About OneNote

Workaround for "turning off" the TAB key creating a table instead of a regular TAB in OneNote

Olya_Veselova — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:40:00 GMT

As you may know, pressing TAB in the middle of a line in OneNote 2007 creates a table. There is no way to turn off this behavior, but if you want to create a regular TAB instead, you can use this workaround:

Create an Auto-correct rule that turns your chosen character sequence (e.g. "\t") into a regular TAB:

Open Notepad and type one TAB. Select it and copy it.
Go to OneNote and click Tools > Auto-correct Options...
In the dialog, put your desired sequence of characters (e.g. \t, or \tab, or TAB, or <t>, or whatever you like) into the "Replace:" field.
Paste the TAB that you copied from Notepad into the "With:" filed. Click Add.

Now, any \t followed by a SPACE will be replaced by a regular TAB.

Assigning Outlook tasks from OneNote shared notebooks

Olya_Veselova — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 03:00:00 GMT

If you are not familiar with creating Outlook tasks flags from OneNote notes and synchronizing them, you can read about the basic here: OneNote and Outlook task syncing.

This post is about using OneNote and Outlook task sync for in team shared notebook. (What's a shared notebook?)

Summary: If you create a list of team tasks in a OneNote shared notebook, you can make them into Outlook tasks and assign them to team members. The nice thing in OneNote 2007 B2TR is that these tasks will keep synching with the OneNote shared notebook for any of the team members who have the task in their Outlook (assigner, or assignee) and the notebook open.

When is this useful?

Your team may want to keep track of particular project tasks in one place - on a page in in the shared notebook with the rest of project materials (ideas, reference materials, drafts, comments, etc.). This is often done for a list of action items from meeting notes (e.g. recurring status meeting), or just a list of work items for the team. Each team member responsible for a particular task can still have the task in their own Outlook and manage it in whatever way they like managing their Outlook tasks. But the task will also sync with the shared notebook if they have it open. So the other team members can see that the task has been done when they review the shared notebook page.

Ho to do it:

Let's say there is a list of team tasks for next week. I have already created an Outlook task for myself, and now I want to create the task for Dave:

I put the cursor on the task note for Dave and select Task > Custom:

In the Outlook task inspector that comes up I click Assign Task:

The task now appears in my Outlook, but it is also sent to Dave.

When Dave accepts, the task is added to his Outlook, and I get this message.

When Dave marks the task complete, I also get a message. And the task disappears from my To-Do Bar, because it is complete.

Since my OneNote is syncing with Outlook, this fact is also reflected in the OneNote shared notebook for the whole team to see:

Note that I can even delete the task that I created for Dave from my Outlook. As long as Dave has the task in his Outlook and has this shared notebook open, his OneNote will sync with the task status and the whole team will be able to see that the task is complete.

How to reorganize page templates

Olya_Veselova — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 01:45:00 GMT

I have seen a couple of questions about this on the OneNote discussion group, so I decided I should post a comprehensive explanation.

This refers to OneNote 2007 page templates (used to be called "stationery" in OneNote 2003).

Summary: It is possible to reorganize the custom templates that you create and also the templates that you download off Office Online. You can reorganize the templates into your own groups.

Steps:

When you create the your custom templates, they go into the My Templates group in the Templates pane.

This is actually just a special section file that is stored in this directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates

I say "special" because for every page there is also a hidden template name property that got put in there when you saved the page as a template. This name is used in the Templates pane.

When you download templates from Office Online they also go into the same folder, and appear as another bold group in the Templates pane.

You can open the Templates directory as a notebook and reorganize your stationery. To do this, click File > Open > Notebook and specify the path to the Templates directory.

When the notebook opens you will see "My Templates" as a section, along with any other sections corresponding to the templates you downloaded from the web.

Create other sections that represent the groups that you want to have, e.g. Agendas, or Personal. Move the pages from the My Templates section to these new sections. You can just drag and drop.

Note: Don't forget to remove the empty pages from the Agendas and Personal sections.

