Onenote - How do I find folders by name?

[EmeryN]

I have searched hither and yon and cannot seem to find any way to search for
a onenote folder by name. Maybe I am misunderstanding the whole concept but I
have so many onenote folders and sections and notebooks and have a dickens of
a time trying to find a particular section name within the notebooks I have.

I know onenote is to catch the quick notes and then later, manually relocate
these unfiled notes to topically specific notebooks and sections or section
groups but this whole process seems to be short the ability to find a
particular section or section group by a few characters in the name.

A typical use is when I have one or more items to create or move to a
specific area, like RVing or health, which as section groups are in different
notebooks and within those, are amongst upwards of 50 other sections.

Often, I don't remember the exact name of the section but can usually
remember some part of it or guess at it but I always resort to having to look
through all of the folders sections and groups in all of the notebooks until
I find it.

This causes me to frequently end up with multiple sections of the same topic
in different locations because I was not able to find the one I was searching
for at the time I needed to file a note or a clip.

Is there a mechanism that I am missing that makes it possible to easily
search for just a section name or part across all of the notebooks I have?

 

[Rainald Taesler]

Is there a mechanism that I am missing that makes it possible to
easily search for just a section name or part across all of the
notebooks I have?

Unfortunately not.
One can search for pages but not for sections and section groups.

In order to see what you have you may use the "All notebooks" feature
(bar at the bottom in the navigation pane).

A workaround might be to manually create your own Index-page which lists
all of the sections in all notebooks. The entries can be hyperlinked to
the sections.
This would require to update this Index whenever you create a new
section.

It would mean quite some work to create the Index manually. But when
doing so you might detect redundancies and having a better overview on
what is where might be of great help for sorting / re-organizing things.

Rainald

 

[EmeryN]

Unfortunately not.
One can search for pages but not for sections and section groups.

In order to see what you have you may use the "All notebooks" feature
(bar at the bottom in the navigation pane).

A workaround might be to manually create your own Index-page which lists
all of the sections in all notebooks. The entries can be hyperlinked to
the sections.
This would require to update this Index whenever you create a new
section.

It would mean quite some work to create the Index manually. But when
doing so you might detect redundancies and having a better overview on
what is where might be of great help for sorting / re-organizing things.

Rainald

Unfortunately, I have over 140 folders, section groups and sections in the
first of 5 onenote notebooks. So far, each of the others has at least this
many as well.

I just figured that I was missing something in the realm of usability and
that there must be a shortcut key or something to allow for the type of
search I need. With this amount of data and growing daily, Onenote becomes
useless after it reaches one's own memory (in the brain) limitations.

In my case, I am a seasoned citizen that is trying to use Onenote to help
compensate for my fading memory but it now seems like it will be about as
useful as a package of post-it notes. I thought it was the perfect tool
between the PC based and mobile based versions and its integration to use
Sharepoint workspaces but, alas, I am drawn up short at the very brink of
success.

Rats!

Thanks for your response, though.

I am thinking that, for now, Each section I create can start with a section
identifier page that will be the name of that section with some unique fixed
text string concatenated to it to limit the hits to just section names. ..
Not the solution I wanted but easier than trying to manually maintain a
parallel index (which never works, anyway).

 

[Rainald Taesler]

Unfortunately not.
One can search for pages but not for sections and section groups.

[…]
In my case, I am a seasoned citizen that is trying to use Onenote
to help compensate for my fading memory but it now seems like it
will be about as useful as a package of post-it notes. I thought it
was the perfect tool between the PC based and mobile based versions
and its integration to use Sharepoint workspaces but, alas, I am
drawn up short at the very brink of success.

It is a really great tool. But "perfect"? Which software is *perfect*?

I think you have a really valid point. And therefore it would be good to
let the developers know.
You may post this as a suggestion for the next version in "Connect",
the place for submitting suggestions and bug reports to the developers
team:
http://connect.microsoft.com/onenote/

When done, pls drop a note with the URL in here so that we can jump in
and vote for your suggestion

Thanks for your response, though.

De nada

I am thinking that, for now, Each section I create can start with a
section identifier page that will be the name of that section with
some unique fixed text string concatenated to it to limit the hits
to just section names. .. Not the solution I wanted but easier
than trying to manually maintain a parallel index (which never
works, anyway).

Seems to be a workaround.

And perhaps you may reduce the number of sections and for seeing their
contents you may work with the really fine PowerToys:
Sort Pages (2007)
http://www.onenotepowertoys.com/index.php?s=sortpages

Sort Sections PowerToy (2007)
http://www.onenotepowertoys.com/index.php?s=sortsections

and especially:
OneNote Table Of Contents
http://www.onenotepowertoys.com/2007/07/12/onenote-table-of-contents/


HTH
Rainald