Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks

[IainB]

@dantheman:
Multiple page deletes are simple: You can select multiple pages at a time, using the Page tabs (holding down the Shift key to collect a contiguous range of pages, or the Ctrl key to select/deselect pages in a selected range). All the selected page tabs go grey. You then delete them with a single press of the Delete key. That sends just the selected pages to the Trash. They can be recovered from Trash for a while, but Trash will eventually be expunged according to the settings for that.

I seem to recall that copying a PDF file to OneNote 2007 could be done so that all the pages of the PDF file go to one infinitely long page in OneNote (not sure what the limit is) - I had mistakenly sent a 500-page document to OneNote, and it all came onto one page. Maybe I used the Print To OneNote function; I don't recall though.

With MS Office 2013 (OneNote 2013), you can:

• Print a PDF file to ON (as if it were an installed printer).
• Insert a Printout of a file.
• Insert a file as an attachment (Object) or as a Printout.

The file printed automatically goes onto one infinitely long page in ON as a series of images - one image for each page of the PDF document. If you do this, the print images are not OCRed or indexed (even though you may have Make text in images searchable set on by default), and so to get them OCRed and indexed you simply select those page images you want indexed and then right click and select Make text in image searchable. I just did this with a 7-page PDF document to prove it, and it works a treat. I was pretty sure that ON2007 worked in much the same way.

By the way, for Client-based Notebooks, the contents of files inserted as objects are apparently stored in a format peculiar to OneNote, which is not indexed and thus cannot be searched - either by OneNote or WDS (Windows Desktop Search).
For Cloud-based drives (i.e., if the Notebook is in OneDrive), I think the same is true. However, if the Notebook is saved in Sharepoint, I think I read somewhere that all file objects inserted in ON Notebooks can be indexed/searched in/by Sharepoint search.

[dantheman]

Thank you Ian for your generous time and most elaborate response! 
A ctrl+A type hotkey would have been most appropriate. Next version maybe?

Would be nice if Microsoft could integrate a bit better their overall search for ON.
In time...

[IainB]

Thank you Ian for your generous time and most elaborate response!  
A ctrl+A type hotkey would have been most appropriate. Next version maybe?
Would be nice if Microsoft could integrate a bit better their overall search for ON.
In time...
___________________________________

-dantheman (February 18, 2015, 12:18 PM)

Thanks. I'm always happy to try and help where I think I might be able to.
Ctrl+A works on (for example) the series of PDF pages printed within a OneNote page.
Ctrl+A does not work on the Page Tabs, but it does work on the page tabs within a Page Group (which seems logical, to me).

Selecting (say) 400 contiguous Page Tabs to delete in OneNote is easy. Just click on the uppermost or lowermost page in the page tabs, then scroll to the lowermost or uppermost (respectively ), and click on that whilst holding down the Shift key. That selects them all. Then press Delete.

I have an AutoHotKey macro that pops up and displays the OneNote 2013 Hotkeys and functions.
Here is the pop-up:

[wraith808]

^ you might also do this with ROT, so you don't have to use a hotkey or dismiss it.  Just a shameless plug

[IainB]

@wraith808: Oh, I think I see what you mean.
Wouldn't it be a bit too busy on the screen though, if all that info was overlaid onto it? For the purposes of good ergonomics, I mean. Or did you just mean progressively overlaying smaller chunks of reference info and scrolling through those chunks?
I haven't used ROT, so I am unsure as to how it looks in practice.

[wraith808]

The manner in which I use it day to day is to have it on my secondary screen, partially transparent so I can see the actual apps on the second screen beneath it without switching back and forth.  As it just displays images, you can change up the display size also in order to make it as small as you want, and therefore take up as little space as you want.  I need to get back to it, because I was going to add the option of a global hot key to advance the image, which I've found would be useful.

Just an idea that I thought to posit when I saw your pop-up screen.

