OneNote Testing

What it is like to be a tester on the Microsoft OneNote team and day to day life as an SDET in Office. Plus a few tips for using OneNote and an occasional powertoy.

Thanks all! Time to close this blog

This is a sad day around the OneNote test hallway. After more than 6 years of regular blogging I am...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 09/26/2014

Using OneNote to repair a Camaro

This week I received a note from a user who is in the process of repairing a 1969 Camaro. He wants...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 07/31/2014

A OneNote user was printing from OneNote last week and when she printed, she kept seeing a little...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 07/28/2014

Super proud of this (minor) happening

For years, I have called people at work “Boss.”  “Hey, boss” is a pretty typical greeting from...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 07/21/2014

How to get a Watson bucket number for Windows 8

Just posting this since this is the single biggest helpful piece of information I have available...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 07/09/2014

You don't need to micromanage the recycle bin in OneNote

A few months ago I wrote a tip about emptying the Recycle Bin to save space...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/30/2014

And the OneNote twitter display is gone (again)

A few weeks ago I had the idea to get a Raspberry Pi set up to display the tweets sent about...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/25/2014

Testing the printer change

Testing the change I made was fairly straightforward and is a good example of a small, but complete,...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/16/2014

A change for printing to OneNote 2013

When we shipped OneNote 2013 SP1, we changed the way we printed long documents to OneNote. I'm happy...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/12/2014

Updating some comments and metadata

This week I was given a small set of bugs that ultimately amounted to saying we are still using the...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/09/2014

Tim, a OneNote test team member, is enjoying his time in the spotlight

No idea how I missed this considering Tim and I are on the same team.  He was offered the...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/05/2014

Sorting enhancements for OneNote from Onetastic!

Omer has updated his Onetastic addin to combine a lot of the most common requests I get for sorting...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/27/2014

Closed bugs still on my plate represent work

One of the more powerful aspects of our bug tracking is that bugs can be closed but still assigned...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/19/2014

Risk taking with OneNote and civet "products"

We love our coffee in OneNote. We have the Microsoft provided Starbucks machines, a Tassimo espresso...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/16/2014

Just getting back to the office after a week out

For me, this was an unusual time away. I had no internet access so I am working to get caught up...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/13/2014

Return of the OneNote twitter feed thanks to Raspberry Pi

Over the weekend I decided we had been without our twitter feed long enough and decided to do...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/28/2014

A small update to OneNote is available

For those of you running OneNote from the Windows Store, we released a small update yesterday....

Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/24/2014

New computer day (again)

This is not at all related to the end of my Lenovo tablet, but last week I got a new HP machine and...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/21/2014

OneNote Tip: getting ToDo checkboxes to work a little better with tables

Reader Heather C. contacted me recently with a question about how to get table rows to show with...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/15/2014

Enjoy this OneNote song while I track some lost blog articles

My blog seems to have dropped a couple of articles so I am working with our support team to track...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/09/2014

OneNote Tip: copy and move pages and subpages all at once

Reader Erin S. contacted me about how to move or copy parent pages and subpages from one section to...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/07/2014

Goodbye to an old tablet

Long time readers will know my love/hate relationship with my old Lenovo tablet. I loved the...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/02/2014

OneNote Tip: Change the notebook display name to save screen real estate

I was hosting a meeting this week and had OneNote on the display. I opened a notebook that was named...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/27/2014

Using Watson with Dogfood

One of the benefits we get from Watson and our internal usage of OneNote is that we get a different...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/21/2014

We shipped a lot of OneNote today!

Wow - we shipped a TON of stuff today. OneNote for the Mac, a free OneNote for Windows users, the...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/17/2014

Books on my reading list right now - Think Bayes and 10 Print

One of the challenges of working at Microsoft, or at any job really, is continually learning new...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/14/2014

Getting the version number for modern OneNote

Last week I mentioned a fix we made that makes tables load faster in the modern OneNote client. I...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/11/2014

A second (final?) "beta" of the text file importer for OneNote 2013

Thanks to a slew of folks that helped test this, I am posting another version of the text file...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/07/2014

Making pages with tables load faster in OneNote

Way back in 2007 when I started this blog, I had an idea to take a look at a bug we fixed and write...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/04/2014

A tedious task for today

One of the challenges of testing around Office is ensuring all the code changes partner teams make...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/20/2014

OneNote Tip: Empty the notebook recycle bin to save space

I was cleaning up a laptop over this weekend and was trying to free some space on the hard drive....

Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/17/2014

A high resolution fix for OneNote

One of the changes in the marketplace since we shipped OneNote 2013 was the rise of high resolution...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/13/2014

Follow up from the Coursera class

The 4 week Coursera class we took for Data Analytics is done. We took several approaches to this...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/06/2014

OneNote Tip: Making tables from pasted text

I hit this situation last week and I am not sure if everyone knows this tip for making tables from...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/03/2014

Trying to narrow down a set of reproducible steps

We had a small test pass last week using the Windows Phone version of OneNote. We had four testers...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/30/2014

The “InkBias” registry key in OneNote

This week I was contacted by a fellow using OneNote and he had a couple of questions about inking....

Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/27/2014

A partner team contacted us about a bug today

I want to take a bit to describe one facet of working with partner teams. This type of activity...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/23/2014

OneNote test is hiring - looking for a senior level tester

Just a quick note today that our job posting is live at...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/13/2014

Tip: using Touch to zoom

I was looking through various posts about OneNote and noticed several folks had wanted the ability...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/10/2014

Enrolling in another Coursera Class – Data Analysis

I have been spending the last few weeks honing some of my math skills as we start to approach some...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/06/2014

A book review for a data analysis book I am using for testing OneNote

Looking back over my blog here, I don't think I have ever done a book review. I spent the last...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 12/13/2013

Getting caught up after a short break

I was out of the office last week (enjoying some Texas BBQ) and of course that was the week I got a...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 12/09/2013

Sitting in the ship room monitoring OneNote feedback

We just released a major update for OneNote for Windows Blue! This was a lot of hard work for test...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 11/25/2013

A really cool inverted color mode in Windows

I was testing some of the accessible features in OneNote and had to use the Magnifying tool in...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 11/21/2013

Adding Unit Tests

Just a funny anecdote today. I overheard a developer mention that writing code for OneNote was easy,...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 11/19/2013

Getting rid of unwanted line breaks when pasting to OneNote

I got an email this week that asked about a problem I faced years ago. A OneNote user was pasting...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 11/14/2013

Some A/B Testing for OneNote layout

Back in May, I wrote a little about A/B testing for OneNote and used napkin math as an example. We...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 11/13/2013

OneNote Tip: print to OneNote in portrait or landscape mode

I got an email from a OneNote user that was printing to OneNote and noticing that all of his...

Author: JohnGuin Date: 11/08/2013

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