G
Grant Robertson
I think I have figured out a workaround to a dilemma that has been
nagging at the back of my brain for weeks. I have complained that neither
OneNote 2007 nor WDS 3.0 indexes document files that are embedded within
a OneNote page. I think I have a solution, but first some background
information:
When you drag a document to a page and choose "Insert a copy of the file
onto the page" from the dialog, OneNote embeds the document into the
OneNote Section file and places an icon on the page. You can also get the
same by choosing { Insert / Files... } from the menu. This is handy
because that embedded file goes wherever the icon goes and you can get to
the actual document for editing or printing. This is not handy because
you can't search for text within that document. This has been confirmed
by Microsoft employees.
I had decided that I would just put files in the same folder as the
OneNote section files (.ONE files) and create text links to them.
Unfortunately, that causes problems as well. If I move the section I have
to remember all the documents that are associated with that section and
move them too. I then thought I would create a separate folder for each
section that had associated files similar to the folders that OneNote
2003 created. Unfortunately, OneNote 2007 sees those folders and displays
them up in the tab bar with the sections. Besides, what if I move just
one page or even just some text that happens to have a link in a
collapsed paragraph. I don't want the mess of having to go over
everything I move with a fine tooth comb. Even if I never moved a thing I
would still have problems. The only way to search within those documents
would be to open Windows Desktop Search (WDS) and search there. All of my
searching through all of my notes on a topic would not be integrated.
So, I had this .PDF I wanted to add to my notes on a topic but I didn't
want to read it right away. I wanted to be able to search for text in it
if necessary. But I also wanted to keep the original .PDF file. I knew I
was going to be rearranging things in this notebook a lot before I was
finished and the prospect of needing to go back and sort through a bunch
of files and update a bunch of links just made me cringe. I thought it
sure would be nice if OneNote would let me search for text in the
document the same way it does when you print a document to a OneNote
page. But I didn't want all those printed pages taking up gobs of space
on my OneNote page. I had a hierarchy of notes and I wanted to keep
everything neat and orderly.
Then it hit me, pages printed to OneNote are just pictures like any other
picture I could paste into OneNote. Other pictures that I have pasted act
kind of like paragraphs in that they can be indented in a hierarchy just
like a paragraph. What about these big pictures? They have
paragraph handles like anything else so why not? But when I tried to
select the paragraph handle and drag the big picture of a page up into my
outline it would move but not become part of the outline. It just sat
there on top. After playing with holding various modifier keys down as I
drug I discovered that holding the Shift key down forces the picture to
become part of the outline. (Further experimenting revealed that the
Shift key does the same for text drug in from elsewhere on the OneNote
page.)
So now that I could indent these pictures just like any other picture I
could also collapse the parent paragraph and not have the printouts
taking up all kinds of screen real estate. But I still
wanted to be able to get to the original document. Then I realized I
could do the same thing with the icon-link that I did with the pictures
of printed pages. In the end I figured out that I could indent the icon
under a heading of plain text, then indent the pictures under that, and
finally collapse the whole thing so all I normally see is the text
heading.
I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to search for text in these
collapsed pictures but it works just fine. When you indent the pictures
they get reduced in size to fit within the Writing Guide (or Text Box or
whatever they are calling it these days) but the actual internal stored
resolution of the image isn't changed. It just looks smaller. After a few
minutes of idle time for the WDS to index the images, OneNote has no
trouble finding words that are too small for you to read. If the document
is buried under a few collapsed headings it doesn't matter. OneNote
automatically expands the document so you can see the found words. Now,
once I have found the text I need, I can just read it or open the
original document and copy it or print it if I want.
I understand that I am sacrificing hard drive space for convenience but
what the heck. I know I now have up to six copies of the darn document on
my hard drive. Two in the .ONE file and two in the cache. Possibly two
more in the backup. But it is entirely possible for me to configure
things so that four of those six are stored elsewhere. I know I have
complained and belly-ached about how much storage space OneNote now
consumes for the cache. But I guess I have come to accept that as the
price of convenience.
