I was looking at the Microsoft Genuine Advantage Program as I wanted to try the Microsoft Antispyware beta. One of the goodies on offer was a 6 month trial version of Microsoft OneNote which is a program for taking notes and organising them. By the time a 6 month trial is finished I am either using something every day or I have not touched it for 5 months so I thought I would give it a try.
I am always interested in new ideas for organising notes. I've tried Wikis but web apps are a bit too slow and fiddly. I've tried blogging but I end up typing more than is necessary in order to be descriptive. I've tried outline editors but I never really get into the habit of using them. For notes I just want to bang in bare details, paste stuff in with a 3 word description.
OneNote gives you the following:
- A simple place to type in arbitrary text. You click anywhere on a page and type away, giving a box with a note in it.
- The notes are organised into a confusing multi-layer hierarchy of sections, folders and pages which map onto folders, subfolders and files in the physical file structure. Essentially there are multiple levels of tabs. However, once you have chosen a name for a section and folder, you don't really have to worry about giving your notes names or wonder where to save them.
- Can drag and drop file or folder locations from explorer to a link in a note and then annotate them. Later you can click on the link to open them. Ditto for urls in FireFox. Cool way to build annotated bookmarks or add metadata to your file system.
- Paste images into notes
- A cool 'screen snippet' facility that lets you mark an area of screen and capture a bitmap to poke into your note. This has a bug on my multi-monitor setup whereby the cursor does not appear on one of the monitors.
- Taskbar OneNote button for post-it functionality
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If you are one of the select few that have a tablet PC then you can scribble on the pages with a
crayon pen. You can use the mouse if you want to write like a three year old. - Spelling checker
- Search through notes for keywords
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Very basic automation interface that just about allows you to post new items. Here I use Python to poke in a new page:
1 # 2 # Poke an entry into OneNote 3 # 4 5 import win32com.client 6 import pythoncom 7 8 oOneNote = win32com.client.dynamic.Dispatch( 'OneNote.CSimpleImporter') 9 10 strTemplate = """<?xml version="1.0"?> 11 <Import xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/onenote/2004/import"> 12 <EnsurePage path="Postings\\Posts.one" 13 guid="{10DA1EEF-6415-4ae8-AF79-9E099F3800A8}" 14 title="Odours" /> 15 <PlaceObjects pagePath="Postings\\Posts.one" 16 pageGuid="{10DA1EEF-6415-4ae8-AF79-9E099F3800A8}"> 17 <Object guid="%(ItemGuid)s"> 18 <Position x="10" y="10"/> 19 <Outline> 20 <Html> 21 <Data> 22 <![CDATA[ 23 <html><body><p>Sample text here.</p></body></html> 24 ]]> 25 </Data> 26 </Html> 27 </Outline> 28 </Object> 29 </PlaceObjects> 30 </Import> 31 """ % { 'ItemGuid': str(pythoncom.CreateGuid()) } 32 33 oOneNote.Import(strTemplate)
Notes on this:- You need to know the Guid of pages to add stuff to them and there is no way to inspect the guids of existing objects so you have to create guids for you own objects and remember what you called them.
- It won't create guids automatically, you have to do it.
- You have to specify the position (x,y) of an object on a page and there is no way of knowing if it will collide with another object. The interface was added as an afterthought in SP1 and it shows.
- Encrypt pages, save passwords etc
What it doesn't give you:
- No way to link from one note to another, in a different section for example. Hypertextual linking would take it to a new dimension.
- Can't drag and drop a note from one page to another, have to cut and paste.
- Integrate OneNote with Outlook or Word unless you have Office 2003.
- You can only export files in .mhtml format, a mime encoded html archive. Not total lockin but close. No way to extract data through automation interfaces.
I'm going to give it a try, to see if it will become indispensable to me. It seems very version 1 (which it is), there seems to be a lot they could have done with it. However, give Microsoft credit, this does not appear to be another 'me too' app designed to crush competitors but an actual attempt to create a new product.
Update:
This suddenly got more interesting:
- You can drag and drop an email message from outlook to onenote and the email message is stored in a '.msg' file and a link to the message goes into your notes. Something I have always wanted, the ability to thread emails with notes. This turns out to be a standard thing in Outlook (Xp version anyway), you can drag and drop messages into the desktop.
- You can scribble on notes with 'ink' and save it all to a .mht file which just about anyone can admire in internet explorer. Amaze your friends. This example may work in Explorer, FireFox may show the raw mime message, which is interesting in itself, eminently parseable.
- The 'research' feature is set of onlike books. You can look up words like 'plaintively' which aren't covered by google define.
Peter's Moblog
One more thing: MSN Desktop Search indexes the OneNote files. Unfortunately, it doesn't take you to the exact page, just the section and the last page you looked at in that section.
Peter