Using Dropbox to Sync OneNote Across Multiple Computers
So, you’ve got OneNote installed and you think it’s great… but you’re tired of having to carry your files with you everywhere you go. You may have found a workaround already (I’d been using a flash drive as my default) but it requires… you know… effort and diligence. You’re looking for something easy… something effortless.
I think I’ve got you covered!
First things first. You want your notebooks to sync to multiple locations, but you also need a place to store your data that isn’t dependent on an always-on, always available connection. Maybe you venture out of the corporate comfort of the local Starbucks when you travel and you thus lack a wireless connection. To create that data store, we’re going to use Dropbox. (http://getdropbox.com/) Dropbox is perfect for this purpose because the computers you’ve installed it on see it as a local folder (which it is), it automatically syncs when it has an internet connection, and any other computer running Dropbox from the same account will see the updated files as soon as the automatic sync happens.
Go ahead… download Dropbox and create your account. I’ll wait.
Done? Awesome.
Now that Dropbox is installed, we’re going to move our OneNote data from its current location to the Dropbox folder.
Create a OneNote folder in your Dropbox. See how I have a lovely OneNote folder in my Dropbox? Yeah, you should create one of those too. The path to your Dropbox should be C:\Users\(Username)\Documents\My Dropbox in Vista or C:\Documents and Settings\(Username)\My Documents\My Dropbox in XP. To create the folder, simply… create a folder. You know… File -> New -> Folder or simply right-click -> new -> folder.
Open OneNote. Go to Tools -> Options. Select the Save option. In the Paths Window, we see where OneNote currently stores its files. Before we redirect OneNote to the new file store, we want to copy the old data into the new Dropbox OneNote location. Browse to the data location listed (usually Documents\One Note Notebooks), right click, and copy. Open your Dropbox and drop the files into the Dropbox! You’ll want to make sure to get both Folders AND the Unfiled Notes.one file. The folders contain your individual notebooks, while the Unfiled Notes.one file contains your unfiled, unassigned notes.
If you’ve stored any notebooks elsewhere, you’ll want to move them too. For example, if you were like me and you had specific notebooks on a flash drive, you may want to move them.
Back in OneNote, change your paths. Point the Unfiled Notes.one file to the Unfiled Notes.one file in your dropbox. Point your backup file to the backup file in the dropbox. Finally, point your Default Notebook location to the One Note folder you created in your Dropbox. Viola! You’re done!
Well… not quite yet. We’ve still got to tell One Note to open those moved Notebooks. Yeah, yeah… I know. You’d think that it would be smart enough to open them up, but you’d be wrong.
Since OneNote should already be open, right click on each and every Notebook and select “Close This Notebook.” After you’ve done that, go to File -> Open -> Notebook, browse to your Dropbox, and open all of your notebooks from the Dropbox. You have to do this if you want to update the new, Dropboxed version of your notebooks instead of the old, local versions of your notebooks. I suggest closing and reopening OneNote to verify that it worked, but you should be good to go.
Now for the fun part. On any computer that you’re going to share the OneNote files with, install Dropbox and redirect OneNote’s default directory as above. If you have notebooks unique to the machines, go ahead and move them… otherwise, leave them be and use the new location.
After the Dropbox syncs, you should be able to see the notebooks. Even better. when you update them they should sync across all of your computers as long as Dropbox is running in the background!
