Microsoft OneNote 2010

Troubleshoot SkyDrive sync errors in OneNote 2010

Posted on 17. Jul, 2010 by OneNote in Help Articles

NOTE:  The original issue documented in this article has been resolved. For details, please skip to the section titled “Resolution of this issue” in this article.

With Microsoft OneNote 2010 and a free Windows Live SkyDrive account, you can store notebooks on the Web and access them from your Web browser. Currently, a SkyDrive account offers a generous total storage limit of 25GB (gigabytes). However, SkyDrive also places a maximum size limit of 50MB (megabytes) on individual files that you store online — including OneNote files.

Every section in a OneNote notebook is considered a separate file, so when a notebook section is stored on SkyDrive, it will stop syncing when its total file size approaches or exceeds this 50MB file limit.
 

What causes this issue?

A notebook section can quickly reach the 50MB single file size limit on SkyDrive if its pages contain any of the following:

• A large number of embedded file attachments
• A large number of embedded audio or video clips
• A large number of images
• A large number of file printouts
• A large page history where embedded files have been repeatedly modified in previous versions of each page
   

Since the initial release of the OneNote Web App, the issue affected some customers very quickly because of the way OneNote 2010 stored its section files on SkyDrive. Embedded content previously counted towards the 50MB file size limit, which increased the chances of running out of space faster than intended.

Since we first learned of this issue, we have been actively working together with the SkyDrive team to change the way OneNote sections are stored online.
 

How to recognize this issue

In the Navigation Bar, which is located near the left side of the OneNote 2010 program window, a yellow warning symbol will appear over your Web notebook icon. This warning symbol indicates that the notebook has synchronization errors.

To confirm the issue, do the following:

1. Right-click the notebook icon on the Navigation Bar, and then click Notebook Sync Status.
    
2. In the Shared Notebook Synchronization dialog box that appears, click the Errors tab.
    

The affected section (or sections) will display the following error:

“This section cannot be synced because it exceeds the maximum system download file size. (Error Code 0xE0000025)”

Note   Any other sections that may exist in this notebook that have not reached the 50MB individual file size limit will continue to sync normally.
 

Resolution of this issue

The issue has been resolved. Effective immediately, you are now able to sync much larger OneNote sections to your SkyDrive account than before, due to changes we’ve made in the way that embedded files, printouts, images, and other data inside your OneNote section files are stored on SkyDrive. Such content previously counted towards your 50MB total file size limit, but we now store such section data in a more optimized way to help keep the overall file size low.

The fix has been implemented on SkyDrive servers, so you won’t have to update or install anything to receive the update. Simply start OneNote 2010, log into SkyDrive (if necessary), and then re-sync your Web notebook:

1. In OneNote 2010, right-click your SkyDrive Web notebook on the Navigation Bar, and then click Notebook Sync Status.
    
   
2. In the Shared Notebook Synchronization dialog box that opens, make sure that the Sync automatically whenever there are changes option is selected.
    
3. Click the Sync Now button.
    
4. When the synchronization has been completed, click Close.
    

If you previously ran into the size limit and weren’t sure what to do, or if you still have unusually large notebook sections with extremely large file attachments, you may still be exceeding SkyDrive file size limits. To help you recover from this problem, we’re providing the optional workaround procedure below.
 

Optional workaround

Once a notebook section in a Web notebook approaches or exceeds the 50MB SkyDrive file limitation, it will stop synching. When this happens, simply deleting content out of the affected section will not prevent or resolve the sync issue.

Follow the steps below as an optional workaround. They detail how to move an unusually large section from your Web notebook on SkyDrive to a new notebook on your computer, split up the section’s content, optimize it, and then move the resulting split sections back to your SkyDrive notebook.

Important   This is a detailed, multi-step procedure. Allow ample time to complete these tasks in order, and please follow these instructions carefully.

To begin, start Microsoft OneNote 2010 on your computer, and then do the following:

1. In OneNote 2010, create a new notebook on your computer’s hard drive.
   This notebook will serve as a temporary backup of your SkyDrive notes.
    
   Start by clicking File > New. Under Store Notebook On, select My Computer.
    
   
    
   In the Name field, enter a name for this new notebook (for example, “Temporary SkyDrive backup”).
    
   In the Location field, choose where on your local hard drive the new notebook should be stored (for example, in the OneNote Notebooks folder in your My Documents folder).
    
   To finish, click the Create Notebook button to create the new notebook.
    
   
    
    
2. On the Navigation Bar in OneNote, click the icon of the SkyDrive notebook that has the sync error.
    
   You will see the yellow warning symbol over the Web notebook icon:
    
   
    
    
3. Next, you need to find which specific section in this Web notebook is causing the error.
    
   To do this, right-click the notebook icon on the Navigation Bar and then click Notebook Sync Status.
    
