Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks

[dantheman]

Good video on Onenote IainB.
Could easily serve as a primer for anyone.

Haven't Scrabbled in ages!

p.s. don't know if this exists in Onenote, but it sure is a cool feature, check out cross-reference for Write app:
https://writeapp.co/...48-1-cross-reference

[IainB]

@dantheman:

p.s. don't know if this exists in Onenote, but it sure is a cool feature, check out cross-reference for Write app:
https://writeapp.co/...48-1-cross-reference

-dantheman (July 30, 2017, 07:15 PM)

Apologies for the belated response. I had forgotten to make a reply.
I did check out the Write! application. It's nifty but Cloud-dependent, with a monthly Cloud fee after the 1st year, or something.
Anyway, not for me/my requirements.

[dantheman]

Not a problem Ian!
Figured if Ian "the wizard" didn't know, nobody would. 

[dantheman]

Btw, if someone is familiar with OneNote for Android...
Is there a way to scan two pages at once (booklet)?
So far, i can only scan one at a time.

[IainB]

@dantheman:

Btw, if someone is familiar with OneNote for Android...
Is there a way to scan two pages at once (booklet)?
So far, i can only scan one at a time.
______________________________

-dantheman (November 29, 2017, 10:45 AM)

Yes, I am familiar with that, now, having just recently (last week) bought a half-price refurbished Samsung Galaxy S7 (the ones that were released in 2016 and then recalled for risk of battery exploding) for the missus and daughter. However, it's not OneNote you need to use to scan the document - it's OfficeLens.

I just tried it on a booklet now and it seems to work perfectly. The OfficeLens camera sensor seems to be very smart and can discriminate between the two pages of the opened booklet - it alternately puts a red border (frame) around either page (whichever is most centered in the view), outlining it as the document it is about to capture - but, if you move the camera away a bit, so that the whole booklet is fully within the view, then the red border (frame) expands to encompass both pages. Then you tap the screen and it takes a scan of them both like that, at the same time (i.e., as a single document image). Works a treat. Actually, I think it seems to work more intuitively and responsively than the OfficeLens app on the Nokia-Lumia 830 Windows phone (released 2014) that my son gave me to use - though, admittedly, that is slightly older technology than the S7.

[dantheman]

It works IanB, thank you!

[IainB]

@dantheman: I just re-read what I had written above, and wondered whether I should have mentioned how OL (Office Lens) is integrated for use with OneNote and Onedrive. So, from memory and at the risk of duplication, in case you did not already know it:
1. Capture the document/whiteboard/photo/business card using the camera+OL.
2. Save the thing captured - document image/whiteboard image/photo/smart VCF business card (respectively) to one or both selected default destinations:

• a OneNote Notebook (you will need to have previously set up the default destination for this save). The OneNote Notebook can be either in the Cloud (i.e., a Notebook in your OneDrive storage) or on the Client (i.e., a Notebook saved on the PC's hard drive).
• somewhere else (typically OneDrive or your PC's hard drive) as an image file or as a document file (e.g., Word or PDF file) saved to somewhere else - typically a UserID subfolder - e.g., (say) Documents folder or Camera Roll/Saved Photos, etc.

Remember that any images saved to OneNote will be automatically OCR-scanned (this first has to be set ON in settings for it to be the default action) so that any legible text in the image becomes indexed data and can be found using the search function in OneNote (is only searched/found if the Notebook is OPEN when you start the search), and can also be found using WDS (Windows Desktop Search), if the Notebook is on the Client hard drive and that filetype (.ONE) is set to be indexed.

[IainB]

Details of update to a very useful macro, posted in Onetastic:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Macro Update: Convert Copied Paths to File Hyperlinks Macro
There is an update to a macro in Macroland - Last Updated: December 03, 2017
Convert Copied Paths to File Hyperlinks Macro by Simon Rear

Converts selected pasted "Copied Paths" into file hyperlinks. This provides similar functionality now removed from OneNote that allowed files copied from windows explorer to be pasted as hyperlinks.
To use:
1-Ctrl Select multiple files within windows explorer,
2-Shift + right click one of the selected files,
3-Choose "Copy as Path" from context menu,
4-Go to OneNote and paste into a page,
5-Select all pasted paragraphs,
6-Select "Convert Copied Paths to File Hyperlinks" from Onetastic's hyperlink menu.

