Although we still have no public beta for any 2010 SharePoint product, this hasn't put the main book publishers off from announcing 2010 books.

My list of 2010 SharePoint books which is at present located here

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/SharePoint%202010%20Books/V%20Books.aspx

has now reached 20 with supposed Publish Dates of March 2010 and later.

Most are clearly 2010 versions of successful 2007 books but there is one there from Björn Furuknap who otherwise seems more interested in telling us just how useless SharePoint is. How in that case you can write a book on it is beyond me.

At the same time as attention goes more and more to 2010 (the SharePoint Conference which seems from the officially leaked information about sessions to be all about SharePoint 2010 is in 10 days time), there are still some 2007 books being released.

The latest addition is a Wrox book from John Holliday called

"Professional SharePoint 2007 Records Management Development: Managing Official Records with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007"

(Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470287624/heme0f

other Amazons listed here: http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=729 )

It immediately shot to something like 50,000 in the overall Books list at Amazon (and was in the top 100 in three different categories), but you have to wonder what kind of a life expectancy (at these levels of sales) it will have.

It's a shame. The best books are very often those that come out after many people have experience of the product in production and yet the ones that often sell the best are the ones that came out early.

My own feeling is that Andrew Connell got his timing (and content) just about right with his Wrox book

"Professional SharePoint 2007 Web Content Management Development: Building WCM Sites with Office SharePoint Server "

(Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470224754/heme0f )

but that John's book - which I would imagine is of similar quality - might well be too late for most of the market.

I've not been syncing a OneNote notebook using a USB stick for long so I can't be sure that the function I am now seeing is OneNote 2010 only (but I didn't see this when using the same (USB stick-based) OneNote Notebook in OneNote 2007).

It's one of those things that are easy to explain, which tends to mean that they are going to turn out to be not only logical but also very useful.

OK. The explanation.

I had amended the Notebook in another PC's OneNote 2007 and synced it there with the USB main copy and now had also opened the Notebook in this machines OneNote 2010 and then synced that copy from the USB copy.

What I then saw was that some of the sections of the Notebook were in Bold and some not.

Or very simply those sections contained items that hadn't been opened in this machine's copy of OneNote. (There was a similar indication when such a section was opened of which items had not been opened here.)

In other words they've made it possible to quickly shove new information into OneNote on some machines (maybe at work) and then have a single (home?) machine that can be used when you have more time to actually read (and test?) the information that you earlier saved.

Nice.

P.S. For those who on reading the above thought (just as I did when writing it) that maybe I want a quick way to remove the Bold markings on those PCs where I don't want to re-visit all the posts I've made elsewhere, then I can reassure you that the usual method of right-clicking on the Section name and then clicking on "Mark all as Read" works fine.

(As does right-clicking on the Notebook name to get rid of all the bold markings as you'll find the "Mark All as Read" option there too.)

It would be great if I could remember how I did this (and could say so here), but I added a Spanish Dictionary to Office 2010.

Now if I have an idle moment I can just move the cursor to a word in a document in OneNote 2010 (where the sync using a Notebook stored on a USB stick continues to work perfectly) and with no click or any other action a pop-up appears with my "Bilingual Dictionary" and a translation of that word in Spanish.

Well that's nice but what is really great is that for some words (such as "start") there's not only several optional translations (3) but also some sample English phrases (both with and without translations - mostly with) to explain the usage.

("deployment" on the other hand had just two straight translations - "deploy: verbo transitivo (use) utilizar; (position) despeglar")

Not much later: I found (in my OneNote 2010) a good link on how to create this "Mini Translator" - you'll find it here http://blogs.technet.com/office_global_experience/archive/2009/07/31/using-the-new-mini-translator-in-office-2010.aspx.

Microsoft people are freely blogging about various aspects of the Office 2010 products and although Office 2010 is not yet in public beta, people who have copies of the present pre-beta version are allowed to talk about it *in isolation*.

So this piece is about using OneNote 2010 with WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 although the main point applies equally well to OneNote 2007.

In my book I showed how to synchronize OneNote 2007 with WSS 3.0 and up to that time it had worked well for me. However look today at those files (once I had used that technique to synchronize both with different VMs containing the same WSS 3.0 site and with different Client PCs) and you see a mess.

Instead of one set of .one files there are several sets (Name(2) being the typical additional section name) and while the .one files in each set contain mostly the same individual pages, some of them have more pages (and some naturally less).

