Microsoft OneNote 2007 + CHS - a useful undocumented(?) feature
(Originally posted on: 2012-07-25, 11:12:33)
I made an accidental discovery today of what seems to be an undocumented feature in the OneNote SCT (Screen Clipping Tool):
- The SCT is loaded into the Systray and can be activated by the default key combo Win+S, whereupon the screen "freezes" and turns slightly opaque, and a cross-hairs appears on the screen under the mouse.
- By making a single first click and dragging (I use a tap and drag on my laptop Touchpad), a rectangle can be drawn around that part of the screen you want to clip an image of.
- If you then make a second click of the mouse (I use a tap on the Touchpad), the selected area is copied as an image to a new page in the OneNote Unfiled Notes.
- I have the SCT setting such that the image also goes to @mouser's CHS (Clipboard Help and Spell), and it also goes to my archive in Clipstory (which I have been trialling for a while now) - yes, belts-and-braces, I know.
- I have the Touchpad settings such that, if I hold down the LeftShift key before making the first click, then the mouse slows down to a crawl, so I can carefully make very precise clips at the start, then release the Shift key, move rapidly to the end point and press the Shift key again if I want precision at the cutoff point, then I release the Shift key, click the mouse again and that sends the clip image to OneNote.
I had tediously taken several clips in this way from a long scrolling browser window (because SSC scroll capture could not seem to cope with it), but then I clipped as per the last point above, except I did not release the Shift key before the last mouse click.
To my great surprise, instead of copying the image clipping to OneNote and then popping up the usual window saying that's what it had done, a different-looking window popped up saying "Copying clip to OneNote" or something, with a progress bar - which is what it typically does when you manually copy and paste a large/complex chunk of text and html and objects from a web page to OneNote.
The text was in Unfiled Notes - not the image - but the image was in CHS.
I was able to repeat this behaviour a second time, on a separate part of the same page (it was a report), which proved that it could be repeated on that web page at least.
However, I have not been able to repeat it yet, using other material. Am still experimenting.
The two times it worked was on a report from here: ICSI Netalyzr
What seems to have happened is that some of the defunct but great old "Send to OneNote" functionality may be operating - but I don't see how that could be as it had been disabled (made defunct) under Win7-64, so it shouldn't (it doesn't) work. The workaround for that deficiency is a very poor kludge, and I don't use it much.
Somehow the text and html and objects copied to OneNote bypassed CHS, which just retained the image.
What I would like to do is to be able to repeat this behaviour at will, because it would be very useful and a potentially huge timesaver. It's just what I want.
Any ideas?








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