Inserting a file into OneNote 2007 notebook

[Igor Polk]

I want content of an html file to be imported to OneNote 2007 as content.
On Windows XP I am trying to insert an html file from another directory
tree. First of all it insert icon instead of content. Then when I am trying to
open it, it produces all sorts of strange behaviors, like the file in temp
location got deleted, unnecessary security warnings.. Word doc files are
inserted OK ( but not imported). I use IE6. ( And not going to change it to
IE7 under any circumstances until you make ALL TOOLBARS moveable. ).

I love OneNote 2007. It looks like a masterpiece of a program. I used the
same approach to keep information support for my business. But my very first
experience of using it by porting my staff to One Notes miserably failed. I
am as busy as you, and I will not come back, if I will not be able to find a
solution. Trust is very difficult to obtain and keep, right?

Of course, I can use copy-paste, but that is not cool. And - once I click on
a link ( to another directory tree, of course, I am keeping to receive stupid
and annoying messages that "location is unsafe". On my computer? Shame...

Thank you, and good luck.
Igor Polk, virtuar.com.




----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.

http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...88a9-583dd6bcb001&dg=microsoft.public.onenote

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

I created a new HTML file on my desktop. Then copied it and pasted a
copy of it onto a OneNote page. OneNote inserted an icon of the file.
When I double-clicked it, I received the Location is Unsafe warning, but
it had a checkbox to never warn me again for this file type, which I
checked. The file opened correctly in my browser. When I opened it a
second time, it opened without warning in my browser. I didn't see any
kind of weird behavior.
Can you please describe in more detail (preferably step by step) what
you did and when you encountered problems?

Thanks,

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
RibbonCustomizer Add-In: http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

 

[Igor Polk]

One more behavior: "OneNote links to local html files display an annoying
dialog box which I can not disable."

1. I Open C:\Documents and Settings\Igor\My documents\yes\index.htm file in
IE6.
2. I choose menu "Edit>Select All" and copy it to clipboard.
3. Then I go to OneNote document and paste it. All text with links appears
correctly ( at first glance ).
4. I choose a link. Right mouse button click, choose "Copy Hyperlink" menu.
Here is the result:
file:///C:\Documents%20and%20Settings\Igor\My%20documents\yes\hr\Igor%20Polk\communications.htm
5. Then I click the link with the left button. A dialog box appears:
"Microsoft Office OneNote Security Notice". "This location may be unsafe.
<then the file path follows> Then: "Hyperlinks can be harmeful to your
computer or data. To protect your computer click only those hyperlinks from
trusted sources". "Do you want to continue"? There is no check box "Do not
ask me stupid questions any more". I click Yes.
6. IE6 starts and displays the content of communications.htm file correctly.
7. I Close IE6.
8. Click the same link again: the dialog box appears again. There is no way
to get rid of it.
9. If I click on a link to an internet location, the dialog box does not
appear.

This might look like a minor issue, but it severely diminished my
productivity, if I were using OneNote. I am also a website disigner, and I
have to have a lot of links to local html files in Notes.

Igor Polk, www.virtuar.com

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

What if you open the file in IE and then use Send To OneNote in the
Extras menu, or print it to OneNote?

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
RibbonCustomizer Add-In: http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed

 

[Igor Polk]

When I use Send To OneNote in the Tools menu ( IE6 ) it copy-pastes the code
into a new unfiled Note. Which partially solves one of my problems ( only I'd
prefer to do it from OneNote ), thank you! But links to html files still
produce a security warning dialog.

Oh-oh! Just figured, that with converting all my local html documents to
OneNote documents, I have to re-establish all links between documents. That's
does it !

Printing to OneNote works, but of course, that does not preserve links if
they are not explicitly typed as URLs.

Igor Polk, www.virtuar.com
PS. Patrick, I'd like to know about developments on these issures, please!

 

[Jonathan]

Igor,
I'd like to hear what your information management goal is. How will this
organizational structure imnprove what you do? Do you have some time to share
that with us? I might learn a good new way to organize classroom information
-- and access to that info by me and the students (5th grade). I feel like I
could make better connection to web-based and html-coded content through
OneNote.

What did you mean by re-connecting pages? Didn't the content that orginated
outside OneNote have a structure of it's own? If One Note is the table of
contents for this content, perhaps you don't need to reconnect content inside
OneNote.

There is a right-click-accessed command for copying [into the clipboard] a
hyperlink to a paragraph. Then you navigate to or create a OneNote page that
must have a way (the link you made and copied a second ago) to be able to
jump to that content. So that makes an internal link. There are instructions
in David Rasmussen's blog about doing this and assigning a
hot-key-combination to the jump.

Again, I'd be interested in the overview of what you are trying to do. (I
have been involved in web site production -- from the sales and marketing
side -- before teaching...)