See a demo of the macro in action at https://youtu.be/22nMT8wy8Cc. If you find this macro useful please consider donating to http://www.paypal.me/SimonRear to encourage the development of more useful timesavers.

In this version: Previous macro version had double backslashes stripped out after upload for some reason introducing a bug preventing macro from working. This version corrects this.

Go to the macro | Comments (6)

[dantheman]

@IainB,

Silly me, can't find option (desktop 2016 or Android) to have ON search within scanned items by default.
Always thought it was a good thing if they could do that but never saw that option.
I'm blind!

Will find it...

[IainB]

@dantheman: For data access/search, the relevant settings include:
1: Target Notebook:
In ON (2016), go to: File --> Options --> Save & Backup (panel) --> Save menu item:
Set the default Quick Notes Section to save to, and check the other defaults there are what you probably want.
NB: It is probably worthwhile going through the rest of the Options panels in that window to familiarise yourself with them, and change them as necessary. The other standard defaults in ON - as set up on installation - are usually adequate, but may not be ideal in all cases. The Advanced panel is especially useful. Microsoft have attempted to provide assumed default options for optimising the use of computing resources, including  bandwidth, response time, disk storage, and GPU, but the user can change these to suit their particular requirements/constraints. One cannot easily "break" anything here, but take care anyway, just in case - e.g., think twice before relocating the default save/backup directories.

Then move down to the Send to OneNote menu item:
Set it as: "To new page in section Quick Notes in [name of main Notebook whose Quick Notes section you want to use as the default]"

2: Audio search:
In ON (2016), go to: File --> Options --> Audio & Video --> Audio Search menu item:
I think this was NOT ENABLED by default.
To ENABLE this, there should be a tick in the box by "Enable searching audio and video recordings for words"

3. OCR and indexing of text in images:
In ON (2016), go to: File --> Options --> Advanced menu item:
In the Advanced panel, scroll down to "Text recognition in pictures".
This is ENABLED by default.
To DISABLE this, there should be a tick in the box by "Disable text recognition in pictures".

Hope that helps, or is of use.

[dantheman]

You're a good tutor IainB! 

Seems like i'm missing something in my version of ON 2016:
http://imagizer.imag...g923/2442/tja10m.png

[IainB]

You're a good tutor IainB! 
Seems like i'm missing something in my version of ON 2016:
http://imagizer.imag...g923/2442/tja10m.png

-dantheman (December 10, 2017, 03:10 PM)

Heh, thanks. Though I left tutoring/lecturing a while back, I am still interested in the subject and the training and learning required to develop reasonably proficient tutoring skills was retained and useful, in my subsequent career, so it got fairly regular exercise, and now, later, again, with my children.

You're not missing anything except the visual perception of the RHS scrollbar visible in that panel in the screenshot. It's there, hidden in plain sight! I don't know why Microsoft engineers made it such an unintuitive, bad ergonomics scrollbar. If you make that panel scroll down, then you will be able to see what is below and currently out of sight in that screenshot. It behaves a bit erratically as a pukka scrolling window.  I initially made exactly the same mistake as you seem to have done, when I was looking for the information (that I knew was there) to put factually into my comment above.

I do think Microsoft might have done a better job with updating the training documentation for OneNote. It's been rather scrappily done, IMHO.

[dantheman]

Got it!
Thanks again!

[IainB]

Someone posed me the question:
How to capture/copy text into OneNote from:

• online .PDF files, or
• .PDF image files, or
• security-copy/printing-locked .PDF files.

