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

Today’s error followed the installation of Microsoft Expression Web Studio 4. I like using Firefox as my default web browser, and it appears as if the installer messed up some setting related to the default web browser. The problem appears related to an error that I reported earlier.

As I mentioned, this is not the first time this has happened on my computer. The following fix works for me:

• Close Outlook.
• Set Internet Explorer as the default web browser. You can do this by running IE, and choosing Internet Options on the Tools menu. On the Programs tab, click Make default.
• Set Firefox as the default browser again. Do this by running Firefox, and opening the Options… on the Tools menu. On the Advanced tab, select the General sub-tab, and click Check Now [if Firefox is the default browser].

In summary: The problem appears to relate to setting a default browser other than Internet Explorer, and then installing a (Microsoft?) product that meddles with those settings. Re-setting the default browser fixes the problem for me time and again.

Keywords: Microsoft Outlook, Firefox, default browser, error, hyperlink

According to the TortoiseSVN website, one can safely install both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions side-by-side. The 64-bit version will provide the necessary services to 64-bit applications (including Windows itself), and the 32-bit version will service the 32-bit application.

So, I installed the 32-bit version too. To my dismay though, the TortoiseSVN icon overlays completely disappeared. The shell integration functions (SVN Update, SVN Commit, etc.) were all there and working fine, but the icon overlays were simply missing.

Googling around confirmed that others have been experiencing problems with missing icon overlays too. There were many suggestions, generally dealing with uninstalling and rebooting, changing the status cache settings, and even deleting the icon cache itself. Nothing worked for me.

Several (too many to count) uninstall, reboot, install, and reboot sessions followed with little success. At one stage I got the icon overlays to display on the left tree panel in Windows Explorer, but on the right-side content window they remained gone. Weird.

In the end, I solved the problem uninstalling TortoiseSVN (both versions), rebooting, and then deleting all Windows Registry that made reference to “tortoise”. Reinstalling and two reboots later, all was working like a charm

I cannot remember when last I rebooting my computer this many times…

Keywords: TortoiseSVN, icon overlays, Windows 7 64-bit, shell integration

I promptly consulted my good friend Google for advice, and found a couple of relevant suggestions. The cause of the problem appeared to be related to the default browser setting in Windows (by the way, I use Firefox as my main browser) being damaged (by the Windows update?). Suggestions ranged from setting the default programs in Windows, to editing the Windows Registry. None of that worked for me though. I suspect that might have had to do with me running

Windows 7 (at the time still the Release Candidate), and the information out there relating to Windows Vista and older operating systems.

What did fix the problem was to simply run Internet Explorer and set it as the default web browser (Tools / Internet options / Programs / Make Default), and then run Firefox and set it as the default web browser (Tools / Options / Advanced / General / Check Now).

Really easy in the end!

Keywords: Outlook, Firefox, error, restrictions