When you are ready, close the notebook (File > Close this Notebook)

Restart OneNote and go to Templates pane. You should see your new groups in the pane.

Enabling searching of OneNote content on SharePoint sites

Olya_Veselova — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:29:00 GMT

SharePoint sites are great for storing OneNote shared notebooks for team collaboration. The OneNote New Notebook Wizard promotes SharePoint sites for storing shared notebooks. If many teams in your organization store their notebooks on SharePoint sites, you can enable searching OneNote content via SharePoint search.

It is necessary to install OneNote on the server and to register the OneNote IFilter in order for the OneNote content on SharePoint sites to be searchable. To do this, follow the steps below:

Windows SharePoint Services

Note: the steps are different for SharePoint Portal Server and Office SharePoint Server. Please, see further below.

v2.0:

Install OneNote on the server (To get and use the OneNote IFilter)
Reboot the server (For the IFilter registration to take effect)
Start a full crawl (For any already existing OneNote files to be searched)

v3.0:

Install OneNote on the server (To get and use the OneNote IFilter)
Check this registry key to see how many extensions are on the list:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\961ddf2b-49a8-4a2f-ac9f-a5a14a0096f8\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList]

If there are 37, you will need to add OneNote as the 38th value. If there are 38, OneNote will be 39th, and so on.

Register the OneNote IFilter to be picked up by WSS. To do that copy the exact text below into Notepad. Update the last line if OneNote extension is not 38th on the list. Save the file. Rename the .txt file extension to .reg and double-click the file. This will set the correct registry values.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.one]

@="{B8D12492-CE0F-40AD-83EA-099A03D493F1}"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.one]

"Extension"="one"

"FileTypeBucket"=dword:00000001

"MimeTypes"="application/msonenote"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shared Tools\Web Server Extensions\12.0\Search\Applications\961ddf2b-49a8-4a2f-ac9f-a5a14a0096f8\Gather\Search\Extensions\ExtensionList]

"38"="one"

Reboot the server (For the IFilter registration to take effect)
Start a full crawl of the sites (For any already existing OneNote files to be searched)

SharePoint Portal Server or Officer SharePoint Server:

v2.0:

Install OneNote on the server (To get and use the OneNote IFilter)
Reboot the server (For the IFilter registration to take effect)
Start a full crawl (For any already existing OneNote files to be searched)

v3.0:

Install OneNote on the server (To get and use the OneNote IFilter)
Go to Centeral Administarion > SharedService1 > Search Settings > File Types and add the .one file extension (without the dot) to the list.
Register the OneNote IFilter to be picked up by SPS. To do this copy the text below into Notepad and save. Rename the .txt file extension to .reg and double-click the file. This will set the necessary registry keys.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\Filters\.one]

"Extension"="one"

"FileTypeBucket"=dword:00000001

"MimeTypes"="application/msonenote"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office Server\12.0\Search\Setup\ContentIndexCommon\Filters\Extension\.one]

@="{B8D12492-CE0F-40AD-83EA-099A03D493F1}"

Reboot the server (For the IFilter registration to take effect)
Start a full crawl of the sites (For any already existing OneNote files to be searched)

Note:

If your document libraries require check-out to edit the files, OneNote files will often be in checked-out state. The new additions to the files will not be searched until the file is checked in. In general, we recommend to turn off the "require check-out" rule for document libraries intended for storing OneNote files.

Welcome to my OneNote blog

Olya_Veselova — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:11:00 GMT

I work on the OneNote team and help design product features. I have posted a couple of times as a guest on other blogs (OneNote and Outlook Task Syncing and Try OneNote Instant Search!)

Now I have accumulated enough ideas for posts that I decided it was time to start my own blog.

I will try to cover various OneNote how-tos, best practices, and troubleshooters that fall under the general category of "not-obvious-how-to-do-and-I-bet-some-people-are-wondering." So apologies in advance for the apparent lack of theme :).

Other OneNote blogs you should check out: