This article deals with the folling error message: “To open this notebook, your computer must be running a supported version of Microsoft OneNote and a browser that supports opening files directly from the Office Web Apps.”

I am relatively new to Microsoft OneNote (now part of all Microsoft Office 2010 suites) and totally new to Microsoft Office Web Apps. The Office Web Apps service was introduced by Microsoft a couple of weeks ago, and holds great promise for sharing information. Personally, I find the service extremely useful for jotting down notes and building simple spreadsheets when I am out of the office – it is great to have Office (albeit a scaled down version) available at my fingertips wherever I go). Documents are saved in the “cloud” on Microsoft’s SkyDrive, and are accessible from anywhere.

As things go with geeks, the simple stuff is seldom enough and you soon find yourself bumping your head against system boundaries. It seamed logical (and it proved reasonably simple too) to share a OneNote notebook and Excel spreadsheet with my significant other. I created the documents locally, shared them online, and she could access them through her Live ID. I admit that it took a little bit of head scratching to figure out how to share my online documents, but I eventually figured that out.

The opposite would not work though…

I could create a document (in this case a OneNote notebook) on SkyDrive with ease, but was unable to open it locally (i.e. using OnenNote on my main work computer). It was supposed to be as easy as clicking the Open in OneNote button. But doing that gave an error…

To open this notebook, your computer must be running a supported version of Microsoft OneNote and a browser that supports opening files directly from the Office Web Apps.

I tried using Internet Explorer (instead of my default Mozilla Firefox), but the error was the same. It took me a while (Google is my friend) to figure out that the problem was likely due to me running a 64-bit version of Microsoft Office. Some disconnect between Office Web Apps and Microsoft Office still seem to exist in the 64-bit environment. (A related issue exists in Office OneNote 2010 when using the Insert File option, e.g. dragging and dropping a PDF file into OneNote – it currently does not work with the 64-bit version.)

Microsoft will likely be addressing issues like this in due course. In the meantime, I found a work-around for the problem to be opening the online notebook in [my local] OneNote using its URL. Figuring out what the URL is, is not that difficult…

Looking at the notebook that resides on Office Web Apps (i.e. the online notebook that I want to open locally), the URL displayed in my web browser’s address bar is an ASPX (ASP.NET) page:

https://cid-XXXXXXXX.office.live.com/edit.aspx/NameOfOnlineNotebook

where XXXXXXXX is some unique session identifier.

Comparing with a notebook that I am sharing online (i.e. notebook I created locally and then shared online), I found more clues. Right-clicking the notebook and choosing Copy Link to Notebook revealed the following two URLs:

https://cid-XXXXXXXX.office.live.com/edit.aspx/NameOfSharedNotebook

as well as

https://YYYYY.docs.live.net/XXXXXXXX/NameOfSharedNotebook

where YYYYY is some subdomain for my SkyDrive instance.

Using the similarities and differences in the two URLs, I could deduct that the URL to the online notebook should be as follows:

https://YYYYY.docs.live.net/XXXXXXXX/NameOfOnlineNotebook

I could then simply use the Open command on the File menu, enter the URL for the File Name, and open the notebook

Keywords: Microsoft Office, OneNote, Office Web Apps, SkyDrive, 64-bit