How to compare two OneNote sections (*.one files)

I am syncing my OneNote notebooks using Cubby (something like Dropbox) and sometimes, it generates "conflicts", i.e. suddenly there are two sections like this:

MyNotes.one
MyNotes (conflict at ...).one

Such notebook typically contains tens of pages and I don't want to go through them and compare them manually. Can you recommend a tool / procedure that would help to easily find any potential differences? I usually use Beyond Compare to compare just about anything but it doesn't support *.one file format.

Solution 1:

If you need to compare only 2 OneNote sections from 2 .one files:

1. Open both .one files with OneNote (version >= 2010)

2. Export both sections to the single web page, .mht format

3. Use your favorite text comparison tool to compare the exported .mht files

If you need to compare multiple sections (i.e. the whole notebook), the process is slightly more cumbersome: use the same method, but choose to export the notebooks as .xps files.

Then unzip the .xps files, and use a directory comparison tool (the text of your notes is stored in plain text).

Solution 2:

I am not aware of anything that will do this, but you might find this article useful in understand why this happens. It explains how OneNote has its own built-in sync'ing and recommends against trying to sync a .one file with other off-the-shelf sync tools. http://omeratay.com/onetastic/?i=onenote-sync

I get these frequently because I use Dropbox to sync between OneNote on my desktop and Outline+ on my iPad. Hopefully Outline+ will get the SkyDrive sync worked out soon to alleviate all of this.