So when I was looking at a OneNote 2010 blog that was new to me and saw a pre-2010 article on putting your OneNote files on a USB stick I thought I'd try it out.

So far that technique (which doesn't rely on creating shared notebooks as did the previous sync system) seems to be working fine.

The basic idea is that you create a OneNote Notebook on a USB stick drive. You then add data to it and after a wait of a few minutes you pull this stick. This leaves a copy of the OneNote data in a cache on that machine so that it is still there when you next open OneNote (and can add data).

Your USB stick is then taken to a second machine where OneNote is opened and then the USB Notebook opened with File Open Notebook. Again here after use the USB stick is pulled from the machine so that the cache is still open and still has the data.

OK. All well and good, but where does OneNote 2010 come in?

The answer is that I have OneNote 2010 only on one machine. But because OneNote 2010 can read and write 2007 format OneNote files, I can still use a 2007 format OneNote notebook on my USB stick !

[There is a 2010 format and you can convert to it and theoretically get additionally functionality, but doing things this way is too useful for me so I'll look at that later in a dedicated VM with test data not this "production" data.]

P.S. There is one snag to this technique. I spent about an hour looking for the small, black USB drive at home a couple of days ago. It wasn't where I expected it to be because it had been tidied away and then *I* - instead of just putting it back where it had been - had decided to find a new location for it that would be safe from the tidier - a location I immediately forgot about!

The time has come to thank Bil Simser (a LOT!) for his hospitality over the past couple of years in first offering to host my blog using his server and also to let me hang around for so long.

The new blog is being hosted by the Mindsharp Blogs system and the URL is http://sharepoint.mindsharpblogs.com/MikeW

I'm moving the blogs across. So far I've moved the ones until (backwards) the beginning of February. The job is made more difficult by my also updating the links of WSS FAQ items to point to the present WSS FAQ site(s).

Later:

As Bil doesn't seem to have tired of me, I'll occasionally add here some duplicates of posts that go to the Mindsharp Blogs site.

All the WSS FAQ additions and contents posts will however go only there.

With WSS 2.0 and SPS 2003 lots of things didn't work if you weren't using IE as your browser. It was especially essential to use IE for administration.

With WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007 I've rarely found the need to use IE for Administration and most things just work in Chrome (and Safari for the Mac) which I use more than IE on one of my machines.

However, there's always a bit of nastiness hanging around waiting to hit the unwary.

This particular piece of nastiness was caused by my noticing that the number of items I had listed in my Books page had gone well over 200 and so page changing was necessary.

I solved that by making the limit 400 but now I had a very long page, so I decided to change Grouping to non-expanded.

That in turn led to me wanting to remove the Grouping: prefix which looked fine when the page was in expanded mode but looked ugly when you saw line after line of it.

So off to SPD 2007 and (thankfully after making a copy of Books.aspx) convert that section of the page to XSLT. Get rid of the "Grouping: " text before the Group name (and which for reasons that I can't really understand also gets rid of the (nn) after the group name!) and Save.

Go to Chrome and test. The page opens up fine and looks as it should. Luckily I then click on one of the "+"s to open one of the sections and nothing happens. Oops.

Go to IE (7 as it happens) and try that there. Yes, the "+" opens with no problems.

In SPD 2007 rename the new version and rename back the saved version. Phew, good thing I saved a copy ...

Now test again in Chrome. Now there is action when I click the "+" but not enough as all that happens is that it says "loading" and keeps on saying "loading".

Head over to IE again and refresh the page and do + there. No problems. "Loading" for a minute amount of time and then the listing for that section are there.

Back to Chrome and the section is still "loading".

So the only thing to do is either disfigure the web page with two links (one of which is marked IE only) or abandon the whole idea of having the web page non-expanded by default.

I do the latter.

It's interesting to note that when accessing v2 SharePoint in the old days in Firefox, if "non-expanded" was specified, that was ignored and the page opened in expanded mode. (Using IE it was non-expanded). Now it opens in non-expanded mode and doesn't work (in Chrome).

Which alternative design do you think is better?

The following is the entire text of a post to a SharePoint forum.

-----------------

Hi,

I am having the exact same issue. We are not using forms authentication.

Any further ideas?

Thanks.

------------

I've never really seen much point in writing posts saying that you are having the same problem, but a Microsoft contact thought such posts were very useful as they give an indication of the frequency of the problem. (If, that is, Microsoft read every forum thread, which I doubt).

