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The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

OneNote 2007 has been out for over a year, we've shipped our first service pack for it and have had overall very positive comments sent our way from many people who have used OneNote. Thanks!

It's not all sunshine, though, as a few shadows have been reported. Based on postings on various websites (like our newsgroup, or even this blog), bug reports, product support feedback and internal usage, we've identified three areas which are problems for OneNote users.

In no particular order, they are:

1. Sometimes addins such as the powertoys we've released stop working. The symptom is usually a toolbar icon "goes gray" when clicked. I've seen this once, and by the time I got everything installed on my home computer to debug the thing, it started working. We know the problem exists but have not been able to force it to happen so isolating it has been quite difficult. The best we can do so far is the to recommend this workaround:

  1. Exit Onenote and wait 15 minutes (or restart the computer, or, if you want, use Task Manager to kill dllhost.exe)
  2. Uninstall the addin
  3. Go to control panel and open Programs (or Add/Remove programs). Open the Office 2007 install and check to ensure .NET programmability is installed under OneNote
  4. clip_image001
  5. Re-run setup for the addin. On Vista, ensure you are an admin, or run under administrator rights.
  6. Try again.

The good news is this generally works. The bad news is it is not 100% guaranteed, and you may have to repeat the process a few times.

2. The OneNote printer gets removed. Dan Escapa wrote a good summary and posted a workaround here: http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/archive/2008/02/06/how-to-fix-missing-printer-icon.aspx

3. The OneNote tray icon (technically, the OneNote screen clipper and launcher process, onenotem.exe) disappears. This at least has an easy workaround which has worked 100% of the time: in tools \ options \ other, toggle the setting to show the icon OFF, save the setting, then toggle it back ON. We are still trying to track down why the process ends and gets turned off.

From a test point of view, the 3rd item is the most frustrating to troubleshoot. No one usually notices the onenotem process is gone until trying to use the WINDOWS+S key to capture a screen clipping. By then, the cause of the problem has already passed and we are left with precious little information to isolate the reason for the behavior.

The test team is working on these problems and I hope to have some good news as we continue investigating.

Questions, concerns, comments and criticism always welcome,

John

Published Monday, March 17, 2008 5:16 AM by JohnGuin

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# MSDN Blog Postings » The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

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Monday, March 17, 2008 9:50 AM by MSDN Blog Postings » The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

# re: The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

Hey John,

Along with #1, and a problem I don't have a solution to, is that sometimes the buttons for Outlook tasks become grayed out and no longer work. I run OneNote on three different computers and it's only happening to me on one of them, but it's one that lacks an "uninstall/reinstall" fix.

Keep up the good work with OneNote and this blog! I love seeing new posts here :-)

Monday, March 17, 2008 12:27 PM by Jordan

# re: The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

If it helps, for me it seems that the tray icon always goes away after I connect to my machine via remote desktop.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 1:14 PM by Pete

# re: The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

Hi. I've found the taskbar icon remains (after some initial difficulty with it) and is helped by customizing the behaviour of the icon (don't allow it to be hidden if inactive).

I have found what I think is  a legitimate bug to the program. You might think it negligible, but it is definitely annoying for me. Using word 2007, you can define how the program pastes in terms of formatting. The only way I can see how this is possible in ONenote is when pasting, clicking on the clipboard icon and selecting source formatting or destination formatting (ie Onenote). When selecting either of these first two options, the menu remains visible, which is good because you can now select the fourth item, which is define as default pasting behaviour. The problem is that if you select the THIRD item, that is to paste just the plain text, the menu disappears, making it impossible as far as I can tell to make this kind of pasting default. Have you had the same experience?

Thanks.

Monday, December 01, 2008 3:01 AM by John (a different John!)

# re: The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

I just tried this on my Vista machine and the setting persisted after selecting "Plain Text."  After I clicked the paste options button a second time, I was able to set this to be the default option.

Here's what I did step by step:

clicked Start | Run

tyeped "test" in the dialog

select all | CTRL+X to copy

went to a OneNote page in Unfiled Notes

typed "BOLD TEXT" on the page

applied bold formatting and changed the font to bookman antique

clicked in the middle of BOLD TEXT

CTRL+V to paste

selected Plain Text from the paste options dialog

clicked the dialog again, set plain text to be the default

I was using a vista machine, OneNote 2007, everything English.

Can you see any differences in our machines?

John

Friday, December 05, 2008 7:39 PM by JohnGuin

# re: The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

A variant on #3 is that I am having a clash between Onenote and Gmail.  Whenever Gmail is loaded in a tab in either Firefox (3) or IE7 (but not Chrome), I get an opaque grey screen when I try to use the Screen Clipper.  The process is still there.  If I close the tab with Gmail, the problem disappears.  So at the moment my workaround is if I want to do a screen clipping I have to close Gmail (a pain because I normaly have that open all the time).  If I want to screen clip something in Gmail, I have to open it in Chrome.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008 11:58 AM by Phil

# re: The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

Hi Phil,

I could not reproduce the problem on my Vista machine.  I used Firefox 3 and IE7.  Are you using XP, or 64 bit Vista?  Do you have any addins working with gmail or any google apps?  If one of the google apps is trying to use the Windows+S key, there may be some conflicts.

John

Wednesday, December 10, 2008 10:29 PM by JohnGuin

# re: The 3 biggest "pain points" we are investigating

Hi John,

I should have said I'm using XP.

I've experimented a bit more and found that if I run IE7 -extoff there is no problem.  Likewise if I run FF in safe mode.  Which is curious because I am convinced that I tried it in safe mode a couple of days ago and the problem was still there.  So I'm guessing its a problem with an add-on that is invoked when Gmail loads and which is removed when Gmail shuts down.

Thursday, December 11, 2008 4:44 AM by Phil

# A new powertoy (nee test tool) used to find OneNote pages with embedded files

Every so often I'll get a question from someone who has a need to find pages that have embedded files

Monday, December 22, 2008 1:17 PM by OneNote Testing

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