This blog started off with being a short report on OneNote 2007 synchronizing with WSS 3.0 and why couldn't we have a List in one WSS 3.0 site synchronizing with an identical List in a different WSS 3.0 site in a different server.

Which (the latter) of course is impossible.

But thinking about that got me thinking (yes, it happens occasionally) and I realized that a solution to my particular WSS 3.0 synchronization problem had been staring me in the face for a long time.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the beginning.

I now have three different Windows PCs all of which are running OneNote 2007 and all of which have loaded the same two notebooks that were created as shared OneNote notebooks and stored in WSS 3.0.

The WSS 3.0 containing these notebooks is in a VM on my MacBook.

So now when using any of those three PCs (even the work one), if I ever see anything I want to keep, I just take a quick Copy-C and paste it into that PC's OneNote 2007 copy of one of those 2 notebooks and rely on the fact that whenever I have the MacBook and that PC in the same place I can synchronize the two.

This of course - as it's a two-way sync - will also get amendments/additions made in PC1 into PC2 and PC3 (in time).

That worked so nicely I thought wouldn't it be nice if I could synchronize two copies of WSS 3.0 in the same way. Then I could have my personal WSS 3.0 system (with those OneNote 2007 notebooks but also other things) stored in different machines without being forced to do this on a semi-regular basis via Save Site/List as Template and/or Backup/Restore methods.

A dream of course, but while thinking about that I realised that there was a solution of sorts for my problems in getting my non-OneNote data into that WSS 3.0 site when the MacBook wasn't available.

What's more I already had that solution both available to me; working (on one machine) and I also had several licenses. It was just that I'd always used it with my public web sites (because they were there) and they were always available so there never was any point in using an off-line product to update them.

Yes, I'm talking about Colligo Contributor.

Once I realized that it was simple to work out how to set up a similar thing to the OneNote solution. I would need to install Colligo Contributor on those same three Windows-based PCs at a time when the MacBook and it's WSS 3.0 VM were available. I'd then be able to connect each in turn (maybe days apart) to the VM and download the contents of the same Lists in every case.

Now whenever I wanted to add something non-OneNote to the WSS 3.0 site and I didn't have the MacBook around (or open in the wrong VM) I could just add that something to the Colligo Contributor copy and next time the MacBook and the VM were around/open I could do a sync.

I only came up with this earlier today when I was washing the dishes (!) and thinking about this blog and the whole synchronization issue, but I've no doubt that it'll work and work well. (I just need to check that the program will cope with being in three different PCs and still synchronize - I know it works from one perfectly.

It's just really annoying to realize I could have solved this problem a long time ago if I'd just had the MacBook on-line when I installed that test copy of Colligo Contributor.