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Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks
IainB:
Welcome to this thread.
What originally started off as a simple initial post about unexplained behaviour in using OneNote 2007 has since developed into what I hope is a more generally useful discussion thread and set of notes about the idiosyncrasies of, and best ways of using OneNote - from shared experience.
The thread details various sources of useful information on OneNote, and there are discussions about different user's problems with OneNote, or requirements for OneNote, and how they can be addressed.
Generally speaking, OneNote is a very powerful tool for collecting a library of one's notes, where the notes may consist of various data types, including:
* plain text form,
* RTF (Rich Text Format) form,
* formatted text copied/pasted from web pages,
* copied/pasted images of things,
* copied/pasted images containing text,
* perceptible words spoken in embedded audio recordings,
* perceptible words spoken in embedded videos.
* objects - OneNote employs OLE (Object Linking and embedding) - e.g., including Excel tables and files, any other files, and playable YouTube video windows (streams from YouTube, so the user is freed of the constraint of having to use the YouTube environment),
Notes in OneNote can hyperlinkd (including Wiki-like linking and URLs) and can be searched for:
* any words in any text form (plain text, Rich Text, etc.),
* any text captured by the OneNote OCR functionality from pasted images containing text (but not embedded image files),
* any perceived words in embedded audio/video tape files,
* any tags the user may have used.
There's a lot more to OneNotes though, and users can find out by:
* using the OneNotes documentation that they may have,
* searching this discussion thread,
* experimentation and trial-and-error (it's actually quite difficult to "break" anything in OneNote).
If you discover something "new" or that you find particularly useful about OneNote, or a problem or a limitation in OneNote, then please share by posting about it in this discussion thread. Someone else reading about it could find it very useful,
Thankyou,
IainB.
======================================
Since OneNote 2007, there have been 3-yearly updates to MS Office (which contains OneNote) - so, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, etc.
The software has been progressively improved and features have been incrementally added/extended, usually for the better.
____________________________________________________
The original opening post as at 2012-07-25, 11:12:33 is copied in the quote below:
Still unresolved/unanswered:
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?
EDIT: 2014-09-09 - Thread title changed to "Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks" (from "Microsoft OneNote 2007 - some experiential Tips & Tricks")
--- End quote ---
IainB:
I changed the title of this thread to shift the context a bit, the idea being to develop the thread into a generally more helpful/informative/useful direction that other DCF users might like to contribute to.
The original opening post describes an odd/undocumented aspect of OneNote that I have not yet fully resolved/understood.
The background to my changing the title of the thread is that I have been gradually and progressively exploring the use of OneNote for about three years now. However, I still regard OneNote as being only a temporary/provisional/interim solution.. My main uses for OneNote include using it to:
* Act as PIM (Personal Information Manager) for general Personal/Business information.
* Help me to explore and co-ordinate scientific literature and notes on same. (In conjunction and some functional overlap with the reference management system Qiqqa and also Calibre.)
* Gather info and then read/analyze what has been gathered.
* Act as a general note-taking tool.
* Provide for basic/essential note-formatting (e.g., bulleted/numbered lists with multi-indentation if required), including tables, images (mandatory where needed) - e.g. figures from papers in the notes; make concept maps or diagrams as aids to comprehension/understanding).
* Provide easy, simple and fast wiki-like hyperlinking to notes within other OneNote Notebooks, to URLs on the Internet, and to files (documents/images) on my local hard drive. (Though document/image files can be embedded in the OneNote Notebooks as well, if you want.)
* Form an integral part of the Windows Search functionality for the local client/PC, so that the one search function can access all information sources, or at least as many as possible.
I arrived at OneNote after having tried and discarded as "not useful enough for my needs" many other PIMs and note-taking applications over the years. I still review some of these periodically, as they are updated. Some of them are very good - e.g., one in particular that I have used for years and that I am still using - InfoSelect (IS) - though I have stuck with IS8 (version 8 ), after trialling IS2007 (version 9), and the latest IS10 (version 10).
The shortcomings of these others were generally and variously things that reflected my requirements:
* Difficulty/inability to accommodate copies of RTF or HTML notes, though IS8 did have the ability at one time to incorporate native web pages, but that was dependent on the then prevailing/current version of IE (Internet Explorer) and the ability was "broken" when IE was updated.
* Non-existant or difficult/cumbesome wiki-like hyperlinking.
* Inability to make tables.
* Did not include simple arithmetical functions.
* Difficult/impossible to incorporate images or draw images.
* Primary dependency on accessing cloud-based data or functionality (e.g., as in Evernote) if you want full (unconstrained) functionality of the tool on the client PC - which is mandatory for my requirements.
The ideal is not yet in my grasp, hence I say that the temporary/provisional/interim solution I have come up with is Onenote. It allows me to do the main things that I mention above - and quite a bit more - but nothing is perfect.
So this isn't intended as a OneNote "fanboy" thread. As a Onenote user, I am always interested in examples/case studies - if only just for reference - as to how I can improve on how I might be able to make more advantageous/beneficial use of OneNote.
What I intend to do is share those things that I might have learned in this regard, and I would be very interested to read of other DC Forum members' experiences, problems, workarounds or tips regarding OneNote. There seem to be only a few websites with very useful notes about OneNote, so perhaps this discussion thread might be able to fill some gaps.
IainB:
Searching for information in audio notes in OneNote.
The OneNote Help File is extensive and comprehensive, but OneNote is chock-a-block with useful features, and the usefulness of some of of those features is sometimes left up to the user to discover.
I have a habit of taking short written notes in a paper notebook when attending any meeting. Since starting to use OneNote, I have also started to take audio notes via my telephone - which doubles as a dictaphone and which is also sensitive enough to pick up a discussion in a meeting.
I have installed a journalling add-in to OneNote, where notes can be made logged in a journalised form for a particular date/time.
I transcribe my handwritten meeting notes into a journal entry in OneNote, and copy the related audio notes in as an embedded and playable .MP3 file within OneNote.
I also sometimes make a copy of radio talks that I listen to, and embed those as playable .MP3 files within a journalled OneNote entry.
The other day I was reading something that used the expression "right to be rich". It seemed an unusual expression, but I thought that I had come across it before, but I could not remember where or in what context. I thought it might have been in a meeting discussion, but did not recall any such discussion where the phrase would probably have been uttered.
Anyway, I eventually got around to searching for it in OneNote, and was very impressed with what I found and the ease with which I found it. OneNote had apparently transcribed and indexed all the voice items that it could detect in my audio recordings (I checked, and it has done this with the sung audio lyrics part of the music .MP3 files that I had saved into OneNote). It takes you straight to the audio clip and the position (time) in the audio clip that the searched item occurs:
IainB:
ERROR (Solved): The protocol "oneindex" does not have a registered program.
A fix to a very annoying OneNote problem: (Win 7-64, Microft Office 2007, OneNote)
ERROR: (When trying to open a search find to a OneNote item, in the Start menu.)
Unable to open this Internet Shortcut. The protocol "oneindex" does not have a registered program.
--- End quote ---
A google search eventually turned up this post "answer" in Microsft Community/Office/Windows 7:
OneNote Search Location not available
- which contained details for a registry file fix:
Spoiler Posted by steigerm on 23/06/2010 at 09:44
The solution posted by PCM2 is ONLY for Office 2010!
Use this one for Office 2007:
----------
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{5858A72C-C2B4-4DD7-B2BF-B76DB1BD9F6C}]
@="Microsoft OneNote Namespace Extension for Windows Desktop Search"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{5858A72C-C2B4-4DD7-B2BF-B76DB1BD9F6C}\InprocServer32]
@="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office\\Office12\\ONFILTER.DLL"
"ThreadingModel"="Both"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{5858A72C-C2B4-4DD7-B2BF-B76DB1BD9F6C}\ProgID]
@="OneIndex.ShellFolder.1"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{5858A72C-C2B4-4DD7-B2BF-B76DB1BD9F6C}\ShellFolder]
"Attributes"=dword:20180000
"WANTSFORPARSING"=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{5858A72C-C2B4-4DD7-B2BF-B76DB1BD9F6C}\VersionIndependentProgID]
@="OneIndex.ShellFolder"
----------
--- End quote ---
I applied the fix, and the Search was OK and now resulted in:
IainB:
Align image sections - 2 half-page image clips of a page of a document;then OCR.
Objective:
* To capture a browser image of a single sample page of a document which was behind a paywall.
* To OCR scan the text.Steps:
* Take OneNote image clip of top half of the page.
* Scroll down.
* Take OneNote image clip of bottom half of the page.
* Abut the two images to look like a single image.
* OCR scan the text in the image.
The image below shows the steps, focussing just on the abutted parts of the images.
The result is pretty good OCR output.
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