saving OneNote notebooks on hard drive and simultaneously on Skydrive

Question

G’day, I love OneNote but there is one thing I hate: it’s one or the other, not both (i.e. I want to save the notebook on my computer but ALSO have it synced online). I DO NOT like the idea of just relying on a cached copy if something goes wrong, I want to have a notebook folder on my computer (which is automatically backed up to an external drive) AND I want it all backed up and accessible online. Can this be done?

Why do I want this done this way? well, I run Win7 and Office 2010 in parallels desktop on my 15" MacBook Pro - I am currently saving my notebooks to the Mac's Documents folder. If I save (share) them online then cannot seem to be able to save them on the mac either. I"m not happy with them just being on Skydrive with only a cached copy as a backup (why? because some of my friends have had their live accounts shut down by Microsoft without explanation, and it's been a pain in the neck to get them reactivate, I don't want to rely on Skydrive just in case this happens to me). Suffice it to say I have lots of reasons for wanting to do it this way so does anyone have any clues on how this might be done?

Solution

NTFS provides a functionality called symbolic link kind of like a hard-link (Not a shortcut) you can place links to your Notebooks folder in your Backup Folder which will then automatically sync. Here's a utility that can create Junctions for you: Junction

To create a junction c:\Skydrive\MyNotes for "c:\My Docs\NyNotes":

Create Directory:

C:\Skydrive>md MyNotes

Create junction:

C:\>junction c:\Skydrive\MyNotes "c:\My Docs\MyNotes"

Now everything in MyDocs\MyNotes is also (technically) in Skydrive\MyNotes - And automatically synced!

Here's a right-key click solution for the problem, no command line required: NTFSLink

Comments

[surfasb]

Why not just point the cached location to your backup folder?

[snow_FFFFFF]

The copy in SkyDrive\MyNotes is Synced Online, whereas the original files are in MyDocs\MyNotes - The purpose of this junction will be to sync in real-time all files in the MyDocs\MyNotes folder to SkyDrive or any other online services that the user might choose. [The original lives in MyDocs\MyNotes, the Copy lives online at SkyDrive or Dropbox or whereever the user might choose.]