Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

    I was reading the newsgroups again the other night and "SubSeaGuy" made this post:

    "I want to create a custom calendar.  Rather than typing in the date on each page of which there would be 365, is there a way to import the page name.  The example would be to create the dates (day, dd-mon-yyyy) in say excel, and then import that data as page names."

    Time for a new Powertoy! I've been itching to write another (where does the time go?), and this looked like a great reason. I started with my text importer, stripped out the stuff I did not need and added in a routine to account for the dates to use as page titles. Here's what it looks like on a Windows XP computer:

    clip_image001

    It was pretty simple. It let you pick a start date and a number of days to create. For instance, it looks like SubSeaGuy would want to start on January 1, 2009 and go for 365 days. You can control the date format the page title will get as well. A long format looks like this:

    Monday, October 06, 2008

    And the short format would be

    10/6/2008.

    These settings can be changed in the Windows Control Panel \ Regional Settings application if you want.

    I added the agenda settings after the first iteration. More on that process later. For now, just select whether you want an agenda view, the start and stop times for it and the time increment.

    After making these choices, choose the notebook and section where you want the pages created and press "Make Calendar." Since the pages are blank, it runs pretty quick. On my trusty HP, it took 18 seconds to make a year's worth of pages. Not too shabby, I think.

    I liked this application for a couple of reasons. One, it let me reuse some of my code, so it was pretty easy to write :). Two, it spawned some great ideas for features and test cases. For instance, I did not know whether to let you choose how many days worth of pages to create, or use two date pickers to let you set a start and end date. I decided on the simple number of days since it is a little easier to test, and has a little less code to write.

    I hope you get some use out of this. I can see it being used to save a little time here and there.

    And there is no setup for this. Just copy the file (link below), unzip it and rename it to .EXE and start it. Remember, you will need the .NET framework and OneNote must have the .NET programmability component installed. To check it, look in Control Panel | Programs (or Add/Remove Programs), change the Office install, and look under the OneNote tree to see that the component is installed:

    clip_image002

    You can get the source code here: OneNote Calendar Source Code

    The link for the powertoy is below.

    Let me know what you think!

    Question, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

    John

Published Tuesday, October 07, 2008 6:51 PM by JohnGuin
Filed under: ,

Attachment(s): oncal.zip

Comment Notification

If you would like to receive an email when updates are made to this post, please register here

Subscribe to this post's comments using RSS

Comments

# A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote! : EasyCoded

Tuesday, October 07, 2008 9:58 PM by A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote! : EasyCoded

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Thanks for posting the calendar.

But somehow if I save the file and rename it, there is then .exe.ex

Can you help me with this?

Many thx in advance.

Best rgds

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 5:30 AM by mobileman (Alex)

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Windows is hiding the three letter extensions.  In a folder on Windows XP, click Tools \ Options and then the View tab.  In Vista, click the Organize button (near the top left) and select Layout | Folder and View options.  Select the view tab again.

There will be a checked box in the list which says "Hide three letter file extensions for known types."  Uncheck it and click OK.

Now you will see the entire file name.  

Hope this helps,

John

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 12:13 PM by JohnGuin

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi it was a little bit tricky because I have a German XP and there the designation is different form the meaning but it worked.

Many thanks.

Alex

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 2:05 PM by mobileman (Alex)

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi,

I downloaded and ran the exe but it did not show up in the Add-Ins section under Tools->Option->AddIns.  Is there something I am missing?

thanks!

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 4:18 PM by BrianL

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

This is its own standalone application.  You can use it w/o running OneNote, and it will not show in the addins.

John

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 4:25 PM by John

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi John,

When I ran the renamed executable, the application window popped up for about two seconds before it disappeared.  I did not get the UI that you have pictured here. I have checked to ensure the programmability section in OneNote setup is correct.  I also have the latest .NET Framework installed.

I tried to run it in XP Compatability mode as well as an administrator but not luck with either.

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 5:27 PM by BrianL

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi John,

Many thanks for the Calendar Powertoy.

Just one main nag, I can't get it to install the calendar pages to other notebooks, it only installs to Unfiled Notes. Nothing drastic as it only takes a couple of seconds to move the pages to wherever I want in OneNote.

Another thing that always nags me with a lot of software is that of sizing. This program is too short when using 800x600 screen (I'm getting on a bit now and my sight's not as good as it used to be) and the make calendar button doesn't show even when I expand the window to fullsize. I have to change the screen to 1024x768 to use the program.

Thanks again for the handy toy.