However that's not the point here, the point is that the next poster marked the above post as a possible answer by marking it with "Propose as Answer".

How any post saying "we are having the same problem" can be regarded as a possible answer to the problem is completely beyond me, yet this is not the first time (and won't be the last, I'm sure) that such a post has been marked as "Propose as Answer".

So not only does the poor Moderator have to deal with the ever-present self-proposers (who propose that their own post is an answer) but also has to deal with "answers" which aren't - by any stretch of the imagination - answers.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother but then comes along a post with a very clear and solid answer and someone whose judgement I trust has proposed it as an answer. Then I can see the point again as I rush to mark it up to Answer status.

No doubt you are saying to yourself that this happens once every couple of weeks so why the fuss. Well the above was today and this next one is also one that was seen today.

Hi XXXX!

Were you able to figure out how to resolve the problem?

Thanks,

YYYY

...and that too was proposed (by the poster in this case - Mr YYYY) as an Answer.

Special Note: The big news this week was the announcement that SPD 2007 was now free and you'll find the relevant links below. I've been saying for a couple of weeks in the forum, when suggesting that something could be done by using SPD 2007, that people should use the Trial version for now and wait a couple of weeks before buying it. That wasn't saying it would be free and also more improtantly wasn't breaking any NDAs because someone from Microsoft had let the news out in a publically available video and in addition after news of that publically available video had spread through the SharePoint MVP community like wildwire, a couple of SharePoint MVPs had put out blogs / articles on it before they saw the request from the Microsoft guy who unfortunately had leaked it that SharePoint MVPs *don't* publicise his mistake until the news was officially announced. Well now it is.

The key thing for all Administrators to be prepared for (and more importantly to block!) is that some of their users will be trying to use their newly acquired SPD 2007 copy to access the SharePoint site and could cause absolute mayhem if they are able to make changes to files like default.aspx and save them.

Note: All of the addresses of the KB / Articles - 2007 Products / MS / Non-MS Articles below were valid at the time I added them to the WSS FAQ
site and to this file. I can't guarantee that they still are.

(Items are added to the WSS FAQ throughout the week so you will find new items more quickly by checking at wss.collutions.com or www.wssfaq.com daily.)

From 29th March to 4th April 2009

NOTE: Amendments to KB articles are now only listed when a version is x.0. MS no longer change the dates of KB articles when version changes are minor.

I.1 2007 KB Articles    (*now only one section for WSS and MOSS*)

New

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969727

Spell Check dictionary defaults to Spanish for some English words

31st March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969730

MOSS: The "Modified by" field in workflow always show the Users Account information (DOMAIN\UserAccount), but not the user Preferred Name (User Name Eg. James Smith).

31st March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969733

MOSS or WSS 3.0 Modification or redirection of OOB javascript files is not supported

31st March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969732

Error message when restoring a backup via Sharepoint Designer or stsadm: "Unable to display this web part"

31st March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969735

Virus scan engine(VSE) does not provide a graceful error message if the file status is 'INFECTED'

31st March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969561

Unable to add documents to a recurring meeting workspace with non-ascii characters in the subject

26th March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969563

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 error message: "There are no items to show in this view of the <name of view> list"

26th March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969565

Content deployment job fails with the error - "Content deployment job failed. The remote upload web request failed.”

26th March 2009

Modified

None

I.b Forefront KB Articles

New or Modified

None

I.c InfoPath 2007 KB Articles

New or Modified

None

I.d SPD 2007 KB Articles

New or Modified

None


II. Articles - 2007 Products

New

A. Office 2007 Server Products

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.05.sharepoint.aspx

Integrate Information Rights Management into SharePoint (Technet mag, May 2009 - Pav Cherny)

3rd April 2009 (date added, Mag is dated may 2009)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=baa3ad86-bfc1-4bd4-9812-d9e710d44f42#tm

FREE SharePoint Designer 2007 (full version - from 1st April 2009 free)

31st March 2009 (date on the above page, actually 1st April 2009)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=901f0335-63da-4e9c-bfbe-4ed22a92d276#tm

Video: SharePoint Designer 2007 (April 2009 Announcement) (Tom Rizzo, J.R. Arredondo)

31st March 2009 (to align with the download)

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepointdesigner/HA103607621033.aspx

Q&A on SharePoint Designer 2007 Licensing Changes

31st March 2009 (to align with the download)

