home and make changes, then you go to work and open OneNote and make changes, then you go back home... In that instance Live Mesh has time (while you're traveling from home to work and back) to sync the changes made in one location before any changes should have a chance to be made in the other.
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook
This is exactly how I use it.... I agree it is not the best but it is working for me mainly until the final release of OFfice 2010 and Office Mobile 2010 -
Wednesday, March 03, 2010 5:36 AM
How do you get around this?
I'm not sure that I have.... I get home and all my stuff is there... Judging my my Mesh client, it is updating all 27 files at once.. -
Sunday, March 14, 2010 6:25 PMHi Ben,
You said "the experience on older versions was that sync software (like Windows Offline Folders) tended to cause problems with OneNote files."
Bingo - that's my problem exactly.
Maybe I'm being dense here :) but it isn't clear to me how to (natively?) configure OneNote 2007 sync so as to avoid this problem. Could you please give me a step by step?
thx -
Sunday, March 14, 2010 6:52 PMThere's nothing you can do to OneNote's sync - it is what it is. What you have control over is where you store the Notebook(s) and how you replicate those notebooks.
In my experience the IDEAL situation is to have a single Windows file share somewhere that you can access from all of your computers. It can be a shared folder ON one of your computers, or a file server or just about any storage location you can access from a Windows machine.
You can, after OneNote 2007 SP2, use SharePoint as the central repository for that shared notebook. (O.K., you could before SP2 also, but let's be honest, it sucked)
If that's not possible then Chaps has it right - you can use a service like Windows Live Mesh, you just have to be careful about how/when you access the shared folder.
Remember, OneNote creates a local cached copy of your notebook. If you're working from a single notebook that's good - OneNote will handle syncing to it (even from multiple machines) and reconciling any conflicting changes (mostly). That's the fastest, most stable, environment. That's what I'm describing when I talk about having ONE notebook on a single Windows file share (or SharePoint server) somewhere.
When you use something like Live Mesh or Offline Folders what you're doing is creating MULTIPLE notebooks and then OneNote makes its local cached copy from whichever copy of the notebook your machine is accessing. Syncing to the notebook is easy, but THEN something has to sync the multiple notebooks. And if that sync doesn't happen in a rather particular order you can have data loss, conflicts, old versions....
Think of it this way. You have a paper notebook that you share with a friend. In one scenario there is just one paper notebook. You check it out, make notes, check it back in. Later your friend checks out it, sees your notes, checks it back in. Then you check it out again, see your notes and his, make some notes, check it back in. If you check it out again, no problem, you see all the notes, check it back in.
Now imagine that instead of one paper notebook you have TWO. And the librarian who curates the book not only has to check it in/out but also has to try and reconcile the different changes. So you check out your notebook, make some changes, check it back in. Librarian reconciles the changes. No biggie. Now your friend checks out his notebook (which has a copy of your changes now), makes his changes, checks it back in. Librarian reconciles his changes. You check your copy out, see all the changes, make some changes. While you're doing that...your friend checks his copy back out AGAIN. You haven't checked your copy back in yet so your latest changes aren't in his. He makes changes. Both of you check back in. Now the librarian has to try and reconcile possibly conflicting changes. And while she's doing that you check yours out again and make more changes....
Hopefully you can see why having multiple copies of the notebook could cause an issue.
When you use Live Mesh you're in the second scenario. Rather than having a single file that you're caching locally and OneNote is sync'ing. You actually have MULTIPLE copies of the notebook. If you're not careful they can get mucked up in the Live Mesh sync process.
What Chaps is doing is just being sort of deliberate about it. He has multiple copies of the notebook but because he's the only user he's able to make sure that Live Mesh has time to sync copy A (Home) with copy B (work) BEFORE he tries to open copy B. And vice versa, his changes to Copy B are sync'd to Copy A BEFORE he tries to open Copy A. With a single user accessing them in separate geographic locations that's reasonably easy to do. With multiple users or one user on multiple machines it can get goofy in a hurry.
So....if you're using OneNote 2007 make sure you're running SP2 (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=B444BF18-79EA-46C6-8A81-9DB49B4AB6E5&displaylang=en ) and if you're going to use something like Live Mesh to maintain separate sync'd copies of the notebook make sure that you're conscious of closing the notebook at one location (and letting Live Mesh sync it to the cloud), and then letting Live Mesh download that latest copy at the other location BEFORE you open it over there. And vice versa.
OneNote 2010's SkyDrive capability (not yet quite ready) will solve that issue very nicely because it will let you have ONE copy of the notebook stored in the Cloud where all of your machines can access it. Since it will be just ONE copy of the notebook (instead of the multiple copies that Live Mesh creates) you won't be faced with the sync issues we're talking about.
Does that help at all? :-)
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Thursday, March 18, 2010 11:39 PMI'm glad to see there are those within Microsoft that can see the potential of an Android app. As I'm sure everyone is well aware, smartphones are not as easily interchangeable and affordable as PCs (it costs a few hundred dollars less to purchase an entry-level PC than it does to purchase an entry-level smartphone outright and consumers are locked into a contract if they buy it subsidized). As such, having applications for every available smartphone OS would be the ideal solution - it would draw a bit of attention away from Microsoft's own OS, which I'm sure they wouldn't be thrilled about, but it would enable all smartphone users to take advantage of Microsoft's excellent notebook software (and would likely increase customer satisfaction quite a bit in that regard).
Welcome to the Social - 6/15/07 -
Friday, March 19, 2010 12:18 AM
I'm an Android user myself and I'd be thrilled to see an Android app. I suspect that initially we'll be working with the web app and that a native Android solution will probably end up coming from a 3rd party.
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Monday, April 05, 2010 5:50 AM
OneNote 2010's SkyDrive capability (not yet quite ready) will solve that issue very nicely because it will let you have ONE copy of the notebook stored in the Cloud where all of your machines can access it. Since it will be just ONE copy of the notebook (instead of the multiple copies that Live Mesh creates) you won't be faced with the sync issues we're talking about.Will it be possible to have local copy (for offline use) that stays in sync?
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Monday, April 05, 2010 8:02 AM
OneNote always makes a local cached copy for offline use. Even on local notebooks, in fact.
-B-
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author: The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook -
Monday, June 07, 2010 3:17 PMCan OneNote make a local copy on mobile devices, or is the only way to view the notebooks by connecting to the net? Is there any way to access OneNote data using a mobile device (android) that isn't connected to the internet?
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