David Rasmussen's Blog : OneNote

OneNote 2010 will be available in more places and more ways

DavidRasmussen — Wed, 13 May 2009 01:55:00 GMT

Last year at the PDC we gave you a very small taste of what’s in store in the next version of OneNote. With OneNote 2010, you will get full web access to your OneNote notebooks and enhanced sharing capabilities that will make it the easiest way to capture all your information and have it easily available to you everywhere. It will also be awesome for teams sharing information, ideas, plans, coordinating projects and so on. We have many other exciting features coming up in this release that we’re not able to disclose yet but we think you’ll like it a lot.

We’re also making it easier for our business customers to get OneNote. OneNote 2010 will now also be available as part of the Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 release. Office Professional Plus is targeted to business users and is only available through Volume Licensing. We’re not announcing any details about other SKUs yet. Overall we’ve seen a lot of interest in OneNote and we’re trying to make sure customers will be able to get it easily whether you use Office at home or at work.

I look forward to being able to share more details with you about the new features in OneNote 2010 in future posts.

Syncing OneNote to Sharepoint - Access Denied and Automatically Detect Settings

DavidRasmussen — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:13:00 GMT

If you have a OneNote notebook on SharePoint you may have seen something like the following errors at some time:

An 'infobar' appears at the top of the page in OneNote saying you don't have permission to sync to that section file
You may have failed to create a new notebook on that SharePoint location
You may have failed to open the notebook

One obvious reason you might get this is that you don't in fact have permissions to write to the SharePoint location. You should check that first, for example, by trying to write a simple text file there. But there could be other causes for this, most of which should be quite rare*. But if you're running on Vista there is one very simple reason that is likely to be quite common.

Automatically Detect Settings needs to be on

You need to ensure that "Automatically Detect Settings" is checked on in the "Internet Options" settings in Internet Explorer, as shown below.
You can get to this from Internet Explorer -> Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN Settings

If this option doesn't work for you because it messes with your browsing in Internet Explorer then go back to your original settings and read the rest of the nitty gritty in this post for other ways to possibly fix this.

* there's actually another possibly common cause, depending on your network conditions you may get time outs when connecting to your server that get falsely reported to OneNote as permissions denial. We have made some changes to address this issue that you'll see in a future service pack soonish. This should be intermittent though (unlike the auto detect settings issue) and likely fixed just by restarting OneNote once the network condition has improved.

Why do you need Automatically Detect Settings on?

There's a lot of details behind this that may be hard to follow if you don't know much about HTTP etc. I'll try and explain it briefly.

Background

"Automatically detect settings" talks to a server on your network to get basic configuration information like proxy server
In XP HTTP traffic goes over a protocol stack called WinInet
In Vista there is also a new network stack called WinHTTP for HTTP traffic. This is a much improved HTTP specific stack. It was originally created for Windows Server 2003. WinInet still exists on Vista for backwards compatibility.
WebDAV (a protocol for accessing files over HTTP) was re-written in Vista to use WinHTTP. This was a significant improvement over the WebDAV stack in XP.
However, many applications still use WinInet because they haven't been re-written to use WinHTTP on Vista. Internet Explorer for example still uses WinInet. And many parts of Microsoft Office still use WinInet. Parts of OneNote included.
So on Vista when OneNote is accessing files on SharePoint it makes some calls to check on things like which files have changed and so on, that ultimately end up using the WinInet stack. But when it actually tries to write up changes to the file it uses WebDAV which uses the WinHTTP stack.
Now there is a subtle difference in behavior between WinInet and WebDAV over WinHTTP. WebDAV on Vista has a rule that it never proactively sends your credentials over the wire unless you have auto detect settings on (because that's how it gets configured to know when to send your creds proactively and when not to). WebDAV defaults to assuming you're on open public internet when this is not set and doesn't send credentials proactively at all.
Note: that your credentials are always encrypted anyway, so I'm not talking about plain text transmission here. WebDAV still thinks it's a good idea not to send them unless needed on public internet. It's good surface minimization.
In theory, if WebDAV gets a permission denied response the user will be explicitly prompted for the credentials and WebDAV will then proceed to send them and you'll successfully connect.
The reason for the difference in behavior is that inside a work environment people generally expect to just be able to connect to all their server resources without having to enter credentials for each server.

The problem

OneNote syncs in the background relatively frequently. It's not just saving when the user hits save. OneNote is also syncing potentially several notebooks on different servers.
That means OneNote can't just pop up random dialogs asking you for credentials every time it syncs, otherwise you might be working on one notebook, and get bothered by credential prompts randomly popping up from a second notebook syncing in the background. That would be pretty weird.
So as a result, OneNote makes file access calls in a 'UI-less' mode. The layers under OneNote are told not to show credential prompts if there are permissions failures. The various networking layers below OneNote return "permissions denied" error codes. OneNote should then display an infobar saying you need to enter a password and give you the option to click it to enter the password. This is less intrusive than random cred prompts. And this infobar only shows when you're on the relevant notebook.
However, in the situation above, the initial WinInet calls all succeed (checking the notebook is there, checking for which files changed etc.) and only writing the file up fails. This messes with this workflow a little and you get a slightly different infobar just telling you that OneNote got an access denied failure. This isn't very helpful...

This affects other apps too

This problem manifests in different ways for different apps
It's slightly less of a problem for traditional apps. Because they generally save in response to a specific user command only, and do it synchronously. They make all file access calls and network calls requesting full UI showing. This allows the underlying network stacks to just pop credential prompts whenever needed (it's also the reason they can hang while you're saving to a slowly responding network server...).
So for many apps this manifests as you getting one to three credential prompts while trying to open a file. Sometimes these may fail and you'll end up with a read only copy of the file open.
See this post on the SharePoint team blog for more details on this

By the way I would NOT "stop and disable the WebClient service" as suggested as one of the possible solutions on this blog post. It turns off WebDAV which will break OneNote syncing, and likely other apps too. And the "install Web Folder and run in XP compatibility mode" option has some unpleasantness too... Look to the bottom of the post for "Problem Description" and "Potential Workarounds" for other options.

Note, that in theory the result should just be that you get a manual cred prompt and entering credentials should succeed. However, in practice I have noticed that there appear to be occasions and configurations where even after entering the credentials the access fails with other apps too. Still investigating.

What's being done to address this?

We're paying lots of attention to this issue. And here are a couple of things that are being done among others:

There are hot fixes coming from the Windows team to help deal with this as mentioned on the SharePoint team blog post. The hotfixes are KB941853 and KB941890. These fixes are only available through support right now (e.g. if you're a corporate customer) but should be available in a future service pack after further testing and work.
OneNote will also be doing work to have a better response to this particular kind of partial failure in the network calls, so the user gets more helpful information in the infobar and OneNote can prompt appropriately where possible.

Mind Manager meets OneNote

DavidRasmussen — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 18:39:00 GMT

We've met a number of users who use MindManager for mind maps. It's still a small niche of people, but they tend to be creative and enthusiastic visual thinkers, who are enthusiastic about OneNote too. They often wish for a better connection between OneNote and MindManager. Well our friends over at Mindjet have delivered a cool tool to do just that. The OneNote 2007 + MindManager tool provides three functions:

OneNote 2007 Send To MindManager
OneNote Hyperlinks in MindManager
OneNote Notebook Hierarchy Mapping

In their own words, you can:

From MindManager, easily map out the OneNote Notebooks, Sections, and Pages, including hyperlinks to the notebooks, sections, and pages:
From MindManager, send the current map to OneNote as an image that you can sketch on and annotate:
From OneNote, send a page to MindManager as a hyperlinked topic:

There are some screenshots on the site that give you a better idea of what it does. And you can download it for free to try it out if you have MindManager.

"Virtual Notebooks" that include files from anywhere

DavidRasmussen — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:07:00 GMT

I got the following question recently, and thought the answer might be valuable to others.

