Synchronising OneNote notebook among different computers via FTP

OneNote does not support saving a Notebook directly via FTP. However, with the following step, we can conveniently do the trick:

Register for a free FTP account at http://www.drivehq.com/

Download Netdrive (www.netdrive.net/), a Windows utility to map FTP/WebDav folder as network driver

Use NetDrive to map the free FTP account into a local drive, such as Z.

In OneNote 2007, choose Menu->Share->Create Share Notebook. Enter a name for the notebook, then select Multiple users will use this Notebook, and pick On a server. After that, choose to save the notebook onto the network drive you just map in step (3).

On other computers you wish to use this notebook, re-perform step 1, 2 and 3. In step 4, do not create a new notebook, but instead use File/Open and choose to open the shared notebook.

Done! Everytime you make changes, OneNote will automatically save the changes and upload it to the FTP server. Your changes can be seen by all users of this notebook.

Cons: OneNote is not optimized to work with FTP connection. Every time you make change to a notebook, Onenote deletes an entire file and create new one. This is very slow and if for some reasons, the FTP upload fails, the notebook file will disappear and can only be restored from OneNote backup.

An alternative is to use BestSync (http://www.risefly.com/fsedwld.htm). It allows syncing between local folders as well as FTP folders.

See also Migration from OneNote Notebooks to Blogger

References

OneNote 2007: Notebook Upload via FTP, http://colbyafrica.blogspot.com/2008/05/onenote-2007-notebook-upload-via-ftp.html

Syncing OneNote 2007 notes across your many PCs , http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2006/06/07/621692.aspx