Cheers,

Tom

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 6:33 PM by Tom Hodgers

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Tom,

I patched the app to actually use sections - silly typo on my part.  Just use the same link as before.

Brian, this app uses the 2.0 .NET framework.  I tried on Vista as well and it worked for me.  In the folder from which are running the app, an error log file will get created.  Can you email me that log file and I'll take a look?

JOhn

Thursday, October 09, 2008 10:34 AM by JohnGuin

# Some updates to the OneNote Calendar/Planner powertoy

Well, my "well tested" calendar/planner had an easy to fix but obvious problem - it always sent the calendar

Thursday, October 09, 2008 10:59 AM by OneNote Testing

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi,

Have to say, this is a great idea!  I downloaded it and tried it out, but my problem is it created the calendar in a completely different notebook and section than I designated.

I notice it also created an 'error log', but the log page was blank.

Thursday, October 09, 2008 6:01 PM by Elizabeth Boyd

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hello Elizabeth,

Can you ensure that the notebook you selected is did not get changed by an accidental mouse click?  I cannot even guess at what may be going on otherwise (unless you used another powertoy to make or copy the notebooks around).

Can you email me more details about what you have installed?  

Lastly, the error log being blank just means the powertoy thinks it is doing everything right.

Sorry for the problems,

John

Thursday, October 09, 2008 6:40 PM by JohnGuin

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

John, I also get an error log, but it's a file, not a page:

I copied  the .exe to my desktop

Double-clicked to run (OneNote is also running)

Program window opens

OneNoteCalendarMaker_error_log.txt is created on my desktop just after launch

Txt file is empty

Powertoy works

Hope this helps.

Thursday, October 09, 2008 7:12 PM by Sothis

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Great application, definitely what I have been looking for.  I was wondering though, could you change it so you could set how many lines to have the agenda spots?  I am using this on a tablet pc so I cant just hit enter, plus I write big.  Having a bout 4 spaces would be awesome.

That was my easy request, my long term one would be to either make it so we could put in recurring events, or integrate it with Google calender.

Thanks!

Thursday, October 09, 2008 7:30 PM by xedden

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi John,

New version still doesn't work for me.

Now always sends calendar to OneNote 2007 ToolKit, whatever notebook I choose.

Cheers,

Tom

Friday, October 10, 2008 12:54 AM by Tom Hodgers

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

John,

Love the PowerToy, but it seems to create the calendar in whatever section that OneNote was last opened to, rather than where I wanted it. I tried several times to be sure it wasn't a random click on my part.

Friday, October 10, 2008 8:29 AM by Sharon

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Check that. I created a new section in a personal notebook called Calendar. I navigated to that section in OneNote, and then closed OneNote. I then went back to the Calendar PowerToy and selected my new calendar section. Once again, it created the pages in the same section of one of my work notebooks that it had before. So it is NOT a question of whichever section I had opened last, as I had thought.

On the positive side, it was very easy to select all the calendar pages and manually put them where I wanted them.

Weird.

Friday, October 10, 2008 8:36 AM by Sharon

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Xedden,

You can always use the little tool to make more space in OneNote. I might even prefer that, since it wouldn't automatically create blank space in spots I wouldn't be writing in.

Just a thought.

Sharon

Friday, October 10, 2008 8:38 AM by Sharon

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

OK, here's a patched version which puts the pages in the correct section.  For what its worth, it worked fine with my test notebook.  The key was having more than one notebook open - if you chose the second section from notebook 3, the pages were likely getting put in the second section of the last notebook you had open. Sigh - missed test case on my part.

There is one ugly piece of UI to clean up here - the section ID is shown to the right of the name in the tree.  It's harmless, ugly, and I need to clean it up.

John

Friday, October 10, 2008 2:48 PM by JohnGuin

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi John,

Just tried the patched version, several times, with ON both open and closed.

It worked perfectly.

Friday, October 10, 2008 3:48 PM by Elizabeth Boyd

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hello John,

Great tool...thanks!  But the source code zip file seems to be empty.

Friday, October 10, 2008 8:43 PM by Richard Thomas

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi John,

Calendar for OneNote now working fine.

Cheers,

Tom

Friday, October 10, 2008 9:34 PM by Tom Hodgers

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

OK, I fixed the UI ugliness and now hide the IDs for each section, cleaned up the UI a bit overall and added Xeden's idea to create more than one blank line in each cell of the agenda.

I'm also trying to figure out why the source file is blank...

John

Friday, October 10, 2008 11:10 PM by JohnGuin

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Great, the extra lines are very helpful.