   
4. In the Shared Notebook Synchronization dialog box that opens, click the Errors tab.
    
   You will see the section path and the error message, “This section cannot be synced because it exceeds the maximum system download file size.”
    
    
5. Note the name of the section that’s causing the problem, and then click Close.
    
    
6. Next, you will need to move the section to the local backup notebook you just created.
    
   To do this, right click the section tab matching the name you saw in steps 4 and 5, and then click Move or Copy on the shortcut menu.
    
   
    
    
7. In the Move or Copy Section dialog box that opens, select the new notebook you created in step 1, and then click Move.
    
   Take a moment to verify that the section has been fully moved to the new notebook on your computer’s hard drive by clicking each page tab in the moved section and verifying that all of your content is loaded.
    
   Note   If you had more than just one section that reached (or exceeded) the SkyDrive file size limit, be sure to repeat steps 4-7 for each additional problem section.
    
    
8. Once you have moved all of the problem sections from the Web notebook on SkyDrive to the backup notebook you created on your computer’s hard drive, check and then empty the OneNote Recycle Bin for the original SkyDrive Web notebook.
    
   To open the Recycle Bin, right click the SkyDrive notebook on the Navigation Bar, and then click Notebook Recycle Bin.
    
   
    
   Check the contents of the section that opens to make sure there isn’t anything important here that you haven’t yet moved over into your backup notebook.
    
   When you’ve done that, click Share > Notebook Recycle Bin > Empty Recycle Bin.
    
   
    
    
9. Next, go back to the backup notebook on your computer by clicking its notebook icon on the Navigation Bar.
    
   Now that you have moved over content from the oversized section in the SkyDrive notebook, you can determine which parts of its contents are the largest in size. First, look for pages that contain a large number of images and/or embedded file attachments, such as audio or video clips.
    
   You can check the size of each embedded file attachment by moving the mouse pointer over its icon and then noting its size in the tool-tips that pop up.
    
   
    
    
10. Now it’s time to split the original section into two, so that the large amount of content is distributed between them.
     
    To do this, first create a new section in your backup notebook by clicking the Create New Section tab at the end of the section tab row and then typing a name for the new section.
    
     
     
11. Drag some of the page tabs from the large, original section to the new, second section that you just created. Make sure to include some of the pages that in step 9 you noticed for having a large amount of content or having large embedded files.
     
     
12. Once the content from the original section has been distributed somewhat evenly across the two sections, you need to remove any version history from the sections by clicking Share > Page Versions > Disable History for this Notebook.
     
    
     
13. Once you have disabled the notebook history, you must also manually optimize the sections.
     
    Typically, OneNote routinely optimizes notebook files in the background while you work. Such optimization cleans up temporary space from moved pages and their deleted history and it removes these items from the file so that they require less storage space.
     
    In this particular situation, it’s important that you initiate a manual optimization instead of waiting for OneNote to get around to it automatically. By forcing a manual optimization now, your section files will be reduced to their smallest possible size before you transfer them back to your SkyDrive account.
     
    Click File > Options. In the OneNote Options dialog box that opens, click the Save & Backup category, and then click the Optimize All Files Now button.
     
    
     
    After you click this button, one or more progress bars may appear while OneNote optimizes your files. When these no longer appear, click OK.
     
     
14. Next, you’ll want to make certain that all of the previous steps helped to reduce the file size of your sections to well under 50MB each.
     
    To do this, open Windows Explorer and then navigate to the location where you created the backup notebook.
     
    Open the notebook folder and then check the size of each of the two section files. (If you chose to split the original, oversized section into more than two sections, be sure to check the size of all section files in this notebook.)
    
     
    If any section files listed here are close to 40,000 KB (kilobytes) or larger, note their name, return to step 11, and then move some more content out of those sections to further reduce their file sizes.
     
    If your second section is also reaching this limit, return to step 10 to create a third section. Once you have distributed more section content, you must repeat steps 12-13 in order to optimize the file sizes of the sections again.
     
     
15. When your optimized section files show up with a low file size, you can log back in to SkyDrive (if necessary) and then move the sections from the backup notebook on your computer to your Web notebook on SkyDrive.
     
    To do this, right click the first section tab in your backup notebook, and then click Move or Copy on the shortcut menu. In the Move or Copy Section dialog box that opens, select the Web notebook on SkyDrive as the destination, and then click Move. Do this for each additional section in your backup notebook.
     
    Once you have verified that all your notes are back in the Web notebook on SkyDrive, you can either close or delete the temporary backup notebook that you created in this procedure. (To close the backup notebook, right-click its icon on the Navigation Bar and then click Close This Notebook. To delete it completely, navigate to its notebook folder  in Windows Explorer, and then delete the notebook folder from your hard drive.)
     

Please leave us a comment if you found these instructions helpful. Thank you!

Tags: OneNote Web App, Sharing, SkyDrive, Troubleshooting