There are two approaches I would suggest:

• 1. Print to OneNote: Normally, if you can print the image of the .PDF file to OneNote, then the embedded text in that image (or in images of its pages) can be OCRed and indexed for searching/copying in OneNote.
• 2. Image clip OCR scan: If it is not possible to take the first approach, then the simple answer is to use the OneNote image clipping tool on the page context as displayed on your PC display screen. (Consider rotating the screen 90° so that landscape view becomes vertical portrait mode, to capture more of the page in each clip.)
  
  • Those image clips are saved into a default location in a OneNote Notebook, and OneNote will automatically OCR scan them and index for search any identifiable text in the images.
  • Alternatively: You could use the ABBY ScreenshotReader to OCR scan directly from the screen, and paste the text thus identified into a OneNote Notebook. This is worth considering, as ABBY SR seems to have a consistently lower error rate in OCR scanning than does OneNote (as I demonstrate in this thread), and also can scan tables with columnar text, retaining the columnar layout, for pasting into OneNote or (say) Excel.

A bit off-topic, but might come in useful:
Some years back, on a very large and important documentation conversion project for an electrical engineering company, I tested and deployed for use a piece of excellent software (Omnipage) which operated on similar principles as above. The documents were vitally important assets as they related to specs of specific high-voltage electrical equipment (physical assets) in the field (e.g., transformers and substations in the National Grid), which had to be updated as and when the  equipment had maintenance/changes carried out on it - this was quite literally a matter of life-or-death risk for the field engineers who had to service the equipment, because sometimes the equipment isolation procedure was changed/modified during maintenance, and this had to be logged in the specs. Thus the new isolation procedures were documented to make it safe for the next engineer who might work on that asset in future - the engineers relied absolutely on the documentation for performing correct isolation.

Unfortunately, a lot of the documentation assets could not be updated, As they were security-locked and the relevant security passwords had been lost during a prior corporate takeover.   
Omnipage  was able to bypass security-copy/printing-locked .PDF and other document files by simply reading in the file to RAM as a series of images, and then OCRing the images in RAM. It could then output copies of the images in RAM as a new and separate (unlocked) .PDF file, (usually without errors), or as an editable/indexable .PDF file (usually with very few errors). It also handled diagrams, etc. as discrete images in the file. Very handy if one needed to have text-editable/copyable/indexable copies of previously "locked" documents!   

Here, for info:

Never retype another document
Don't spend hours retyping documents. With OmniPage Standard, the world's best selling OCR software, scan and convert different types of documents, such as paper, PDF files or images into editable and searchable files with ease.

Get OmniPage Standard for £79.99

Copied from: OmniPage Standard | Nuance (UK) - <https://www.nuance.com/en-gb/print-capture-and-pdf-solutions/optical-character-recognition/omnipage/omnipage-standard.html>

[IainB]

Cross posted here regarding Page Four - as a potential alternative PIM to OneNote: and which may be of interest. Though Page Four was not designed to handle all the functionality and data types (including text, .RTF, .html, OCR, images, audio, embedded video, etc.) that OneNote handles, it's specs look like it might be very well-designed for its purpose and the price can't be beaten at $Free. At the end of its development life-cycle, it is likely to be a pretty well-honed and tested (in the field) product.
I did give it a cursory trial a while back, but it was an "also-ran" as far as my PIM requirements were concerned. However, out of interest, I might give it another look now, anyway.

• _____________________________________
  EDIT 2018-01-25: I did re-trial Page Four, and it remains an "also-ran" as far as my PIM requirements are concerned.
  _____________________________________

That's what CRIMP (Compulsive-Reactive Information Management Purchasing) does to one. But I at least have it under control - trialing a PIM software product helps me to release the CRIMP urge, whilst my extremely tough requirements mean that it is only very rarely that I will actually lay out hard $cash for anything.   

