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Interesting sync problem - "Sync to a new location"

  • Artigo

We have a mailing list for all of the OneNote MVPs as well as some people on the OneNote team.  Just the other day Patrick wrote us with this problem:

That particular notebook is stored on my desktop and available to use on my desktop, my tablet and my girlfriend’s laptop. Right now though, my desktop is sitting in a shipping container in a US port waiting for the ship to take it to Germany while its hard drives went over the Atlantic in my carry on luggage.

When I got to Germany, I realized that our notebook would not sync anymore because the server containing the notebook (my desktop) was not there. Considering that this is the notebook we use for our move, keeping it in sync is very important right now. (link)

So the problem was that they both had a copy of the notebook and they both contained changes.  How could you get them back in sync without needing to manually go through the changes and merge things yourself?  Is there a way to do this?

Well I wasn't 100% sure so I suggested the following to Patrick:

    1. Find a USB key
    2. On you Tablet right-click on the notebook and choose properties
    3. Choose to sync the notebook to a new location, and have it saved to the USB key
    4. Try the same on the other machine

Amazingly this worked without any problem!  I wasn't sure if we fully supported this scenario but I guess we did which is amazing!  You can read all about it here: OneNote 2007: Switch notebook from client-server sync to peer-to-peer sync while offline

Nice job OneNote team!  I wasn't involved with this but it is just awesome, hopefully this will help other out there.

Update @ 6/7/2007, 11:32 PM from Ilya Koulchin a developer on the OneNote team:

Yep, this is a neat feature. The only caution I'd make is about moving the notebook back to the desktop once that computer comes back online. If you just use the "move to new location" feature again to point at the desktop, you'll likely lose some of your more recent notes. Instead, first, you should DELETE the copy of the notebook on the desktop, then use the "sync to new location" from one of the laptops to publish a more recent copy of the notebook to the desktop from scratch. Then you can boot OneNote on the desktop to sync to the updated version of the notebook. This workaround is needed since the feature was designed for permanent moves of notebooks, not temporary relocations (I'm assuming Patrick doesn't want to keep all his notes on the USB stick forever!). If there's more interest, I can have Dan post a proper post about why all of this is necessary.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 07, 2007
    Yep, this is a neat feature. The only caution I'd make is about moving the notebook back to the desktop once that computer comes back online. If you just use the "move to new location" feature again to point at the desktop, you'll likely lose some of your more recent notes. Instead, first, you should DELETE the copy of the notebook on the desktop, then use the "sync to new location" from one of the laptops to publish a more recent copy of the notebook to the desktop from scratch. Then you can boot OneNote on the desktop to sync to the updated version of the notebook. This workaround is needed since the feature was designed for permanent moves of notebooks, not temporary relocations (I'm assuming Patrick doesn't want to keep all his notes on the USB stick forever!). If there's more interest, I can have Dan post a proper post about why all of this is necessary. -- Ilya (OneNote dev)

  • Anonymous
    June 21, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2008
    Hi there, how can I sync OneNote files between my desktop and my laptop?  thank you for your comments.

  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2009
    We placed a shared notebook on a server that is accessible to several individuals.  Two people have accessed and added content.  However, when one of them (the owner of the notebook)syncs it erases what the other person added.  Any ideas about how to keep the sync from overwriting the work of others?

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2010
    Nice post! and i have used this sync and i have also like this problem. I think comments also helpful for me.Thanks for this.