[dantheman]

Do hope our OneNote guru can answer this one.
Is there a way to clip notes from webpage to OneNote and preserve hyperlinks that are present within?
Have printed and emailed entire webpage to ON but neither have active hyperlinks (look just like one "picture").

[IainB]

@dantheman: Which version of OneNote are you using?
It sounds as though you might be using the "FREE" version of OneNote. If that is the case, then it is pretty constrained.

[dantheman]

Using the one that came with either Office or Outlook 2013 (both shareware - not expensive enough?).

Update: CliptoOneNote addon does the trick just fine but would expect better from native OneNote clipping or printing options.

[IainB]

@dantheman: Thanks for your response above, I think I understand your question about capturing web pages in OneNote now, and I might be able to help.

Basically, copying parts of the content of web pages into OneNote is potentially useful, though you may have to tediously reformat some of it to make it look better. However, copying the content of an entire web page into OneNote is not something that I do, and nor would I recommend it..
If you wish to capture web pages in their entirety, including any required linked/embedded file types, and to zero or "n" levels deep (selectable), then the Firefox ScrapBook extension (version 1.5.11 currently) is essential. It faithfully captures all the html and files in WYSIWYG.

Explanation:
A: In Firefox: to copy part of a web page to a OneNote notebook, the steps are:

• 1. Select as a block those parts of the page which you want to copy and save to a OneNote notebook.
• 2. Press Ctrl-C - copies the material selected.
• 3. Alt-Tab to the OneNote window.
• 4. Press Ctrl-V - pastes the material from Clipboard to the OneNote page you select, in RTF (Rich Text format), and appends some metadata, including the URL it was copied from.

B: In IE: to copy part of a web page to a OneNote notebook, the steps are:
You could use the same steps as for Firefox (above), but alternative methods are:

• 1. Select as a block those parts of the page which you want to copy and save to a OneNote notebook.
• 2. Either:
  (a) Send to OneNote:
  
  • Press the Send to OneNote button - the material selected is copied and pasted into a OneNote page (you can set/select the default destination page to receive the material).
  (b) OneNote Linked Notes:
  
  • Press Ctrl-C - copies the material selected.
  • Press the OneNote Linked Notes button - the screen splits into two with the browser window on one side (usually set as the LHS by default), and a OneNote Linked Notes window (usually set as the RHS by default).
  • Press Ctrl-V - pastes the material from Clipboard to the OneNote page you select, in RTF (Rich Text format), and appends some metadata, including the URL it was copied from.

Notes:

• 1. Depending on the browser you are using, the content of the copied/pasted results may differ in some minor way between browsers. The output is not WYSIWYG - e.g., in the web page colours copied - and the amount/type of metadata shown at the foot of the copied item may also differ. Usually, material sourced from IE seems to have fuller metadata.
• 2. The content of the copied/pasted results is not WYSIWYG because it is not an html copy but an RTF copy, and OneNote mucks about with the format - e.g., including column widths, turns a single horizontal row of icons/images into a series of rows - one for each icon/image.
• 3. To copy ALL of a web page in Firefox or IE, use the Ctrl-A button, to first select ALL content on the page, in the steps above.
• 4. To copy ALL of a web page in IE, it is quicker if you don't select any data and then use the Send to OneNote button, whereupon the whole page is copied by default.
• To copy ALL of a web page in IE as a scrolled image broken into pages, you can use two approaches (both result in 'orrible output):
  
  • (a) Via the Send To OneNote tool (invoked by pressing the Windows+N keys) and then selecting the Send To Onenote (D) button in the tool window that pops up. This button is only integrated/operative with/for IE + MS Office products.
  • (b) By printing the page to the Printer defined as "Send To OneNote 2013". This also works for printing from any application.