Now, all of my .PDF documents are searchable right within OneNote, I can
get to the original document if I need it, and I can move things around
without worry. It is the best of most worlds. Again, I am really glad I
got that 100GB drive for my Tablet PC.
=======================================================
So, here is the procedure in a nutshell:
1) Drag the document onto the OneNote page. (It doesn't matter where
because OneNote will always put the printout at the bottom of the page.)
2) Choose "Insert the file as printout so I can add notes to it" and
click [OK]. OneNote will create an Icon, a text link to the original
location of the document, and the printout pages.
3) Delete the link to the original document. (I will be deleting the
original documents and keeping them ONLY in OneNote. You can keep this
link if you are going to keep the original document outside of OneNote
and it will always be in the same place.)
4) Shift-Drag the icon to where you want it up in your outline. (I will
be creating a line of header text to put it under but you can do whatever
you want.)
5) Select all of the pictures of the printout. (The easiest way is to
just click on the paragraph handle of the first image and then hold the
Shift key down as you press the down arrow or Page-Down keys until all
the pages are selected.)
6) Shift-Drag all those pictures up under the icon then to the right one
"notch." (You will probably need to scroll back up to the top of the
first image and Shift-Drag from there.)
7) Double-click the paragraph handle for the icon then for the header
that is the parent over the icon to collapse them.
================================================================
Some final notes and things to watch out for:
You can not write on top of these printouts and expect your writing to
stay where you expected it to. While the printouts were individual
elements on the OneNote page they were immune to getting messed up by
adding text in Writing Guides above them. But these printouts are now
part of an outline and they can easily get shoved down just by adding
text above them in that same outline. Also, if you collapse the outline
and hide the pages, the other stuff you wrote OVER them does not get
collapsed. I emphasized "over" because the stuff you write gets put into
SEPARATE text boxes that just hover over the printout. They do not become
part of the printout nor do they get attached to it in any way. If you
want to add notes that will stay with the printout you should put it
between the pages and make it part of the outline just like the printout
images.
The other option is to not make the printout images part of the outline
as described above. You could just leave them all below the writing guide
that has the outline in it and create hyperlinks to the "paragraph" that
is the printout image which the note is about. Then you could also write
over the printout images without worry that these annotations would get
messed up as you add to the outline.
You can't print a Journal file with handwriting on it to a OneNote
printout image and expect OneNote to be able to find words in the
handwriting in that image of a Journal page that is now on the OneNote
page. This is true even though Journal could find those words in the
handwriting when you searched for them within Journal. Once that page is
an image on the OneNote page then that is all it is, an image. OneNote
can do OCR on TEXT in an image but not on handwriting in an image. Since
WDS 3.0 can't seem to index Journal files anyway I guess you haven't lost
anything. If you wanted to you could just copy and paste the ink from the
Journal page onto the OneNote page and then OneNote would treat it like
any other ink and be able to search it.
As I have mentioned before, you can't copy ink and pictures from Journal
to OneNote at the same time. If you try to get both then OneNote drops
the pictures. If there aren't many then you could just copy all the
pictures individually. If there are a lot then you might want to just
embed the Journal file as an icon on the OneNote page then paste the ink
indented under that. You could collapse the stuff under the icon and just
leave it there for OneNote to search through.
Finally, it should go without saying (but often doesn't), that OneNote
will NOT update the printout images if you modify the document that you
used to produce those images. If you make enough changes to the document
that you think it would affect the usefulness of the image file as a tool
to aid in searching then you can always just delete the images and create
new ones. Just right click on the icon and choose "Insert as Printout"
from the context menu.
