Well, I think I've managed to mix myself up again. How unusual...
I blogged back in January about how great Office Live is but how I wish it would handle OneNote files.
Exploring further, I found that Office Live isn't everything I'd thought / hoped and have probably gotten mixed up with what it does now and what is forthcoming when the new version of Office is released (probably late this year or early next year).
For now, Office Live will allow you to edit Notes online but you can only view Word docs (I'm not sure about Excel or PowerPoint files as I hardly use either).
Not having the ability to handle OneNote files isn't a real concern at present as I am not sharing with other people. For me, I only use Office Live to save documents for my own use.
To be able to share OneNote files, I'm using Live Mesh. The thing that really impresses me about Live Mesh is that a copy of a folder that is part of my mesh is kept on my local machine - very handy for when I'm disconnected from the Internet. The sync is pretty easy too and means that files I create at home can be used at work as well.
I'm using Mesh extensively with my new ASUS netbook as it affords me some cheap backup in the event of failure or theft. Mesh also means I can use EndNote (bibliographic software - I study part time) on several machines and keep my databases in a Mesh folder, so I now get the same databases no matter which machine I'm using.
As for Office Live - I say bring on full online authoring capabilities! It will leave Google Apps for dead as far as I'm concerned. While Google Apps is great for online document editing, it doesn't integrate well with Office and doesn't have any sort of OneNote like functionality. While I do also use EverNote (yep - another product name ending in "NOTE" and I've mentioned all three of them in this post) I use this for other note taking like tasks such as recording receipts. OneNote doesn't really fit this bill and I mainly use it for professional / study tasks.
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I came across your blog whilst searching for links on the use of Endnote and Live Mesh. I've been having major problems with it and wondered if anyone had had any success. Live Mesh worked fine with just sharing normal files, but everything went wrong when I added my EndNote library to Live Mesh. Live Mesh keeps disconecting and there are synchronisation problems. I think it is something to do with the extra folder that Endnote adds alongside the library file. Can I ask what version of Endnote you use and did you have any problems initially?
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, Nick
Hi Nick
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting on my blog. I'm using EndNote X1 and haven't had any problems. I only use my database with one copy of EndNote at once. I'm curious whether you try to use your database with more than one copy of EndNote at once. The extra folder EndNote creates is just kept for any attachments you add to EndNote references.
That said, I have had several sync problems with Live Mesh. For some reason, some folders continue to sync while others don't, even though they have been sync'ed successfully before. What I usually do is to remove the folder on the computer and re-add it. For this reason, I tend to keep many of my folders fairly small. I haven't found any other way of fixing sync problems.
The sync problem seems to have gone away since I removed my EndNote (X1) files from Live Mesh. Likewise I am/was only using it on one PC at a time.
ReplyDeleteI found another similar service - DropBox, which does much the same and seems to work fine with my EndNote library. It is an amazing help to have EndNote sync'ed between two PCs. I'd be lost without it.