• Unfortunately both (a) and (b) above not only have the imaged output for a single long web page broken into discrete pages of images in OneNote, but also the output reformats and makes a serious hash-up of the content - e.g., narrowing the width of text columns, splitting text from any associated embedded images in the web page, and often truncating the RHS parts of all wider embedded images. The 'orrible results are pretty much identical to the output when printing to a PDF printer.
• You can get an excellent scrolled screen capture (image) of a web page - see Test of the OneNote Clipper bookmarklet "button" that you drag to Favorites.
• None of the above image output  - e.g., including Print To OneNote, Send To OneNote tool, and Print as PDF - contains embedded links. That is, embedded links are lost.

[dantheman]

That was a full course meal Ian!
A web clipper add-on like Evernotes' for Firefox would be a nice addition.

Thanks again! 

[IainB]

That was a full course meal Ian!
A web clipper add-on like Evernotes' for Firefox would be a nice addition.
Thanks again! 

-dantheman (March 04, 2015, 01:46 PM)

You're most welcome.
RANT ON/
I had thought to mention Evernote, but as per separate discussions in this forum, I don't think its current incarnation is up to much, and I would like to go back to the version that had a FREE and very good client component - but that doesn't work with the current Cloud-based Evernote service. (Sigh.)
I used to think that if EN and ON were somehow merged, then that might be a good idea, but now I am not so sure, and I only have ON as the PIM I could really recommend for a future migration path (which is why I have taken that route for myself).
ON is hard to beat, and with MS Office integrated withal for a paltry US$10 (Corporate Home Use licence), I reckon it's a no-brainer. That does not mean it is perfect by any means - you only need to re-read my comments to you above to see where some gaping holes still require patching up. (Those comments do not provide a comprehensive list of ON failings either, though this entire thread does provide some more!)
For example, I can hardly believe I am still having to rely on the FF extension ScrapBook to store copies of web pages; and what about the Windows Desktop Search (Index/Search) non-integration with OneDrive-based notebooks? How did that all happen?
/RANT OFF

[IainB]

It's nice see that OneNote is now a free program.
Do have one hick with this software.
The other day, tried to import a .pdf file but it created separate "pages" for each page instead of one page (as hoped for) but ended up with over 400!
Evidently i went on to delete the OneNote pages but it seems that we can only delete one page at a time.
Fortunately, i was able to transfer the other pages to another "tab" then simply delete the one with all the extra pages.
Wish there was a way to batch delete some pages instead of one at a time.

-dantheman (February 17, 2015, 02:18 PM)

As well as my comment above, I though I might respond to this more specifically (and apologies for ny duplication).

• Definition of "Free": I personally wouldn't describe what Microsoft offer as a "free" OneNote program as being a truly free program. There are too many hooks/constraints associated with it, and it's not really all that usable compared to the full client-based software (which comes with MS Office). For that reason, I would not recommend it, except possibly as a taste of some of what OneNote could do.
  However, if you wanted to trial OneNote, then you could download a free trial of the full MS Office 2013, which would be good for a 60-day trial:
  60-day evaluation copy of Office Professional Plus 2013
  EDIT 2015-04-09: fixed bad link here.
  The download is:
  
  • Office Professional Plus 2013 32-bit IMG - this is the one you will most likely need; a 666MB file.
  • Office Professional Plus 2013 64-bit IMG
  
  Be warned though that the experiences of many users - myself included - who have downloaded this seems to be that this download will not always install for various obscure reasons, and there seems to be little or no support offered from Microsoft for users to get the thing working. Amazing.
  
  
• Inserting PDF files: The issue with inserting PDF files is that you can either insert them into a OneNote page as an actual file, or as an image printout of the file contents. In the latter case, OneNote effectively is set up as an output device (a printer) in your devices - named "Send To OneNote 2013", or similar. This is what you seem to have done. I can't really see that it is all that useful - i.e., why would a user want to do this? When you get a separate OneNote page for each page of the PDF file, then it is a PITA.
  However, once you discover that you have all these unwanted pages, the correct/quickest way to delete such pages is as a "batch". You go to the first page, select that page's tab (usually 2 clicks or until it goes grey) and then scroll down the page tabs to the last page in the series that you want deleted and select that whist holding down the Shift key - that selects all the pages in that range, from 1st to last. Then press the delete key, which removes the pages to Trash, wherefrom they will be deleted permanently after 60 days or so (default) or whatever is the user setting, if different. The delete is thus undoable/reversible if you change your mind about it.
  
