OneNote 2010 sync problem with SharePoint 2010

Question

We use OneNote 2010 documents stored in document libraries in SharePoint 2010 extensively. Each notebook is viewed and edited by up to 10 users, although rarely at the same time.

We have periodically (over the last year) had corruption issues where a notebook would suddenly start repeatedly insisting that: "OneNote needs a password to sync some of your notebooks. Click here to see the list of sections and notebooks that require passwords." The sync center showed a "A password is required to synchronize this notebook. (Error code: 0x80070005)" error. This was with users who have used the notebook in the past, no permissions changes occurred, and the user could still access the rest of the site. Once a OneNote notebook was "bad" for one user, it was corrupt for everyone.

Our guess is that this was due to a section getting locked somehow during a failed save operation (perhaps related to a loss of connection to the server at just the wrong time) and OneNote not being able to release that lock. We suspected a locked file issue because the corruption seemed to correlate with users having OneNote open and shutting their laptop screen without closing OneNote. So, we have asked users not to do that, and most comply.

This was a "section level" problem (closing the notebook and seeing what showed up in the Misplaced Notes section helped us hone in on that), a new section could be created, the content moved over, and the old section deleted. Occasionally this was not sufficient, so we had to create a new notebook and move all the content over. This was a much bigger hassle, but still doable.

Until last weekend. Last weekend (May 12/13) our hosting company did their every other month patch and restart, and a bunch of notebooks all started failing. We reasoned that maybe the restart caused some connection failures and did our usual workarounds to get things going again.

However, this time the "fix" wasn't a fix. Now, we can create a new notebook (in several different document libraries in SharePoint, including some newly created ones), and start moving pages over. At some point, seemingly randomly during that process or even up to a few days later, we will get an "Incomplete sync" error of "Unable to lock a region of a file. (Error code: 0x800700A7)". On the next sync after that, the 0x80070005 error shows up again.

I am asking our hosting company what patches they applied, and will update with that information when I get it. However, this may not be related to the patches at all. We are pulling our hair out over this (going so far as to look into Zoho Notebook and others) and would appreciate any help or tips.

Sorry for the tome, and thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Hi bgreen_sp2010,

I am trying to involve someone familiar with this topic to further look at this issue.  There might be some time delay, appreciate your patience.

Thanks

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Daniel Yang

TechNet Community Support

Answer 2

Dear Daniel,

Thanks for the help. Hopefully someone can point us in the right direction soon.

Best regards,

Brian

Answer 3

Hello Brian,

"Incomplete sync" error of "Unable to lock a region of a file. (Error code: 0x800700A7)" >  It could be possible that users are still accessing some OneNote sections while you're trying to move the .one files to new location. Can you please ensure you mark the site as read only before you copy the .one files to new location and then after marking the site read-write you can get rid of the older data.

"OneNote needs a password to sync some of your notebooks. Click here to see the list of sections and notebooks that require passwords." > This error occurs because the user has applied a password to OneNote section and that OneNote section needs to be opened with the user defined password before it can be sync'd. (This is not related to domain credentials)

"A password is required to synchronize this notebook. (Error code: 0x80070005)" > This error is different than above one and is related to authentication. You should get network authentication prompt when getting this error message and once you put in the password to authenticate Internet Explorer / OneNote OR Both against the SharePoint Server. Once the Domain Credentials are provided, IE / OneNote should be able to connect to SharePoint Server and sync normally.

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Please remember to click 'Mark as Answer' on the post that helps you or click 'Unmark as Answer' if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Regards,
Nishant Shah
Microsoft Online Community Support

Answer 4

Dear Nishant,

Thanks for your input, but this seems to be a case where OneNote is not behaving as it should. To be clear, this is a problem with a specific set of sections in specific OneNote notebooks. We have other notebooks, stored on the same SharePoint site, that are open and syncing perfectly normally. That said, when a notebook "goes bad" it is a major problem for us.

For some reason, notebooks were going "bad" very frequently over the last few weeks. Then, for whatever reason, notebooks aren't going "bad" as frequently for the last few days. However, since once a notebook goes bad, it stays bad forever, I have a few "bad" ones to troubleshoot with.

To take your points one at a time:

1) "Unable to lock a region..." I can no longer reliably trigger this error. Let's ignore it because it (when it occurred) was always followed up by the permanent 0x080070005 error (below).