Interesting. Is Atomic Scribbler sort-of an updated version of Page Four ?
https://www.atomicsc...er.com/Home/Gallery/

Yes, I see it is
http://www.softwareforwriting.com/

[ Invalid Attachment ]

-tomos (January 15, 2018, 09:51 AM)

@tomos: Thanks for those links.   
I see from the links that Page Four was the main ($Paid) software product by <http://www.softwareforwriting.com/>, up until 2017 when it became $Free, but unsupported, as a new $Paid product became the focus of development and is intended to supersede Page Four - which is a perfectly good .RTF document authoring/creation tool.

Hats off to softwareforwriting.com for making such a smart marketing move. They'll get my vote.
This is redolent of:

• Microsoft releasing their excellent $Paid and yet-to be-beaten Microsoft Money Plus "Sunset" accounting system for $Free, and
• Google's release of a "Sunset" version of their excellent $Free and yet-to be-beaten Picasa image management software as it reached end-of-development.

-IainB (January 15, 2018, 11:40 AM)

[IainB]

Interesting comment by @Dormouse (taken from the DC Forum discussion thread Notetaking software), , regarding experiences with using OneNote:

...I find OneNote pretty good across platforms. The functionality of each program is not the same, and only desktop has all features, but everything that has been done on a note is visible and editable on all platforms (or has been so far). Sufficient for me atm.

I do have worries about it though. All my previous attempts at major use floundered on huge, unanticipated glitches (eg tables). However, I have a number of those on my map now and the advantages are enough to make set off into the wilderness again.  My current/almost immediate future project is being done on OneNote. Taken quite a bit of time getting the program set up to do what I want. Had considered Scrivener, but no Android and 3 only in beta on Windows. Had considered, and started, a more convoluted system using Simplenote for the main cross platform use, but convoluted and switching all the time was a real drag; wouldn't have been so bad if my mind stuck to one path, but it doesn't - it always wants to follow multiple paths at the same time.

One big advantage of OneNote is being able to write/draw directly into any page. I'm almost purely on Samsung Notes (tablets and phones) and Surface now just because of that. Occasional use of older Windows/Linux machines and I have a specialist program that requires iPads. I hadn't intended to upgrade to the Note8, finally persuaded the free Dex offer and kids telling me that phone prices (£) seemed to be going up not down. However, it has transformed my pen use. Not sure why, because it isn't that different to Note 4, but it has. Now choose to write/draw a lot whereas before I would write/draw when it seemed necessary.

PS I do like the concept of paper. Have accumulated reams of notebooks and diaries over the years. All mostly blank. Just have to accept that I'm an old fashioned digital guy

-Dormouse (December 01, 2017, 03:50 AM)

[IainB]

A potentially useful/thought-provoking blog post at blog.evernote.com: 38 Things You Should Save in Evernote

Obviously, the blog post is Evernote self-promotion on its own blog, but it could equally apply to OneNote, though maybe with some minor differences. My now nearly 10-year(!) experiment with OneNote as my "21st-century Zettelkasten PIM" has pretty much demonstrated the usefulness/constraints of OneNote functionality in this regard.

A major difference between use of Evernote v. OneNote in the field, would seem to be how OneNote is already very well-established in the primary, secondary and tertiary educational sectors - often as a de facto tool-of-choice as an aid for class/lecture delivery and school student working records and Notebooks, for use by parents, teachers and students.

For example, possibly perhaps due to Microsoft's marketing strategy more than innovation at the school level, even in my son's New Zealand primary school, where, though the school does not really seem to have an articulated strategy for best practical use of OneNote, it is at least experimenting with how to use it to gain time/cost/delivery advantages. The constraining factors in terms of making use of OneNote in that primary school would seem to be:

• the level of understanding of the potential of OneNote use amongst the school teaching staff;
• the level of understanding of the potential of OneNote use amongst the parent cohort.

It requires a transformational shift in the teaching process. To improve the level of understanding, there is arguably nothing much to beat the experiential suck-it-and-see approach that I usually advocate, but that entails a substantial amount of determined self-education, which is not necessarily going to be everybody's cup of tea, even if they had the time for it.