Question:

I have a notebook called customers, containing about 40 sections (one for each customer). I also have a SharePoint site for each customer. I'd like to track my customers through OneNote and store customer notes in each of my customer SharePoint customer sites. Right now, the only way I can see to do this is to have a separate notebook for each customer. Is there a better way to accomplish this?"

Answer:

There is a power user feature which meets your needs. It takes a little setup though. You need to use Windows file shortcuts. You want a notebook folder that has file shortcuts in it that point to section files (.one files) in each of the SharePoint sites. This acts like a “virtual notebook” that aggregates these sections.

Copy the relevant .one section files to where you want them on each of the customer sites (e.g. the “CompanyX.one” file to the CompanyX site, and the “CompanyY.one” file to the Company Y site).
In Windows explorer create a folder for your roll up notebook on your local machine (or in redirected mydocs or wherever you keep your notebooks, it can be on a windows file share server if you want)
Navigate to your first customer site file in SharePoint. In the browser right click on the file (e.g. “CompanyX.one”) and choose “Copy shortcut” so you get the URL to the file saved on the clipboard.
Go back to the folder you created in step 2.
Right click in the folder and choose “New”->”Shortcut”
Paste the link to the file in the location field
Give the link a name (e.g. “CompanyX”) then close and save your shortcut
Repeat 3-7 for each of your customer sites/files
When you’re finished go up to the parent folder of your notebook folder, then right click on the notebook folder you created in step 2, then choose “Open as notebook in OneNote”

It may take a while to sync correctly given the number of files and SharePoint sites involved, but this should work fine. The nice thing about this process is that if you have other people involved in some of the clients, you can create different “virtual notebooks” that point to different subsets of the files. Also, you could change what you include in your "virtual notebook" over time. For example you can just remove the shortcut link to "CompanyZ" if you no longer work with them, but you don't have to remove it from the SharePoint site, so you'd have a permanent archive of the OneNote file along with other associated files there. This works for Windows file shares, or files on your local hard drive as well as SharePoint sites.

Why the OneNote 2007 and 2003 file format are different

DavidRasmussen — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 17:50:00 GMT

The OneNote 2007 file format is quite different to the 2003 format. Here are some details on the implications of this and the reason behind the difference.

Impact of this difference on interactions between OneNote 2007 and 2003 clients

OneNote 2007 can open OneNote 2003 files read only. This is the default. In this case the format will not be changed and the files will still be editable and viewable by another OneNote 2003 client, and they can be viewed in OneNote 2007 but not modified.
OneNote 2007 can UPGRADE OneNote 2003 files. The user is prompted and asked before doing this and it is explained that OneNote 2003 clients will no longer be able to open them. In this case, the file is now fully editable by all 2007 clients but no 2003 clients.

Why is the file format different?

The simple reason is to support new features. OneNote is still a relatively young app and we made some dramatic improvements in 2007 (our second release). In particular we added a pretty unique sharing capability that allows multiple users (or same user with multiple machines) to interact and edit the same notebook at the same time without getting locked out by each other or writing over each other. OneNote automatically handles merging and so on. To do this while retaining high performance, and autosave required some significant innovation in the file format. Among other things, we need to support multiple clients writing to different parts of the file at the same time through range locks rather than a whole file lock. This kind of interaction between OneNote 2007 and 2003 clients (which were not designed for it) was simply not possible, and would not have been possible among 2007 clients without changing the file format. Hence we concluded pretty early the need for a file format change.

In addition to that, we have a lot of new features that weren't supportable in the OneNote 2003 format. Among other things, they include:

Tables
Embedded files
Internal hyperlinks
Outlook task flags
New note tag types
Drawing tools
Document printouts (because we do them differently now)
Shared notebooks and merging (as noted above)
Merge conflict pages

We understand this issue will cause inconvenience for some, and trust me we did not take this decision lightly. It was a very difficult and painful decision. We do think the improvements in OneNote 2007 are pretty dramatic and compelling and were worth the change. Thankfully many of our beta users seem to agree. Also the upgrade pricing for OneNote is reasonable, so given the compelling improvements we expect as most people upgrade (particularly those who want to share with other machines), this will quickly become less of an issue.

