Use a notebook on multiple computers

If you often work on more than one computer, you can save time by configuring Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 to keep your notebooks in a shared location such as a file share on your network. You can then freely view, add to, and change your notes from any computer with access to that location, as long as it has OneNote installed. OneNote continually synchronizes the changes that you make to your notes from each computer. The result is an always up-to-date notebook that you don't need to manually copy to each computer you use.

The shared location can be a Web site, a storage drive, or an individual computer, as described below.

The New Notebook Wizard in OneNote guides you through the steps for creating a notebook that you can access from other computers. When you open the notebook from any computer, OneNote creates an offline copy on that computer. Thereafter, whenever OneNote is open on that computer and the computer is connected to the shared location, OneNote continuously synchronizes and merges the changes to the notebook from each computer.

Create a new notebook in a shared location

1. On the File menu, point to New, and then click Notebook.

2. In the New Notebook Wizard, do the following:

   • In the Name box, enter a name for the notebook (for example, Danielle's Notes or Jose's Web Research Project).

   • If you want to apply a color to the notebook cover, select a color. It will be displayed in the notebook icon on the navigation bar.

   • If you want to use a template for your notebook pages, in the From Template box, select a template.

3. Click Next.

4. Under Who will use this notebook?, click I will use it on multiple computers.

5. Click Next.

6. Decide on a suitable shared location for your new notebook. The following locations are recommended for storing shared OneNote notebooks:

   • An internal or public file share on your company's or school's computer network

   • A shared folder on a computer on which you have Administrator permissions

   • A document library on a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services Web site

   • A high-storage-capacity USB (Universal Serial Bus) drive

     We recommend that you do not use shared notebooks with any other file or folder sharing and synchronization technologies.

7. In the Location box, verify the suggested location for the shared notebook.

   Note: The notebook's name that you entered in step 2 will be automatically appended to the location path.

8. If you want OneNote to create an e-mail message for you that contains a link to the location of the shared notebook, select the Send me a link to this notebook so I can add it to OneNote on my other computers check box.

   Tip: If you choose not to create the e-mail message with a link to the shared notebook at this time, you can do so later by clicking Send Shared Notebook Link to Others on the Share menu and composing and sending a message to yourself.

9. Click Create to create the new notebook at the shared location that you named.

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Share an existing notebook among my computers

If you already created a OneNote notebook on your computer and want to use it on your other computers, you need to move the notebook to a shared location from which your other computers can open it (for example, a network file share or a shared folder on this computer).

Do the following:

1. In OneNote, close the notebook that you want to share between computers. On the Notebooks navigation bar, right-click the title of the notebook, and then click Close this notebook on the shortcut menu.

2. On the File menu, click Exit to exit OneNote.

3. On the Windows taskbar, click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Windows Explorer.

4. Navigate to the folder that contains your OneNote notebooks. By default, your notebooks are stored in the OneNote Notebooks folder in the My Documents folder on your computer's hard disk drive.

5. Right-click the notebook folder that you want to move to a shared location, and then click Cut on the shortcut menu.

6. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to a shared location that you can access from your other computers. On the Edit menu in Windows Explorer, click Paste.

   Note: Cutting and pasting an existing notebook folder effectively moves the folder to the new, shared location.

7. After Windows Explorer moves the notebook folder to its new location, close Windows Explorer and start OneNote.

8. On the File menu in OneNote, point to Open, and then click Notebook.

9. In the Open Notebook dialog box, browse to the shared location to which you moved your notebook in the previous steps, click the notebook folder, and then click Open.

   Tip: You can send yourself an e-mail message with a link to the notebook's new location and then click the link in the message on your other computers to open the notebook quickly. On the Share menu, click Send Shared Notebook Link to Others, verify the notebook's new location, and then send the message to an e-mail account that you can access from your other computers.

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