[dantheman]

I'm surprised IainB hasn't posted a comment on this recent post at MUO yet. 

6 OneNote tips for programmers:
https://www.makeuseo...te-tips-programmers/

[IainB]

Sorry @dantheman, I don't really profess (or try) to cover all the bases regarding the usefulness of OneNote's features - e.g., the Macro to turn RTF text in OneNote into simple BBS text syntax.

Talking of covering the bases:

GARY NORTH'S TIP OF THE WEEK (2018-03-05)
Most people should use a program to store, categorize, and retrieve notes
and Web pages. The two biggies are Evernote and OneNote.

There are lots of reviews that compare them. Click here:

https://www.garynorth.com/snip/1315.htm

Evernote is free for most users. OneNote is free for everyone. OneNote comes
with Windows 10.

I use Evernote exclusively for clipping Web pages. It is superior to OneNote
for this operation. I use Web Clipper for Firefox.

Evernote is in the cloud. Your clippings will not disappear if your hard
drive dies, and you don't have a backup (which you need). OneNote requires a
complex approach to saving data, as you can see here:

https://www.garynorth.com/snip/1316.htm

I cannot imagine not using a database program to save and retrieve Web pages.
I use search terms. Evernote lets me use as many as I want. It allows Boolean
searches to narrow down the selection.

Use one program or the other.

Gary "Found It" North
 
Visit my site, www.garynorth.com, for the latest charts on the U.S. dollar, gold's price, and Federal Reserve statistics.

North's own comments above apparently have some errors/omissions, but the link he provides is worth a read.
His comments would presumably be from a non-technical IT user perspective, where the user does not seem to know all that much about OneNote and does not have (should not be expected to have) the requisite skills/inclination to dig deeply into the sometimes more technical aspects of the PIM that I might tend to do. So he will see it from that perspective. That doesn't mean he hasn't got a sensible opinion, based on what he knows.

(My problem is similar, in that I too usually might have no clue when I have no clue what I am talking about - paraphrased as "I don’t know what I don’t know.")   

[dantheman]

Evernote sure does a good job at saving webpages.

While it may be a bit of work to backup OneNote data, i don't see the author pointing an easy way to backup Evernote data.

Btw, just poking fun at you IainB!
I'm a little twerp who should probably read over all of this thread to better appreciate all the good tips you've given over time. 

[IainB]

@dantheman: Yes, well I sometimes cringe at my own ignorance.

[IainB]

Cross-posted: Resetting the paste formatting defaults:
Fix for when ON users find that pasting images into ON causes the images to be small (resized).

...When I use SC in the way you describe, the captured image pastes perfectly into ON. So I don't experience the problem as you do and cannot replicate it.
I am using ON 2016.

However, after doing some searching, I discovered that the problem you describe seems to be longstanding, and common. For example:

How can we improve OneNote for Windows?
? OneNote for Windows & Windows phone

Keep image size when pasting an image
Keep image size when pasting an image to a notebook. Right now we have to right-click and "restore to original size" on every image.
Darryl shared this idea  ·  Mar 21, 2017  ·  Flag idea as inappropriate…
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2 comments
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Jeff Roback commented  ·  September 19, 2017 2:26 PM  ·  Flag as inappropriate
I agree.... I do a lot of screenshots in my work and having to click restore to original size for every single one is making me consider using another program for notes after over 10 years in onenote!
_____________________
Brian Cargnelli commented  ·  March 24, 2017 2:34 PM  ·  Flag as inappropriate
I use OneNote in my photography classes to upload completed projects. I ask students to resize their images to 800X800 at 72 DPI resolution and have created a table with one column and multiple rows to paste these images into. However the images all get resized smaller and as the post says, I have to right click each one and restore to original size. This small problem actually is very frustrating as if the student has 20 images for review then that is 20 times I have to do this for this one student, times 30-40 in each class.
______________________
Copied from: Keep image size when pasting an image - Welcome to OneNote and Sticky Notes Suggestion Portal! - <https://onenote.uservoice.com/forums/327186-onenote-for-windows-windows-phone/suggestions/18676150-keep-image-size-when-pasting-an-image>
______________________

I came across this possible solution:
(The text is copied into the spoiler below the image.)

