Editor's Note: The following is a guest post by Windows Phone MVP Adam Lein as part of the MVP Award Program Blog's "MVPs for Windows Phone 7" series. Adam is a Windows Phone MVP from Westchester NY. He has been using Windows CE, Pocket PC, and Windows Mobile devices since the late 90’s and has been writing for Pocketnow.com; one of the top mobile phone news sites; since 2002. He is now a senior editor with expertise in the Windows Phone platform and intimate knowledge of all mobile platforms. During the day, he works as a graphic designer and at a small design firm called Roher/Sprague Partners.
When you launch OneNote Mobile on Windows Phone 7 for the first time, you might expect it to list all of your OneNote notebooks that are already saved on the SkyDrive storage associated with your primary Windows Live account that's assigned to the phone. Incidentally, the Apple iOS version of Microsoft OneNote Mobile does automatically list all of your SkyDrive notebooks when you sign in with your Live ID.
On Windows Phone 7, you'll only see a default "Personal (Web)" Notebook and two default notebook pages. If you press the "All" button in OneNote, and then the "Refresh" button, it will ask you if you want to sync with SkyDrive. This will set up the "Personal (Web)" notebook for syncing with SkyDrive, but that's all. It still isn't going to show you any of the other notebooks you might already have syncing on SkyDrive with OneNote 2010 on your desktop.
Fortunately, there is a way to get other notebooks to sync with OneNote 2010 Mobile on Windows Phone 7.
- Launch Internet Explorer and make sure the "Website Preference" settings are set to the "Mobile Version" view.
- Navigate to http://office.live.com and log in with the same Live ID used for your phone's primary Live ID account.
- From there you'll be able to browse your SkyDrive folders within the web browser. After you tap a OneNote notebook stored on SkyDrive, it will load a secondary page with a larger OneNote file icon along with a few details.
- Tap the large icon, and all of a sudden, it will switch to OneNote 2010 Mobile and initialize a sync relationship while downloading the notebook. From that point forward, you'll be able to access all of the OneNote Notebook pages from within OneNote Mobile.
If you go to Settings > Applications > Office > OneNote, you'll see an option to turn on Automatic Sync. This isn't the same as automatic sync in OneNote 2010 on the desktop however. It will only sync when you "open a page, save a page or open a section." There's no button for saving OneNote pages, so I'm not sure why it says that. Even with that turned on, it doesn't always sync, so be sure you hit the "Refresh" button often in order to save your OneNote notebook changes back to SkyDrive.