Synchronizing OneNote 2007 with Office Live

Excited that I finally figured this out, here is a step-by-step how-to that will enable you to put your OneNote notebook online with Office Live, allowing for Live sync and sharing amongst multiple computers.

DISCLAIMER:  At this time, Office Live Small Business gives free webspace in the amount of 50 MB.  If your books are smaller than this, then you will be fine.  If you choose to upgrade your server space, you can do so by purchasing additional space.  $4.95 a month plus taxes gets you 1GB of space.

If you are only using Windows Vista or 7 machines, you will NOT want to use this method because there are free WebDAV providers out there that OneNote will be compatible with.  Only use this method if you are looking for a free or cheap way to sync with multiple computers that include Windows XP computers.

If you want me to explain how I set up my personal Vista machine to sync via WebDAV with a public provider, let me know.

Let’s get started.

1) Sign up for Office Live Small Business

http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-us/

Why?  Because standard Office Live will not allow this feature to work the way OneNote needs it to.  We all know OneNote plays nice with WebDAV and Sharepoint.  (Note: WebDAV support is currently limited to Vista without some server-side allowances that I frankly don’t recommend for security reasons.  Google it, the info is out there if you’re curious.)  The Office Live environment is a watered-down Sharepoint, however the mainstream Office Live does not have the extensions needed for OneNote to communicate directly with it (read: you’d have to manually upload and download all your files–what a pain).

Office Live Small Business has some extra features which are more than what most people need, specifically aimed at Small Businesses.  It just so happens (whether intentionally or not, remains to be seen) that OneNote is able to talk to the Small Business application as if it were Sharepoint.

Oh, and don’t worry, it’s free to sign up for a basic account.

2) Sign into your Office Live Small Business account

You will be presented with the following screen (click for larger):

3) Click the “More” option, followed by the “Business Applications” link

The previous picture showed the location of this menu highlighted.  If you’ve never used it before, then you will be prompted to activate it for free.

Then you will be presented with the following:

Here is my current Business Applications screen.  You’ll notice in the corner there that I am COMPLETELY out of space.  My OneNote notebooks are around 160MB in size, so until I upgrade my space, I’m receiving “out of space” errors in OneNote.  Keep this in mind when continuing.

4) Get the link needed for your OneNote root location

You can either use the default “Document Manager” provided, or, if you’re using this for other things as well, click “Add Application” and add another Document Manager module with a name of your choosing.  You’ll see in the screenshot above, I added one I called “Writing” for containing my Writing OneNote books. 

Whichever you do, now click on the name in the left column to bring up that application.

Now, pay special attention to the URL on these pages.

When I click on my “Document Manager,” the URL is as such:

And my “Writing” application URL is:

The OneNote root location will be everything BEFORE the /FORMS part.  So, in a more generic sense, your URL will be something like:

http://CompanyNameTypeOfficeLivecom.officelive.com/NameOfApp/documents

Now that you have your root location, let’s go set up a new notebook in OneNote 2007.

5) Create a new notebook in OneNote 2007

In OneNote, click “File” and then “New” | “Notebook”

Choose a default template, give it a name and a color, and click “Next".

Choose that multiple people will share this notebook, on a server.  Then “Next.”

In the next window, type the Root URL you found from Office Live.  Here is a shot with mine.  Notice I did not add the actual notebook’s name to the URL.  The Full path line underneath that does that for us.  Then, Click “Create".”

The first time you do this, it’s gonna run you through the whole sign in with your Passport thing.  (SEE SIDENOTE BELOW.)  Then, the book is created and syncs automatically.  Start creating sections and such.

Sidenote on Passport Login:  I had used the Office Live Workspaces as well, and as such, had the Office Live Add-in for Microsoft Office 2007 installed on my computer.  It is very possible that this may need to be installed for this process to work, I don’t know, and don’t feel like uninstalling to test it.  If you find you can do it without the Add-in, or can confirm it is needed, let me know!

For completeness sake, the add-in is available here:

http://www.microsoft.com/DownLoads/details.aspx?familyid=36BAC9DA-1EE4-40DF-B06C-A327269F2B63&displaylang=en

ONE FINAL NOTE: Opening previously created books from other computers

Okay, so you’re putting it on a server so you can open it later from another computer right?  Use “File” | “Open” | “Notebook” and then type in your root URL.  Then you will get a window like the following:

This will list the folders in that directory, one of which will be the name of the notebook you created.  Highlight and click “Open.”

ONE MORE FINAL FINAL NOTE: DISCLAIMER

You will notice that at no point does any of this process use SSL (https://etc).  This means the data is NOT ENCRYPTED.  For security reasons, if you are hosting something SUPER SENSITIVE, you may want to consider official hosting options.  1and1.com, my personal host, offers SharePoint hosting for $19.99 a month, and there are many hosts out there to give you these options.  On my Vista machine, I can use WebDAV over a secure connection with free WebDAV provider MyDrive.ch.

Have fun folks!