Spoiler

Resetting the paste formatting defaults:
1. Copy several words to clipboard: e.g., This is a test
   - Right-click somewhere on a OneNote page.
   - Under Paste Options, select the first icon --> Keep Source Formatting (K).
   - This pastes the clipboard contents to OneNote (happens when you select Keep Source Formatting (K). ).
      
   This will paste: This is a test
2. Select the little drop-down menu that appears next to the pasted text:
      
3. Select "Set as Default Paste":
      
4. Try to copy/paste an image again.
     (The as-copied formatting should persist on pasting, without resizing.)
      Copied from: https://social.techn...es?forum=officeitpro
________________________________

-IainB (March 20, 2018, 05:33 PM)

[IainB]

EDIT 2018-04-18 0836hrs: Just updated the OP to better reflect and introduce what this discussion thread has developed into.

I was prompted to do this after someone - not a DCF member - telling me how they had stumbled upon this thread and how useful/informative they had found it.

[IainB]

I started to have a discussion offline about OneNote, but I realised it might be worth recording it here, as it could be of interest to others. It's between me and someone I shall call "Frank":

On the subject of webpage copying:

• I have searched the Internet for years to find something that makes a decent copy of web pages, for archive/library reference purposes.
  The best I had found was the Firefox add-on Scrapbook.
  More recently, I found Zotero.
  Nothing else seems to come close.
  They are both very good indeed.
  Then I discovered that they both use the same engine:WebPageDump <http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/user/pollak/webpagedump/>
  (Details partially copied below and with just the download file embedded hyperlinks.)
  

  -IainB (March 17, 2016, 11:16 AM)

  
  
• WizNote: Superb web page copying (and editable too), but I had the same qualms as you re Cloud-based and security, so do not use it. By the way, I did a review of WizNote on the DC Forum:
   WizNote (a PIM from China) - Mini-Review + Provisional User Forum.
  
  
• See also comments here: Re: flamory <https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=41879.msg392045#msg392045>
  
  
• OneNote is not very good for webpage capture/viewing, but is good for partial webpage clips.
  
  
• Wezinc could have been almost exactly what I was looking for as a PIM, though it's performance for webpage copying was unreliable - it would occasionally miss some parts of pages. It also did rather nifty relationship mind-maps. I was a Beta tester for Wezinc and was disappointed when the developer seemed to just shut down without notice. Maybe he was ill/died. If you wanted it, I have the last Beta version that he provided to me. It was never published on his website, so it'd not be in Wayback.
  
  
• Zotero remains current and supported and thus arguably the "best" proprietary option left by default.
  
  
• .mhtml copies of webpages is probably the most "open" and non-proprietary way to go at present, under the circumstances, so that is where I have gone. This has the advantage of providing webpage copies  that are self-contained single files that are  readable by various browsers and able to be indexed by WDS (Windows Desktop Search and GDS (Google Desktop Search) - the latter still being fully functional and best-in-class by default. Web pages saved by Scrapbook are also indexable by WDS/GDS, and are easily viewable if one goes to the index.html file for each Scrapbook page. This is of course a pain, but I have not yet figured out a way to batch convert the thousands of Scrapbooked web pages I have in my library (together with their nested lower levels and any embedded files).

On the subject of audio index/search + privacy/security concerns:

• (Frank): I too remember my mind being blown when I discovered that ON had this ability [indexing of identified words in audio files]. However, I have refrained from using it because of the hurdles I mentioned AND my hope was that OCR and Audio indexing would become available in the opensource landscape. It has, but only as web services.
• IainB response: If you are using ON on client-based notebooks, then the notebooks are processed in isolation on the client (i.e., not in the Cloud), by audio analysis and OCR capture software functionality in the client app., and, whilst it is processing, there is no chitchat or "phoning home" between client and Cloud, and (for paranoia belts and braces) ON can be easily blocked at the Firewall, anyway (I use Windows Firewall Control to manage this). Also, don't forget that Notebooks or individual pages within Notebooks can be locked/encrypted. (Woe betide you if you forget/lose the key.)

