Why the OneNote 2007 and 2003 file format are different

OneNote file formats, changes between 2007 & 2003

OneNote Extensibility & More.. — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 22:41:43 GMT

As those of you who are using OneNote 2007 know the file format in OneNote 2007 is completely different

Send You Notes To The OneNote Team

GottaBeMobile.com — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:45:21 GMT

Send Your Notes To The OneNote Team

GottaBeMobile.com — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:57:42 GMT

re: Why the OneNote 2007 and 2003 file format are different

mcarbenay — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 01:27:00 GMT

What I'm wondering is why, since you have changed the file format, didn't you embrace the Open Packaging format ?

re: Why the OneNote 2007 and 2003 file format are different

DavidRasmussen — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 20:13:57 GMT

We didn't switch to the Open XML format because we have some unique requirements for OneNote files. We save very frequently, and to do this fast without significant system impact (not to mention battery impact) from rewriting the entire file we use a special internal format. We also optimized this format for seamless sharing and merge. Without going into the details there are a bunch of things about our file structure optimized for this. The option for a OneNote Open XML format is certainly a possibility in the future, but it requires significant work from the OneNote team to optimize the format, and is not just a simple implementation in our case. So we'd be trading it off against other features that customers have told us ae important. Hence we'll consider the trade off carefully.

re: Why the OneNote 2007 and 2003 file format are different

Louise — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:16:34 GMT

I think it is a real pain not being able to edit onenote 2003 files with 2007. I have just started using this great programme. I use 2007 at home and and have managed to get my IT department at work to install the 2003 version. There is no chance they will be upgrading to 2007 in the future (they have a "can't do" mentality) and I am really frustrated that I can't get the two versions to co-exist. To say that this will quickly become less of an issue is short sighted to say the least.

re: Why the OneNote 2007 and 2003 file format are different

DavidRasmussen — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 03:17:27 GMT

I'm sorry about the inconvenience. Really, these kind of trade offs are tough. The trade in doing this would have been that we could not do many of the very significant new features we delivered in 2007. Based on most feedback we've had from users these new features were much more important, but clearly that won't be the case for everyone.

I'm curious about your IT departments resistance to OneNote 2007. OneNote 2007 will run fine with the rest of Office 2003. There is no requirement that they all be at the same version number. If your IT department just now deployed OneNote for the first time nearly a year after we shipped OneNote 2007, I'm surprised they didn't just go for the most recent version (as they wouldn't yet have any particular dependency on OneNote 2003). Was there a reason for that? Did they just assume they had to use OneNote 2003 with Office 2003?

re: Why the OneNote 2007 and 2003 file format are different

J-Mac — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 07:33:00 GMT

@Louise:

I am not trying to speak for you here; just commenting on possible reasoning for an IT Dept's resistance to upgrade to OneNote 2007 from OneNote 2003. (Other than the usual and customary reasons all IT Depts are resistant to upgrade!)

@Dave:

Beside the fact that most IT depts have very little budget funds available to them for software purchases other than pre-approved software standards of the company, it is very possible, even likely, that the decision by Microsoft to NOT include OneNote 2007 with almost all editions of Office is why they will probably never upgrade to the 2007 version.

Companies generally provide funding for X number of seats within licenses for their MS software - if they have 40,000 or 50,000 workstations or more running Office, upgrade costs for every version released can be prohibitive. That is, for the licenses themselves. Staff training is an entirely different animal! Training that many employees in MS Office is quite expensive. Many companies offer "lunch-time training classes" wherein the employees can donate their time and the company provides the trainers, material, and equipment. Even that is expensive, though. Then the loss of productivity inherent in a major UI upgrade like the ribbon interface is even more tremendous! There are many secretarial/administrative positions where the employee does not use a computer except for their specific work duties. Picking up a new interface does not come naturally to those folks. So many companies using Office 2003 are sticking with it for as long as possible.

As for your point of just upgrading OneNote independent of the Office suite, this is not how corporations purchase software! Virtually none of them. They have the multi-seat licenses for the Office suites, and the upgrade pricing they can receive from Microsoft or the Microsoft reseller with whom they contract covers only upgrading the suite to the next version - not individual components of the suite - such as OneNote. I would imagine that the majority of large corporations in the US have not upgraded to Office 2007 for the reasons I stated in the above paragraph, and that those same entities do not have budgets structured to purchase individual Office components separately.

If a company such as Louise's is using OneNote 2003 it is very likely that they have a multi-seat license for Office 2003 - an edition that included OneNote. And if her company DID decide to upgrade to Office 2007, it will NOT include a new version of OneNote. Which is why they will not be using the 2007 version.

I am presently disabled, unfortunately, but I handled most aspects of budgeting for a large utility and two large, multi-national engineering companies when I was able to work. And that was exactly how they operated.

Best Regards.

Jim