B. Other Office 2007 products

None

C. Other relevant products

None

Modified

None

III WebCasts (+ PodCasts, On-Line courses) for 2007 Products

None

IV WSS v3 FAQ

New

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1149

V.209 SharePoint Video Mentor (Pearson - Rodney McIntosh)

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1145

X.316 SharePoint Connected Server (codeplex - "yorkenow06")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1146

X.317 SharePoint 2007 - Create Field Lookup and Associated List as a Feature (codeplex - Antoine Pichot)

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1147

X.318 Mongo - Sharepoint Lists Structure and Data Replicator (codeplex - "wlnaim")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1148

X.319 Community Kit for SharePoint: User Group Edition 1.0 (codeplex - various)

(Thanks to Bil Simser for his blog item at http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2009/03/28/favorite-codeplex-sharepoint-projects.aspx for reminding me of this.)

Modified

None

V WSSv2 KB Articles (plus SPS 2003 Hot fixes)

New or Modified

None

Note: This includes web casts from the period that I was away.

Note: All of the addresses of the KB / Articles - 2007 Products / MS / Non-MS Articles below were valid at the time I added them to the WSS FAQ´site and to this file. I can't guarantee that they still are.

(Items are added to the WSS FAQ throughout the week so you will find new items more quickly by checking at wss.collutions.com or www.wssfaq.com daily.)

From 22nd March to 28th March 2009

NOTE: Amendments to KB articles are now only listed when a version is x.0. MS no longer change the dates of KB articles when version changes are minor.

I.1 2007 KB Articles    (*now only one section for WSS and MOSS*)

New

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969551

Strictly negative queries using object model are not supported when querying against Search.asmx Web service

26th March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969549

Daily/Weekly alerts not sent while the immediate ones are sent successfully

26th March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969553

User is still in the group "All People" after removal from other groups

26th March 2009

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;969242

The STSADM MergeContentDB command may cause database corruption in Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

25th March 2009

Modifed

None

I.b Forefront KB Articles

New or Modified

None

I.c InfoPath 2007 KB Articles

New or Modified

None

I.d SPD 2007 KB Articles

New or Modified

None

II. Articles - 2007 Products

New

A. Office 2007 Server Products

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=6c9db923-139c-4d0c-8111-a6b8c9478c1b#tm

Office SharePoint Server 2007: Five Ways SharePoint Can Save You Money

26th March 2009

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=71a6a448-b655-44aa-bc70-c7f752547046#tm

Extending SharePoint with Groove Collaboration

25th March 2009

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2009.04.insidesharepoint.aspx

Security and Compliance with AD RMS (TechNet Mag, April 2009 - Pav Cherny)

25th March 2009 (date added - April 2009 Mag)

http://sharepointsolutions.blogspot.com/2009/02/expanding-size-of-announcements-web.html

Expanding the Size of Announcements Web Part (Blog - Russel Wright, SharePoint Solutions)

21st February 2009

B. Other Office 2007 products

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=02827333-7341-4891-9c28-3ba279ce230d#tm

PerformancePoint Server 2007 SP2: Data Import Wizard

25th March 2009

C. Other relevant products

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=3bfe2fb6-493b-42d6-859e-eddddf04e2e8#tm

Office Communications Server 2007 R2 VHD  (added because it's a VHD)

24th March 2009

Modified

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=C2C27337-D4D1-4B9B-926D-86493C7DA1AA&DisplayLang=en

Microsoft Windows Vista 30-Day Eval VHD (ver 1.2)

19th March 2009

III WebCasts (+ PodCasts, On-Line courses) for 2007 Products

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032404549&EventCategory=5&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Momentum Webcast: Improving Visibility into Organizational Performance (Part 2 of 4): Delivering Business Intelligence Capabilities Through SharePoint Server (Level 200) Pej Javaheri)

3rd March 2009

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032403524&EventCategory=5&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Momentum Webcast: Improving Visibility into Organizational Performance (Part 1 of 4): Delivering Business Intelligence Capabilities with PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Level 100) (Andy Kamlet)

26th February 2009

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032402580&EventCategory=5&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

MSDN Webcast: BenkoTips Live and On Demand: Working with the Data Form Web Part and SharePoint Designer with Raymond Mitchell (Level 100) (Raymond Mitchell, Inetium and Mike Benkovich)

18th February 2009

IV WSS v3 FAQ

New

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1134

VI.163 SharePoint Zip (Commercial - Black Blade)

