OneNote and Section Groups

[Iona]

I’ve been a user from the get-go, and the early single notebook provided me a
place for everything with everything in its place. Until today. I decided
that it was time to dump many of my research files (MS Word 1994-2007) into
OneNote 2007 and make it my trusted system. Here’s what I did:

In Windows Explorer, I opened a folder as a Notebook in OneNote. Thankfully,
I made a copy first. The folder consisted of 65 sub-folders, 829 files
comprising 61.5 MB. About 90 percent of these files are text. Voila! Outlook
did what it said it would do, and off I went to OneNote. My new notebook had
taken my sub-folders and all the files and created Section Groups that I’ve
been unable to open, take a peek inside, or resuscitate.

Before I abandon OneNote’s research capabilities, please tell me what might
have happened and what, if anything, I can do about it.

Thank you,

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

Were there any OneNote files in these folders or just a bunch of other
files (text files, etc.)?

OneNote won't convert these files into OneNote sections automatically.
That option in Explorer to open a folder as a Notebook is intended as a way
to reopen a previously closed Notebook, not to convert the contents into a
new Notebook.

 

[Iona]

Thanks, Erik, for the feedback. The folders contain Word docs, so it seems
that I must either manually move the files to OneNote, keep them where they
are, or look for another program to hold all my research files.

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

If your goal is to have the content available somehow in OneNote, you might
be able to temporarily set the ON2007 printer as your default printer in
Windows and then select a bunch of these files and Print them from
Explorer. You would have to (re-)create your desired Notebook hierarchy
first and then move the scanned docs to the correct location. The scanned
docs will be searchable in OneNote but you won't be able to easily turn
these docs back into Word docs again.

It sounds like you already have a program to hold all of your research
files - Windows Explorer - there's no sense in recreating the wheel.
OneNote doesn't have the capability to do a mass input of large numbers of
files. Mayhaps some enterprising developer could create a utility using
the OneNote API...

 

[EMRhelp.org]

Look into Mylenix's MyInfo.
It could provide an interesting bridge to your files.

Use the "import files and folders" feature.