2) "OneNote needs a password..." I don't think this is because of user defined passwords; no one in our group has ever used those. This is the standard notice at the top of the page:

When working with a "bad" notebook, when I click on the error notice, it lists the current notebook. I click on that, and the error notice disappears, the sync icon by the notebook name in the left pane spins for a few seconds, and the error notice comes back. Never does it ask for a password (perhaps because other notebooks on the same SharePoint site are connected and syncing just fine).

3) "A password is required to synchronize..." This is the error we always see in the sync center when we have problems (ie when we open the sync center after getting the error discussed in point two above). It isn't a domain credentials issue because other notebooks using the same credentials are working just fine. In fact, other sections can sync just fine.

For example, if I have a notebook with two sections, "Bad" and "Good", I can browse to "Open Notebook" and download it from SharePoint just fine. The green checkmark shows up. I can even edit the "Good" section, force a sync, and the edits are saved and the green checkmark comes back. But, if I make any changes to the "Bad" section, when I try to sync, it suddenly pops up the message from point 2 ("OneNote needs...") and shows up as "Not connected" in the sync center with the 0x80070005 error. To be explicit, this happens in a notebook that has already synced perfectly normally. If I close the notebook, the "Bad" section shows up in the Misplaced Sections area.

To work around the problem, I can sometimes create a "Used to be bad" section and copy the contents from the "Bad" section into it. Then, I can delete the "Bad" section and all is well. The problem is that this is a hassle, but more importantly, for a ~1-2 week period, the "Used to be bad" section would suddenly go "bad" either during the transfer, or up to a few days later.

Please let me know if I can explain anything better or do any specific troubleshooting. Thanks.

Best regards

Brian

Answer 5

Hello,

Do you know if client machines or SharePoint environment is experiencing network issues? Please verify that.
For "OneNote needs a password..." please check if http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2659124 is helpful.
For "A password is required to synchronize this notebook please check if http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280 is helpful.

Also, it looks like you've opened a support case to get in-depth support. If these suggestions do not help and if you find a solution thru support case, please post it here so it can benefit the other members who may experience similar issue.

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Please remember to click 'Mark as Answer' on the post that helps you or click 'Unmark as Answer' if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Regards,
Nishant Shah
Microsoft Online Community Support

Answer 6

Dear Nishant,

Thanks for your suggestions. Right now neither the clients nor the SharePoint server are having major connection issues. We can still access the rest of the site and other notebooks can sync fine.

Regarding the first link (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2659124), the client machines are fully up to date. Since the OneNote document isn't on Windows Live, I don't think that the login issues mentioned there are the problem.

Regarding the second link (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280), we have had this problem on Windows XP computers too, so I don't think that is the issue.

I will update this thread with a resolution when we get one from the support case. Thanks again.

Best regards,

Brian

Answer 7

Hello  Brian,

Do you have any updates on the case, we have a similar issue with few of our users this issue will appear only once while they access onenote directly, if they open Site in browser prior to opening in onenote the error will not be appeared, but this is annoying and its a time being work around which we have suggested to users.

Thanks

Vidura

Answer 8

Dear Vidura,

It sounds like your problem is a bit different from ours. In our case, once a particular section of a notebook becomes corrupt, no one can ever edit it again.

Anyway, right now our paid ticket with Microsoft is working its way up the escalation chain. I'll update when we hear a solution.

Best regards,

Brian

Answer 9

For the OneNote Issue

OneNote 2010 - Notebooks cannot sync - Error 0xE0000024

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Regards Pete Long http://www.petenetlive.com

Answer 10

Brian, your question saved me.  Not sure if you ahve fixed your issue, but we had this issue with OneNote and SharePoint across our environment among various IE Versions. 

The second link Nishant suggested:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280, fixed our issue.  Adding in the URL list via  Regedit and hard coding that value did the trick:

The pertinent parts for our Win7 environment are as follows:

1. Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
2. Locate and then click the following registry subkey: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WebClient\Parameters
3. On the Edit menu, point to New, and then click Multi-String Value.
4. Type AuthForwardServerList, and then press ENTER.
5. On the Edit menu, click Modify.
6. In the Value data box, type the URL of the server that hosts the Web share, and then click OK.
   
   Note You can also type a list of URLs in the Value data box. For more information, see the "Sample URL list" section in this article.
7. Exit Registry Editor.
8. Restart the WebClient service in AdminTools

Answer 11

Hi Nishant & NayreBrey,

One of my end user having similar issue 

so in this case do I need to steps in the below blog?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943280

What are the parameters  I need to check from end user? 

you have mentioned that network authentication issue? so what i need to ask user exactly