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1133

X.305 MediaRich Visualizer for SharePoint (free, but need to fill out a form - MediaRich)

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1135

X.306 SharePoint Filtered Lookup Field (codeplex - "xclusivedev")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1136

X.307 Sharepoint Skype status field (codeplex - "ocplsystems")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1137

X.308 Sharepoint Tagging Solution (codeplex - "BlackMasterX")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1138

X.309 SharePoint Components2 - PDF Search (codeplex - "djeeg")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1139

X.310 SharePoint Components2 - Error Message (codeplex - "djeeg")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1140

X.311 SharePoint Components2 - Job Manager (codeplex - "djeeg")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1141

X.312 SharePoint Components2 - Custom Admin (codeplex - "djeeg")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1142

X.313 Sharepoint RSS Linker (codeplex - "BlackMasterX")

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1143

X.314 SharePoint InstantListFilter (codeplex - Jaap Vossers)

http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com/Lists/v3%20WSS%20FAQ/DispForm.aspx?ID=1144

X.315 Facebook Kit for SharePoint (codeplex - Phil Wicklund)

Modified

None

V WSSv2 KB Articles (plus SPS 2003 Hot fixes)

New or Modified

None

Parallels 4.0 for the Mac came out in January claiming lots of advantages over 3.0 some of which blog posts said didn't affect most people (I don't for instance have an eight-way machine with 8GB memory and aren't likely to have one any day soon).

So I didn't bother with an upgrade.

I was in any way getting used to the fact that I these days actually had a company-paid copy of VM Workstation on my PC (along with the copy I already owned on my home PC) and I had also added VM Fusion to my Mac and finally - after using VMs in Parallel when writing my book - had started using it in a small way.

(Somehow I always seem to use the Mac for forums and e-mail (and watching German TV shows from www.zdf.de) and use the Desktop with the still-going-strong 20inch Pro HP screen for real work involving the VMs - if that is I can shift my wife off it)

Anyway the fact that I was using VM Fusion most of the time, didn't push me in the direction of upgrading the Parallels.

However I was still curious about 4.0 so when I was offered the upgrade for EUR 31.89, it was time to get out the credit card.

The install is naturally over the existing 3.0 version but it still required the new code just as you were thinking it wouldn't.

Then the upgrade was going on it required you to change the state of your 3.0 VMs from suspended to shut down, which of course meant opening them all in 3.0 and then shutting them all down. Having done all that, the installation seemed to be needed to be started again (as one of them was still listed and thus Next wasn't available) and this time it required that all the VMs that had already been shut down (not the ones that had just been shut down but all the other ones that had been shut down rather than suspended). So those all needed to be started again and then shut down.

There followed yet another new installation run and this time it actually installed 4.0.

Then you have to upgrade your existing Parallel VMs to 4.0. Here you are offered Backup and Convert or just Convert.

Lazy as always (and I had two USB drives with copies on in any case) I just did Convert and this was OK for the first couple (it's a two stage process - the first stage is automatic but then you have to run setup for the virtual CD drive to get the Parallel Tools 4.0 installed) but then the next one stuck with the bar on step 4 of 4 showing completed (graphically) but the Next button still not available.

So I waited and waited and started a second conversion and that stuck at exactly the same place.

Nothing for it. A forced shutdown of the entire MacBook and re-start. Needless to say, perhaps, both those converted VMs worked fine. They had completed but just not informed their little installation routine mate that they had completed.

Anyway there you have it. I now have both Parallels 4.0 and VMFusion VMs on the MacBook. However since I replaced the hard drive with a 500GB one I can afford to have two different versions.

The only pity is that as this is a MacBook with a 2GB memory limitation, I can't have two many of the VMs open at any one time.

P.S. When doing the final conversion (a 15GB MOSS VM) I had a new variation on the theme. It stopped registering any change in ho far it had gone about half way through the blue bar showing progress in step 3 (of 4). This time when I restarted the MacBook after the forced close down, it first didn't boot but gave me the hard disk symbol only. Clicking that, though, booted the machine and clicking the MOSS image then took me right back to the same screen I'd had before (showing halfway through the third step) only this time it kept going and very very quickly jumped to step 4 and ready. Perhaps if I'd waited a bit longer before turning it off it would have completed by itself, but most probably it wouldn't have shown this and I would have still been forced to do a forced shutdown.

So the conversion works but the routine controlling it could be better. It could for instance let you close it down when it is stuck instead of forcing you to crash the entire system.