  Notes:
  
  • 1. OneNote and OCR: The printed images of those PDF file pages are in a "background" image, or something, and even if you have set OneNote to auto-OCR text in images, it will not OCR "background" images. I seem to recall that, if you want the text of those images to be OCRed and indexed for subsequent search, you have to select every image and bring it to foreground, and then check that those will be or are being auto-OCRed by default. As I said above, a PITA.
    Thus, if you want the text in the images in a PDF file to be indexed for search, then OCR the images in the PDF file, and rely on your Windows Desktop Search to do the indexing/searching (as it can do with text in .TIF image files).
    
    
  • 2. OneNote OCR threshold text: I have noticed that OneNote will not OCR scan and index text in any image on a page where the amount of text is below some undefined threshold.
    For example, yesterday, I clipped the image of a subtitle on a video where the text in the image was:
    "ice age is creeping over the northern hemisphere even then it won't be as bad" (i.e., 15 words).
    I then got OneNote to select the text from the image , and OneNote reported a longish error message that began:
    

    This image does not contain any recognised text. ...

    
    So I clumped that subtitle clip with several others from the video and then consolidated them as a single, larger image:
    
    
    
     - and then got OneNote to select the text from the larger image and got (with errors, and with lines inserted to distinguish each imaged group of text):
    

    ____________________________
    British professor Hubert lamb says that
    a new
    ____________________________
    ice age is creeping cwer the northern
    hem isphere even then it 'MM1t be as bad
    ____________________________
    as the last ice age sixty thousand years
    ____________________________
    then NewYork Cincinnati Saint lost
    runner 5,000 be unified
    ____________________________
    presumably no tramc movement school
    was let out for the day
    ____________________________
    and thats the way it is Monday Sept
    11th 1972
    ____________________________
    

[IainB]

I had pointed out elsewhere that MS Office Lens on the Windows phone looked potentially useful:

...
3. Office Lens for capturing documents and whiteboards with your Windows Phone. Amazing. Potentially very useful. Just what I was needing/wanting. Now all I need is a Windows phone, and this is a good reason for getting one (so I can test Office Lens). ...

-IainB (March 18, 2014, 08:43 PM)

I still have not justified getting a Windows Phone, so I was pleased to read today that:
Office Lens comes to iPhone and Android - Office Blogs

by OneNote Team, on April 2, 2015 | 16 Comments | 0

Just over a year ago, we introduced Office Lens for Windows Phone—and over that time the app has become one of the most popular free apps on Windows Phone, with an average rating of 4.6 stars (out of 5) from more than 18,500 reviews.

Today, we’re releasing Office Lens for iPhone and Android phones.

Office Lens is a handy capture app that turns your smartphone into a pocket scanner and it works with OneNote so you’ll never lose a thing. Use it to take pictures of receipts, business cards, menus, whiteboards or sticky notes—then let Office Lens crop, enhance and save to OneNote. Just like that—all the scanned images you capture from Office Lens are accessible on all your devices. ...(read more at the link).

[dantheman]

Excellent find Ian! Thank you! 

Thought i was subscribed to this thread... where is that darn bookmark/subscribe to thread link now?

[tomos]

Thought i was subscribed to this thread... where is that darn bookmark/subscribe to thread link now?

-dantheman (April 08, 2015, 08:07 AM)

if you edit your post - it's below the text field:
[x] Notify me of replies

(dont think it's otherwise visible)

[wraith808]

Thanks for the heads up on Office Lens!