On the subject of automation of functionality (e.g., tagging, search) in the database:

• (Frank) I still think that it would be possible to automate these things. Something like ultrarecall with indexing or an AI or machine learning back end. While tagging is very important, I want to spend less time processing the information I collect and more time digesting and doing interesting things with it.
• IainB response: Automation of sophisticated tagging is possible and has been for years - just not in OneNote or any other of the current clutch pf PIMs (that I am aware of). The technology for this seems to be difficult to implement however, using conventional database design methods. The assumption implicit in what you write is that the database would need to be stored and processed within the microcosm of a self-contained proprietary database system. This would be a conventional approach.
  
  
• My guess is that, in ON, the conventional approach of a single (probably relational) database would seem to have been superseded by default and by design, by Microsoft, presumably in the interests of simplicity and efficiency. The database is now comprised of the structured collection of OneNote's .one files/folders stored on the hard drive (or SSD), and the processing is being/can be done by a suite of ON client-based apps able to operate on those files. To a greater extent, that describes what ON is/does. To do this, ON would need to also be maintaining a local database of pointers to the location of the data held in these files - e.g., hyperlinking.
  
  
• Thus, the entire database would consist of two major components (database stores):
  
  • the largest volume of data - the data itself (objects} - held in an integrated, structured collection of discrete .one files/folders, on disk,
  • a smaller volume of data  - indexes/pointers - held in a proprietary database of pointers to the locations of the data held in these files.
  
  This would seem to be redolent of the design patent for Lotus Agenda - US Patent US5115504 - Information management system which defined:
  Two DATA structures:
  
  • FILE .AGA:
      - CATEGORY OBJECTS
      - ITEM OBJECTS [NB: in Lotus Agenda, ITEM objects could be optionally saved externally to disk, as discrete text files).
      - GENEOLOGY OBJECTS
      - VIEW OBJECTS
    
    
  • FILE .AGB:
      - LINK STRUCTURES
    
  
  
• The ON notebooks consist of discrete page files with a .one extension (suffix). This not only makes them accessible at the file level (e.g., for WDS/GDS indexing and search), but also means that updates to a Notebook only involve single pages (files), so file read/write access is greatly simplified and does not require updating a whole database. Similarly, in the case of online (cloud-based) Notebooks, file data traversal/transmission is required only for those small files as and when they are actually updated, so bandwidth is kept to a bare minimum, leading to speedy/efficient updates of Cloud-based files as and when they are edited/changed.

On the subject of Tagging:

• Tagging in ON is pretty restrictive and manual/tedious, having to be done to information items individually or by groups within a page only. Microsoft probably could have implemented a much more useful and sophisticated form of automated tagging in the design, if they had wanted to, à la Lotus Agenda.
  
  
• In Lotus Agenda, tagging was done through the use of a semi-hierarchical tree of CATEGORIES. These CATEGORIES were effectively what we might call "tags" today, and they had selectable properties - they could be treated variously as, for example, strict hierarchies in places where you wanted that (with normal Parent-Child inheritance properties), with mutually exclusive categories, or multiple/inclusive categories, and some special categories could have Condition/Action properties (e.g., trigger an alarm at a certain date/time), or be numerical strings, alpha strings, or alpha-meric strings. Tags could be manually assigned on an individual or mass group selective basis, or automatically and dynamically assigned/reassigned to ITEMS, depending on certain conditions of the set/changed data in any given ITEM.
  
  
• This was incredibly flexible, but it had a steep learning curve, which might have explained why Lotus Agenda was reputedly not a great seller.

[Tuxman]

Ew: OneNote (the non-UWP application) is discontinued.
https://techcommunit...-Windows/ba-p/183974