On a final note, rest assured that we are very committed to file format compatibility as a goal for future OneNote versions.

OneNote 2007 and Groove

DavidRasmussen — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 02:07:00 GMT

Many people have wondered how OneNote 2007 and Groove work together (or not). Your experience will depend on whether you're using a Groove Workspace or a Groove Folder Share. Here's a brief summary. I'll write more later, but suffice it to say we're aware of the limitations and have grand plans for dramatic improvements in the future...

OneNote experience with Groove Workspaces will be limited / problematic

Groove Workspaces will work for individual OneNote section files sort of like a Word doc would, with all the associated potential for conflicts.
Groove Workspaces will not work very well with OneNote notebooks, because OneNote notebooks are folders and require us to open the folder. Groove Workspaces aren’t exposed that way. When you open a document in a Groove Workspace, Groove copies it from their store (hidden and not something we can directly access) out to the temp directory and calls the app to open it from there. Consequently we only see one file (the section file) at a time in the temp directory.

OneNote experience with Groove Shared Folders will be much better but still have conflict issues

Groove Shared Folders will work better for OneNote notebooks. These function much more like regular windows shared folders. OneNote can see all the files in it at once, you can open the folder as a notebook in OneNote. And basically OneNote notebooks will work there.
However, you will still have conflicts if two people edit the same section at the same time (and you’ll end up with two copies of the section file), because Groove disintermediates OneNote's ability to do merge.

Basically Groove works okay for single file document model (but still has conflicts) but it can be quite problematic for data that is represented by sets of files. OneNote Notebooks are an example, Front Page webs would be another example (although obviously less frequent).

Given the time remaining from the point at which Microsoft acquired Groove until the release of OneNote 2007 and Groove 2007 we were unable to do more to make this better in this release because it requires some architecture changes. But it's high on our list to make much better in the next release.

OneNote Notebooks on USB drives and SD cards

DavidRasmussen — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:04:00 GMT

Do you want a OneNote notebook synced between two computers but don't have a network connection between them, or don't want to create a file share? A simple solution is to store a notebook on a USB drive, an SD card or other removable media. We specifically designed for this scenario with OneNote 2007.

A quick recap of OneNote syncing is in order (the paragraph version not the hundreds of pages of specs version). OneNote always works from a cache file. This is stored in the Local Settings folder, similar to an Outlook cache. OneNote syncs between the cache and your notebook files. The notebooks could be on your local hard disk in My Documents (yes we still cache notebooks that are on local disk for many good architectural reasons), they could be on a network file share, or they could even be on removable media like USB drives. When the location of the notebook files is not available (e.g. network disconnected, or you removed the USB drive) then the notebook is still available in OneNote and you can continue to edit it. When the location of the notebook files is available again (e.g. network reconnects, or you plug the USB drive back in), OneNote will sync to it, and merge in any changes you had.

The consequence of this is you can use a USB drive just as you would a network file share as a sharing location for a OneNote notebook between two machines. You can even view and edit the notebook when the USB drive is not available. If you went home but forgot to take the USB drive or SD card home with you, no problem, just edit the notebook at home and bring home the USB drive the next day and OneNote will sync and merge in the changes.

There's one catch here that we had to address. USB drives can get different drive letters assigned each time you plug them in. The first time you plug it in it may show up as the E: drive, but the next time you plug it in it shows up as F: drive. Or you could plug in some other USB drive that shows up as the E: drive. Our solution to this as that we use a unique ID on the removable drive to identify it and map that to the right notebook. So even if it changes drive letter everytime it gets connected we'll sync the right notebook to it.