[IainB]

This is cross-posted from: Re: OneNote now on Mac as well, +FREE everywhere, + Cloud service powered.

OneNote now on Mac as well, +FREE everywhere, + Cloud service powered.[/b][/i][/u][/url]

...I installed the Clip to OneNote button in my toolbar, and pressed that, after logging in to Live, and waiting for the desktop app to sync the note after clipping it, the result was this:
 (see attachment in previous post)
_______________________

-Jibz (March 19, 2014, 02:53 AM)

At the time you posted this, I didn't have any idea what you might have done (to get the image placeholder with the red "X" in the upper LH corner), and couldn't reproduce it at my end.
However, I was reminded of your post when I had a heart-stopping moment the other day - all the images clipped to my largest OneNote Notebook appeared to be just that - i.e., the image placeholder with the red "X" in the upper LH corner.

Background:
__________________________________
This was after my HP ENVY 14 laptop (Win7) had died and I bought a new (refurbished) Toshiba Satellite L855 laptop (Win8).
As part of the process of migrating to the new laptop under Win8, I copied all my OneNote notebooks from the previous (Win7) laptop's drive/user directory to the new laptop's drive/user directory. This was a straightforward process, though it took a little time to copy across.

Previously, all my OneNote Notebooks had been client-based only, except for the free trial OneNote Notebook as per this discussion thread - that was on my OneDrive (was SkyDrive), and had appeared (been automatically synced) amongst my client-based OneNote Notebooks.
If I had had all my OneNote notebooks on my OneDrive in the first place, then I would not have had to worry about manually migrating them to the new laptop. So, recognising the value of having them accessible on the web and on any client I was using, and having read up on it to establish that the technology was very sound, I used the OneNote functionality to "move" all my client-based Notebooks to OneDrive. The location of the Notebooks then changed from a directory under my Windows User ID to https://skydrive.liv...edit.aspx/Documents/… and these all started syncing.

When the initial syncing had completed, I could open my Notebooks on my laptop whether I was online or offline, and could operate on the offline cached copies as though they were client-based, just as before. However, whenever I was online, syncing was active, and any offline changes/updates to the Notebooks promptly automatically synced to the Cloud. According to what I had read, syncing whilst online is incremental and in real-time (not necessitating high bandwidth consumption). It all worked a treat. Perfect.
__________________________________

After my heart had resumed beating, I did some frantic investigation/searching and discovered that:

• (a) Not all of my Notebooks were affected.
• (b) All of my Notebooks contents/images seemed to be intact, correct and available via access to the OneDrive on the web (Phew!).
• (c) There were many forum posts about this problem where all the images in a OneNote Notebook had been replaced by image placeholders with the red "X" in the upper LH corner.
• (d) In Notebook Sync status view, one of my Notebooks (the largest one, which was the one with this problem) seemed to be stuck in syncing and kept instantly restarting syncing as though it were making no progress.

From the forums, apparently this problem only occurred where you had the Notebook resident/synced on OneDrive, and it was apparently caused by corruption/failure problems in:

• A: The client-based folder: C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\15.0\OneNoteOfflineCache_Files
• B: the client-based file: C:\Users\[UserID]\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\15.0\OneNoteOfflineCache.onecache

The recommended fix was to delete the contents of the folder in A and delete the file in B, and initiate syncing (it should start automatically anyway). So I went offline and closed down OneNote. I then moved A and B from their home directory to a backup folder, and created an empty older per A in the home directory.
Then I went back online and started up OneNote again and opened the problem Notebook. The image placeholders with the red "X" in the upper LH corner were still there, but, as I watched, they were progressively replaced with the correct images as the syncing fetched them to the client and rebuilt the deleted caches. Eventually syncing stopped/completed.
Folder A as moved to backup was 70.8kB
File B as moved to backup was 80.1MB.
The newly rebuilt caches were of the order of 665MB (!) and 80MB respectively.
Looking in the folder A, I found thousands of files which are actually image files (irfanview tells you this from the record header, and you can view the record header yourself to see that is the case), but with names and an extension like this: ff046756-6c2d-419f-a52f-575638a5560a.onebin

