undo in ON

M

minimus

undo in ON undoes only few characters that are jsut deleted.
This is very annoying.
 
D

David Olsen

You're right. I included it as it did mention the fact the undo limitations
were in place in Office products. I couldn't find a page that specifically
referred to ON.

My conclusion is based on my own testing in OneNote.
 
J

John Waller

But in practice, it appears that One Note allows around thirty.

I agree David.

My repeated testing indicates 32 (2^5) undo steps.
 
B

b4l4nc3r

I hope it can be increased. Does anyone know whether that's possible?
Otherwise where to request it?
 
B

b4l4nc3r

Well, yeah. I'll try to explain in abstractly.

When I'm following a thought sequence, lets call it A, which leads to many
content mutations in the OneNote page, lets call them page states/versions
AA, AB, AC, etc.. And lets say there were 70 steps involved in that sequence
From the beginning, lets say A0, to AC as the temporary end result as the
page is still a work in progress.

Now it doesn't mean that all the steps were content additions! There were
deletions and alterations as well. Diving into thought sequence A we might
find A1, A2, A3, etc.. Mapped respectively to page versions A1=AA, A2=AB,
A3=AC, etc.. In which A3 alters the work done in the sub-thought-sequence
A2. Lets say 20 steps were invested in page version AA, 30 in page version AB
and 20 on AC.

Lets say at some point a new insight emerges (happens to all the time, often
to me as well), lets call it thought sequence B, which leads to a very
different content from which the page version A1 is needed as the basis.

The history doesn't provide the option to go back 50 steps to page version
AA. This means I've to remember and repeat the steps to get that page version
(AA) to work from with thought sequence B. Most of the 50 steps were tedious
small things that you do right away before you forget it!!! And now they need
to be redone because the history doesn't go far enough.


Practical applications in my case are among others manual graphing
(editing), geometrical drawings & complex thought processes involved in text
editing.
 
B

Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)

Well...o.k. I think it might be better to try and consider when you
might be at a good basis point and use that bit to create a template
that you can save separately.

For example, save at A, AA, AB, AC etc. Then if you need to go back you
can start from one of those.

I just don't think most users are going to remember what they did 30 or
50 steps ago or that they'd want to undo all of the steps in between
very often.

I understand your application, but I don't think pressing CTRL+Z 50
times is really the best solution. :)

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q
 
R

Rainald Taesler

Ben said:
I just don't think most users are going to remember what they did 30
or 50 steps ago or that they'd want to undo all of the steps in
between very often.
Click to expand...

For sure!
Even 32 steps are quite much if it is not supported by a list if recent
changes where one could pick out the changed item.

Rainald
 
R

Rainald Taesler

b4l4nc3r said:
I hope it can be increased. Does anyone know whether that's possible?
Otherwise where to request it?
Click to expand...

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.

Rainald
 
B

b4l4nc3r

Understandable and good points. They're however missing the chaotic nature of
human brainstorming/thinking.

When I'm editing I don't have to remember which steps were exactly made to
know that the hole approach needs to be changed to go back to a point I do
remember which is ok to pick up from. For that I rather use ctrl+z, because
it's not about making a template. If it's being reused then a template is the
way to go, but your suggesting a workaround, because that page state is for
that page only. I might as well just make backups while I'm editing by coping
to a another page. But that's not what I want. I want to feel free to go
forward and backward without having to worry about backups of a pervious
state which is not to long ago. I mean even a 100 steps is reasonably new and
I don't need to backup on the way because the history list can't keep up. It
should be a setting set as the user see fit.

Creating backups/template, I most likely will forget because to save I'm
caught off in the thought sequence so much that when I remember it would be
when I need it which is too late :) I need the program to look after me, like
when ON streams the characters to the HDD instead of manual or periodic
saves. Instead of me disciplining myself to make the program do what I
desire, I want to be able to set the program AS I DESIRE! Or as any other
user desires for that matter! This doesn't apply for all cases, but I believe
it certainly does for this one.

And this avoids cleanup afterwards, as I would need to delete all those
templates/backups to avoid clutter, as they were actually partial saves
meant as a workaround.
 
B

Ben M. Schorr - MVP (OneNote)

Sure, I see where you're going with that - but remember that saving all
of that data requires storage space and resources. We can't just
iterate back through dozens or hundreds of actions otherwise it will
quickly bloat the space requirements.

So we have to draw the line somewhere...we can't just save an infinite
number of actions to undo. And, while I certainly see where you're
going with this, I really don't think most users will very often care
about more than a ~dozen undo actions at most.

I think ultimately the answer is going to be some combination of undo,
templates and maybe even just adjusting your brainstorming style to be
more sequential so that you can merely delete previous steps to work
back up the chain perhaps.

--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
http://www.officeforlawyers.com
Author - The Lawyer's Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007:
http://tinyurl.com/5m3f5q
 
R

Rainald Taesler

Thanks for the reply.
I wonder, however, why you said that in a reply to *Me*.
It was not *my* suggestion to work with some templates or the like.
Honestly speaking - with all due respect -: Ben's suggestion did not
seem to be a practically usable suggestion.

Rainald
 
B

b4l4nc3r

Sorry about the mixup. I though you supported his view that 32 stups should
be enough. I guess I misunderstood.
 
B

b4l4nc3r

B.t.w. I don't have to use ctrl+z when going back that far. I can pick an
entry from the list I can show by clicking the pulldown menu of the back
botten.
 
R

Rainald Taesler

b4l4nc3r said:
Sorry about the mixup. I though you supported his view that 32 stups
should be enough. I guess I misunderstood.
Click to expand...

Yes, you misunderstood me completely.

I voted for your suggestion and left a comment.

Rainald
 
R

Rainald Taesler

B.t.w. I don't have to use ctrl+z when going back that far. I can
pick an entry from the list I can show by clicking the pulldown menu
of the back botten.
Click to expand...

Yes, the pulldown list of the "Undo"-button (NOT the "Back"-button)
makes things transparent.
But: One can only undo *ALL* the changes on the list and there is no way
to select just one single action.

Rainald
 
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