Step by Step Instructions:

Plug in the removable drive (USB drive, or SD card ). Note the drive letter.
In OneNote 2007, create a new notebook on the drive.
- File - New - Notebook
- Give it a name and click next.
- Choose "I will use it on this computer" and click next.
- Click the browse button and browse to the USB drive and optionally a folder where you want the notebook stored. Click create.
Add any content you want to the notebook (section, pages etc.)
Remove the USB drive at anytime
- Don't close the notebook in OneNote. There's no need. And by leaving it available in OneNote you'll be able to continue to edit it even when the USB drive is out and attached to the second computer. You can close the OneNote application, and next time you open it OneNote will still have the notebook available from its cache.
- You might want to give it 10 seconds or so after your last edit, or wait for the drive to stop flashing before removing it. OneNote will sync quickly.
- Depending on the type of drive you might want to use the Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" tool to shut it down and flush the drive first. This is not required by OneNote and if you don't normally need to do it for your drive (depends on its settings) then there's no need.
Connect the USB drive to the second computer
Open the notebook in OneNote on the second computer
- File - Open - Notebook
- Choose the folder with the notebook name that OneNote created on the USB drive above.
- You should now have all the notebook contents available on the second machine.
Again, you can remove the drive at anytime, without closing the notebook in OneNote. You can close the OneNote app at anytime and when you start OneNote again the notebook will be available from the cache.

In this way you can move the USB drive back and forth among multiple machines (2 or more). You can have the notebooks always available on any machine even if you don't have the USB drive with you. And you can even make edits on multiple machines at the same time, OneNote will handle syncing and merging the edits to the USB drive when it's available.

There's one privacy caveat you should know about if you're using removable media to store notebooks. If you plug it into a public computer and then you open the notebook, the notebook will be stored in OneNote's cache on that machine. So if someone using that public machine after you were to look for it, they could potentially see that data. You could minimize likelihood of this by closing the notebook on that machine before leaving the machine. There could still be residue of that notebook data on that public machine, just as with any other document you may have looked at (e.g. in the Windows paging file) but it certainly reduces the likelihood.

Managing Your Tasks With OneNote

DavidRasmussen — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:28:00 GMT

I've been on a quest for the perfect task/ time management system for years. I concluded quite some time ago that the goal will always remain elusive but the questing is valuable. Although many trials of new systems get discarded, I tend to keep the bits that work for me and incorporate them into my ongoing personal system.

I commonly hit two issues: most systems (e.g. GTD) seem overly rigid, and flat task lists, even with categories, don't support the way my task list grows. My tasks often grow hierarchically. The task starts life as something like "Draft plan for perpetual motion machine". But as I start working on that task it spawns sub tasks like ""Review past work in this space", "Meet Fred re: his Project X work" and so on.

Hierarchical task management systems do exist but are rare. I have used ListPro, and I have used MS Project quite a bit. Project is a good hierarchical task manager but its features are overkill for most personal task lists. They both have their own rigidities, and don't integrate with Outlook in the right way. Ultimately I actually want my tasks to show up in Outlook. Because I want to see them along with my calendar and be able to allocate them to slots on my calendar, get reminders etc. Outlook 2007 rocks for all this now but it still doesn't do hierarchy...

With the combination of OneNote 2007 and Outlook 2007 I now have a system that works very well for me. Here's how I manage my task list and workflow now.

I created a ToDo page in OneNote in my general section. This always contains my current to do list and grows and evolves as my tasks change.
I have a direct keyboard shortcut to this page, Ctrl-Alt-T, so that I can instantly go to this page whether OneNote is running or not. This works from anywhere. See my post on Keyboard Shortcuts for Favorite OneNote Pages for how to do this.
I write each task on a line.
I hit Ctrl-Shift-1 to mark that item as an Outlook task for today (or Ctrl-Shift-2 is tomorrow, 3 is this week, 4 is next week, Ctrl-Shift-K pops up the Outlook task dialog for custom date and fields). This process gets the tasks roughly distributed on my calendar correctly.
That line gets flagged as an "Outlook Task" in Onenote. It gets added to the task list in Outlook, and there is two way sync between them. If it gets marked done in Outlook it shows up as done in OneNote and vice versa.
There's also cross linking. A link is created in the Outlook task that will jump you directly back to this item in OneNote. Or you can right click the flag in OneNote to open the matching task in Outlook.
I add hierarchy to the task list and manage the structure and priorities of my tasks in OneNote by indenting lines. Or change order and priorities by moving things up and down. Alt-Shift + left arrow, right arrow, up arrow, or down arrow are great keyboard shortcuts for doing this easily and quickly.
I manage my time on the Outlook calendar. The tasks show up in the "task well" below each day on the calendar. I can drag the task onto a slot on the calendar to schedule it. I can drag it out to a different day if I want to defer it. This is very quick time management.