Conclusions:

• The cause is corrupted/broken offline caches - possibly caused by an erratic or interrupted Internet connection interrupting the syncing process, resulting in incomplete caching syncs.
• No data seems to have been lost, and this problem is thus not a showstopper.
• The fix is as above, and a repeat occurrence could probably be avoided by ensuring OneNote Notebook syncing has completed before shutdowns.
• It might be worth experimenting - I don't know - to establish whether breaking down very large Notebooks into smaller ones could make for a quicker recovery if/when this happens again. This would probably require a good understanding (which I don't have) of the actual syncing process.
• Everything about OneNote (so far) seems to be rock-solid and reliable otherwise.

-IainB (May 29, 2014, 04:48 AM)

[IainB]

I posted about Searching for information in audio notes in OneNote.
That was in ON 2007.
Here is the relevant settings panel to enable audio index/search in ON 2013:

[dantheman]

Don't know if you have had a chance to glance at new desktop version in present Windows 10 Preview releases.
Looks nice! Reminds me a bit of Evernote with its preview icons.

[IainB]

I've not got Win10 anything yet, though am awaiting its scheduled release later this month.
What you say sounds interesting. Anything that might improve the ergonomics or efficiency of the ON GUI is probably good news for users.

[dantheman]

Although i do like the new Onenote they offer, i'm not so sure about the rest.
The shareware/freeware i presently have don't all work with Windows 10.
So, i've gone back to Windows 7 for now.

[superboyac]

IainB...sometimes you scare me.

[spam spam bacon spam]

It's nice see that OneNote is now a free program.

Do have one hick with this software.
The other day, tried to import a .pdf file but it created separate "pages" for each page instead of one page (as hoped for) but ended up with over 400!

-dantheman (February 17, 2015, 02:18 PM)

Go to FILE tab
Choose OPTIONS
Choose ADVANCED
Scroll nearly to bottom, for PRINTOUTS
Uncheck "Insert long printouts on multiple pages"

Evidently i went on to delete the OneNote pages but it seems that we can only delete one page at a time.
Fortunately, i was able to transfer the other pages to another "tab" then simply delete the one with all the extra pages.
Wish there was a way to batch delete some pages instead of one at a time.

-dantheman (February 17, 2015, 02:18 PM)

Deleting multiple pages at once is very easy, even more so for your particular situation.

The list of pages is displayed in the left sidebar:
Clicking on a page name once displays that page.
However, clicking on it twice turns the bar with the page name darkish gray? taupe? puke? 
That page is now "selected."

Now use either the SHIFT or CTRL key to select other pages.

SHIFT selects all everything in between.
CTRL "cherrypicks."

The bars of the additional selected pages will also turn dirty diaper colored.

Don't bother to right click.
Just press DELETE.


Your printout was created as a single "top-level" page and a billion subpages.
Make sure you collapse all the subpages first.
To do that, mouseover the top-level page bar, and a carrot "^" will appear.
Click the carrot and it will collapse the pages, displaying a v "v"

Click the top level page twice to gray it and hit delete.
The whole set of pages will be deleted.


HTH.

Cheers,

~spammy

[IainB]

^^ I think @spam's reply duplicates my earlier one on that same point:

@dantheman:[/b]
Multiple page deletes are simple: You can select multiple pages at a time, using the Page tabs (holding down the Shift key to collect a contiguous range of pages, or the Ctrl key to select/deselect pages in a selected range). All the selected page tabs go grey. You then delete them with a single press of the Delete key. That sends just the selected pages to the Trash. They can be recovered from Trash for a while, but Trash will eventually be expunged according to the settings for that. ...(more)
_______________________________________

-IainB (February 18, 2015, 10:16 AM)