I hope I haven't put anyone to sleep. I warned you that this was a long
one. Now I need to get to sleep myself. Hopefully this will be helpful to
some people who are really looking for "One place to put all their
notes."
nagging at the back of my brain for weeks. I have complained that neither
OneNote 2007 nor WDS 3.0 indexes document files that are embedded within
a OneNote page. I think I have a solution, but first some background
information:
When you drag a document to a page and choose "Insert a copy of the file
onto the page" from the dialog, OneNote embeds the document into the
OneNote Section file and places an icon on the page. You can also get the
same by choosing { Insert / Files... } from the menu. This is handy
because that embedded file goes wherever the icon goes and you can get to
the actual document for editing or printing. This is not handy because
you can't search for text within that document. This has been confirmed
by Microsoft employees.
I had decided that I would just put files in the same folder as the
OneNote section files (.ONE files) and create text links to them.
Unfortunately, that causes problems as well. If I move the section I have
to remember all the documents that are associated with that section and
move them too. I then thought I would create a separate folder for each
section that had associated files similar to the folders that OneNote
2003 created. Unfortunately, OneNote 2007 sees those folders and displays
them up in the tab bar with the sections. Besides, what if I move just
one page or even just some text that happens to have a link in a
collapsed paragraph. I don't want the mess of having to go over
everything I move with a fine tooth comb. Even if I never moved a thing I
would still have problems. The only way to search within those documents
would be to open Windows Desktop Search (WDS) and search there. All of my
searching through all of my notes on a topic would not be integrated.
So, I had this .PDF I wanted to add to my notes on a topic but I didn't
want to read it right away. I wanted to be able to search for text in it
if necessary. But I also wanted to keep the original .PDF file. I knew I
was going to be rearranging things in this notebook a lot before I was
finished and the prospect of needing to go back and sort through a bunch
of files and update a bunch of links just made me cringe. I thought it
sure would be nice if OneNote would let me search for text in the
document the same way it does when you print a document to a OneNote
page. But I didn't want all those printed pages taking up gobs of space
on my OneNote page. I had a hierarchy of notes and I wanted to keep
everything neat and orderly.
Then it hit me, pages printed to OneNote are just pictures like any other
picture I could paste into OneNote. Other pictures that I have pasted act
kind of like paragraphs in that they can be indented in a hierarchy just
like a paragraph. What about these big pictures? They have
paragraph handles like anything else so why not? But when I tried to
select the paragraph handle and drag the big picture of a page up into my
outline it would move but not become part of the outline. It just sat
there on top. After playing with holding various modifier keys down as I
drug I discovered that holding the Shift key down forces the picture to
become part of the outline. (Further experimenting revealed that the
Shift key does the same for text drug in from elsewhere on the OneNote
page.)
So now that I could indent these pictures just like any other picture I
could also collapse the parent paragraph and not have the printouts
taking up all kinds of screen real estate. But I still
wanted to be able to get to the original document. Then I realized I
could do the same thing with the icon-link that I did with the pictures
of printed pages. In the end I figured out that I could indent the icon
under a heading of plain text, then indent the pictures under that, and
finally collapse the whole thing so all I normally see is the text
heading.
I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to search for text in these
collapsed pictures but it works just fine. When you indent the pictures
they get reduced in size to fit within the Writing Guide (or Text Box or
whatever they are calling it these days) but the actual internal stored
resolution of the image isn't changed. It just looks smaller. After a few
minutes of idle time for the WDS to index the images, OneNote has no
trouble finding words that are too small for you to read. If the document
is buried under a few collapsed headings it doesn't matter. OneNote
automatically expands the document so you can see the found words. Now,
once I have found the text I need, I can just read it or open the
original document and copy it or print it if I want.
I understand that I am sacrificing hard drive space for convenience but
what the heck. I know I now have up to six copies of the darn document on
my hard drive. Two in the .ONE file and two in the cache. Possibly two
more in the backup. But it is entirely possible for me to configure
things so that four of those six are stored elsewhere. I know I have
complained and belly-ached about how much storage space OneNote now
consumes for the cache. But I guess I have come to accept that as the
price of convenience.