Now my work flow typically looks like this:

Hit Ctrl-Alt-T, I can look at my task list and get an overall view.
Move things around with Alt-Shift arrows, for example to bring important stuff to the top.
I can mark things done. I can add new things. I can add additional context and links to references or details I'll need to refer to when doing the task.
I also see my tasks show up in the “ToDo bar” on the right of Outlook whenever I’m in Outlook. So they’re always in front of me.
And I see them distributed across date in the Outlook calendar and allocate time accordingly.
I can update the status in either place.
I leave "done" tasks on my OneNote page for a while (they are flagged as done), but as I work on the parent task I can quickly see which of the sub tasks are done and what's left to do. Periodically I delete the done tasks from the ToDo page, for example when the parent task is complete. I always have a permanent record of them in Outlook. Ctrl-A once, followed by delete is a fast way to delete a task line.
Also sometimes I add tasks out of context of my OneNote ToDo page. For example, if I'm taking notes in a meeting. I can use the same process to flag any item in the meeting notes as a task to do. I don't have to switch contexts, and later when I link back to the task I'll see all the information from that meeting that might relate to the task.

Keyboard shortcuts for fast access to favorite OneNote pages

DavidRasmussen — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:51:00 GMT

If you're like me you probably have a few OneNote pages or sections that you use frequently. For example, a to do list, daily log, team notebook homepage, or project status page.

I like to have instant access to those things with a simple keyboard shortcut, whether OneNote is currently open or not. It really improves my workflow. I do that by creating windows shortcuts directly to those pages as follows:

In OneNote right click on the page tab, or section tab that you want the shortcut to go to.
Choose "Copy Hyperlink to Page" or "Copy Hyperlink to Section"
Go to your windows desktop (Win-D will take you straight there) and right click on the desktop. Choose "New" -> "Shortcut".
In the location box, press Ctrl-V to paste the OneNote hyperlink.
Click next. Then give the shortcut a name. For example "ToDo List".
Click Finish. You now have a shortcut on the desktop. You can move it anywhere you want, like mydocs.
Now right click on the shortcut icon and choose "Properties"
You will see a "shortcut key" textbox. Click in there, and then press the key combination you want for the direct keyboard shortcut. For example: Ctrl-Alt-T is what I use for my to do list. The shortcut key needs to be Ctrl-Alt-, Ctrl-Shift-, or Alt-Shift-. Try to avoid any known keybaord shortcuts you might use in apps.

Voila. You now have a direct keyboard shortcut to that page or section in OneNote. Close OneNote and try it out. Just press the keyboard combination and OneNote should open up to that page, no matter what app you're in. It's even useful while you're actually in OneNote but on another page.

Vista bonus

If you're using Vista, there's a nice bonus feature here. You can hit the Windows key on your keyboard. This will pop the start menu and you'll have your cursor in the search box. Type the first few letters in the name of your shortcut. For example: "ToDo". Vista should instantly search (assuming it's already indexed) and your shortcut should pop right to the top. When it's selected, hit enter and it will immediately launch OneNote straight to that page. I find this handy if I have a lot of page shortcuts and it's hard to remember keyboard combinations for all of them. I can just hit the windows key, type a couple of characters, then hit enter.

You could even have a naming convention for your OneNote shortcuts, such as "ONZ1 ToDo List" and "ONZ2 Project Status" etc. If they all started with ONZ, then you could just hit the Windows key and type in "ONZ" and then Vista search would instantly show all the shortcuts with that in it. You could see the list and then just hit the number to narrow to the particular shortcut, or just arrow key through them and pick one.

Of course, if you don't have Vista but have some other desktop search tool that could work too.