Saturday, October 11, 2008 12:46 AM by xedden

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

The lined version works great.

Thanks!

Saturday, October 11, 2008 11:21 AM by Elizabeth Boyd

# Designing, creating and reworking the calendar page maker for OneNote

When I was creating the calendar page maker , I focused on the date picker control and the functionality

Monday, October 13, 2008 11:23 AM by OneNote Testing

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Wow.  This is cool.  The only thing I would love to see is the ability to create a page for a recurring meeting.  Instead of a page per day, it would create a page for every Thursday, since that's the day we have our big team meetin' :)

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 12:50 PM by Sean Valley

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Sean,

Done.  I updated the powertoy and uploaded the new version.

I can't update the image or the source code until Oct 16, so bear with me until I can upload the changes.  It should be self explanatory, though.  

I tested for English, Spanish and Hindi (although most of the UI is not localized).

Thanks for the idea,

John

Thursday, October 16, 2008 1:11 AM by John

# More functionality added to the calendar page maker

Those of you who jumped on the calendar page maker the day I posted it quickly found a bug I had overlooked.

Thursday, October 16, 2008 11:02 AM by OneNote Testing

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi John,

Very nice ON powertoy!  It worked exactly as you indicated.

I didn't read all the previous posts - just skimmed thru them.  Are there any plans to add a "step" feature that could produce pages days of the week more than one week apart?  In other words, this powertoy could provide another, I think very useful, feature to create blank agendas that occur on a regular basis, like on the 1st Thu of the month, every other Mon, the first Wed of every quarter, etc.  (Kind of like the recurring patterns defined in OutLook.)

Another useful feature would be to allow associating a template with the pages.  For one of my meetings, I have an agenda template already created, but I have create each new meeting's page manually.

Anyway, I hope this helps.  I do like it!  Thanks for taking the time to make something like this!

Friday, October 17, 2008 11:35 PM by RiteGuy

# Reading the OneNote schema documentation helps prevent bugs

As I was working on the Calendar Page Make r powertoy for OneNote, I hit a problem at one point with

Monday, December 01, 2008 10:11 AM by OneNote Testing

# Testing my calendar agenda table, and an alternative calendar/planner addin for 2009

Once I made my change to my calendar/planner addin to get the columns to size correctly , I needed to

Thursday, December 11, 2008 10:39 AM by OneNote Testing

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

I thought this was really great. I only had one problem. I don't need such a detailed calendar. Just a monthly with room in the boxes to put a couple events and maybe a small note area. Could you possibly make the same kind of power tool to do that?

Thanks in advance :)

Saturday, December 13, 2008 12:11 PM by Chaos Syren

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

I'm not sure I understand what you are looking for.  How hard would it be to make a sample page and send it (or a screenshot)?

John

Saturday, December 13, 2008 2:51 PM by JohnGuin

# Create a calendar button missing

Hi,

I tried to install Calendar planning for OneNote (2007). The exe file is there, gets installed fine. My notebooks appear fine in the notebook field. But nowhere can I see the "Create a calendar" button.

Could you help me please?

Thanks

Netnolo

Sunday, April 26, 2009 10:21 AM by Netnolo

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

This powertoy does not have a button in OneNote - it runs from the start menu.

John

Sunday, April 26, 2009 1:10 PM by JohnGuin

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Hi John!

Thanks for your quick answer.

I did actually run it from the exe file contained in the zip download. Only after I went to see if there was any sign of it in One Note.

Can it have anything to do with NET.Framework?

I have just retried now, and I can clic on Create Calendar, but nothing happens.

Hope it will eventually work, it looks great.

Netnolo

Sunday, April 26, 2009 2:22 PM by Netnolo

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Yeeeeeeeeeeeees, it works.

Thank you so much. I'll be able to use it for my work.

Netnolo

Sunday, April 26, 2009 3:51 PM by Netnolo

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

So I unzipped the exe to \programs\office in Windows 7, run the exe and get a message:

Unhandled exception occurred in your application. If you click Continue etc etc...

any suggestions?

upshallg@hotmail.com

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 5:29 AM by Graham

# re: A Calendar/Planner powertoy for OneNote!

Got it working: unclicked Add Agenda, now it works with or without OneNote 2007, { 12.0.6415.1000 SP2 MSO (12.6425.1000)} open;

Using Windows7 build 7100.

Thanks John!

Saturday, May 23, 2009 5:14 AM by Graham

Leave a Comment

(required) 
required 
(required) 
 
Page view tracker