Now, all of my .PDF documents are searchable right within OneNote, I can
get to the original document if I need it, and I can move things around
without worry. It is the best of most worlds. Again, I am really glad I
got that 100GB drive for my Tablet PC.
=======================================================
So, here is the procedure in a nutshell:
1) Drag the document onto the OneNote page. (It doesn't matter where
because OneNote will always put the printout at the bottom of the page.)
2) Choose "Insert the file as printout so I can add notes to it" and
click [OK]. OneNote will create an Icon, a text link to the original
location of the document, and the printout pages.
3) Delete the link to the original document. (I will be deleting the
original documents and keeping them ONLY in OneNote. You can keep this
link if you are going to keep the original document outside of OneNote
and it will always be in the same place.)
4) Shift-Drag the icon to where you want it up in your outline. (I will
be creating a line of header text to put it under but you can do whatever
you want.)
5) Select all of the pictures of the printout. (The easiest way is to
just click on the paragraph handle of the first image and then hold the
Shift key down as you press the down arrow or Page-Down keys until all
the pages are selected.)
6) Shift-Drag all those pictures up under the icon then to the right one
"notch." (You will probably need to scroll back up to the top of the
first image and Shift-Drag from there.)
7) Double-click the paragraph handle for the icon then for the header
that is the parent over the icon to collapse them.
================================================================
Some final notes and things to watch out for:
You can not write on top of these printouts and expect your writing to
stay where you expected it to. While the printouts were individual
elements on the OneNote page they were immune to getting messed up by
adding text in Writing Guides above them. But these printouts are now
part of an outline and they can easily get shoved down just by adding
text above them in that same outline. Also, if you collapse the outline
and hide the pages, the other stuff you wrote OVER them does not get
collapsed. I emphasized "over" because the stuff you write gets put into
SEPARATE text boxes that just hover over the printout. They do not become
part of the printout nor do they get attached to it in any way. If you
want to add notes that will stay with the printout you should put it
between the pages and make it part of the outline just like the printout
images.
The other option is to not make the printout images part of the outline
as described above. You could just leave them all below the writing guide
that has the outline in it and create hyperlinks to the "paragraph" that
is the printout image which the note is about. Then you could also write
over the printout images without worry that these annotations would get
messed up as you add to the outline.
You can't print a Journal file with handwriting on it to a OneNote
printout image and expect OneNote to be able to find words in the
handwriting in that image of a Journal page that is now on the OneNote
page. This is true even though Journal could find those words in the
handwriting when you searched for them within Journal. Once that page is
an image on the OneNote page then that is all it is, an image. OneNote
can do OCR on TEXT in an image but not on handwriting in an image. Since
WDS 3.0 can't seem to index Journal files anyway I guess you haven't lost
anything. If you wanted to you could just copy and paste the ink from the
Journal page onto the OneNote page and then OneNote would treat it like
any other ink and be able to search it.
As I have mentioned before, you can't copy ink and pictures from Journal
to OneNote at the same time. If you try to get both then OneNote drops
the pictures. If there aren't many then you could just copy all the
pictures individually. If there are a lot then you might want to just
embed the Journal file as an icon on the OneNote page then paste the ink
indented under that. You could collapse the stuff under the icon and just
leave it there for OneNote to search through.
Finally, it should go without saying (but often doesn't), that OneNote
will NOT update the printout images if you modify the document that you
used to produce those images. If you make enough changes to the document
that you think it would affect the usefulness of the image file as a tool
to aid in searching then you can always just delete the images and create
new ones. Just right click on the icon and choose "Insert as Printout"
from the context menu.
I hope I haven't put anyone to sleep. I warned you that this was a long
one. Now I need to get to sleep myself. Hopefully this will be helpful to
some people who are really looking for "One place to put all their
notes."