Jonathan Rawle

 

[Igor Polk]

With pleasure, Jonathan!

Let's first look what I have now. I run a little business. I am doing many
things related to it. Here are my functions:

Director, or CEO, if you wish;
Photographer;
Tour-designer ( that is like graphical-content-designer for a game);
Graphic designer; ( sometimes )
WebMaster ( including web design );
Software Engineer, I write programs in C++ and Java for my business;
Web Promoter ( SEO );
Sales;
Marketing;
Production;
IT Engineer and tech support ( for myself, but that does not make it simpler
);
Facility manager;
Financial Officer;
Travel Planner;

As you can guess, I have a lot of information to keep about various things.
Good way to organize it is the key to success of any modern business.
Especially of those understaffed.

I use centralized system of documentation based on HTML files. An HTML file
is so far the simplest way to keep text, images, and references to programs
all together, and its greatest advantage is - it has links! Once a link is
established, you click on it, and it brings another HTML document or any
other document in its running program.
And you can even have links to the wealth of information available on
Internet.

So, I have one, root document which is a default page for my Internet
Browser ( which happens to be IE6 ).
Inside this document, I have sections of links to other HTML documents: most
resent activities, and departments:
General company information, financial info, info about my websites, logs of
activities, intelligence information, everything related and what could be
put into a file is there. As you can see I have lots and lots of documents,
interconnected between each other and to other files.

It is very convenient, but it has several disadvantages. First, and most
important is that it is quite slow to make entries. I use Dreamweaver, of
course, but still it is way not as convenient, especially working with large
files, as I imagine. Professional HTML editing software has a lot of powers,
but I need very simple things here. If you ever edited large HTML doc you
will understand what I mean.

Looking at OneNote I can see that it has a lot of advantages: simplicity,
and many useful features, like typing in any place on the screen, great
thesaurus, search, OCR, tags, drawings, a lot of things!

So, I am thinking to switch. For that I need to import, transform some of my
HTML docs into OneNote docs. At least those which I intend to continue to
edit.

Now we are getting to the point. I can import one html file ( by "sending to
OneNote" from IE ). I can import another one. BUT !!!! VERY LARGE BUT
!!! LINKS BETWEEN THEM ARE LOST ! I am just not able to re-establish them
again. It is too much manual work!

I probably will use OneNote for some tasks, like logs of activities, OCR-ing
business cards, hoping that one day, Microsoft will make import of local HTML
sites. Or may be not...

* * *
I do not know what you are going to do. It looks like you are going to start
your little information system from scratch, that is easy, and you will not
have similar problems like I do. Or you may. In future. So we should think
about it.. HTML or OneNote proprietary file format.

Have I answered your question?

Igor Polk, www.virtuar.com

 

[Patrick Schmid [MVP]]

Hi Igor,

Thanks for that description!
Here are some things to consider:
1. If you set the clip to ON from IE feature to send content to the
current page (Tools, Options), you can use IE to navigate to the page
you'd like to insert into OneNote and then simply send it over. At the
same time, you can create the structure you'd like in OneNote first.
2. You can create links between OneNote pages, etc. However, you don't
need links for everything that you have links now in HTML. ON's
notebooks, section groups, sections and pages already provide you with
some structure that you can use to your advantage.
3. You can have ON create pages for links. For example, if you make a
bulleted list on one ON page, then you can select the list and
right-click it (or just right-click an individual item). Then select
"Create Linked Page". This will create a new page in the current
section, title it according to the list item and the list item will link
to it.
4. If you simply want to create a link to an existing item, right-click
the existing item and say "Copy Hyperlink to XXX" (XXX can be a page,
paragraph, etc). You can past this link anywhere else in ON (it will be
a link with the name of the paragraph, page). If you want to make any
particular existing text the link, copy the hyperlink as before, but
then select your text and use Insert, Hyperlink (you can add this to
your toolbar or just press CTRL-K). Then paste the link into the address
field.
5. Depending on the amount of information you are dealing with, you
might be able to get everything you have into ON fairly quickly if you
make use of 1-4 and essentially mold your existing structure into a new
ON structure that you created before.
6. Don't forget about search. The new instant search feature essentially
gives you the freedom to be less organized with your structure and still
find the information you need quickly. I try to be organized with my ON
notebooks, but over time things aren't in a perfect structure anymore.
Whenever I need something then, search finds it for me in a few seconds.

Patrick Schmid [OneNote MVP]
--------------
http://pschmid.net
***
Office 2007 RTM Issues: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/11/13/80
Office 2007 Beta 2 Technical Refresh (B2TR):
http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/09/18/43
***
Customize Office 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/customize
RibbonCustomizer Add-In: http://pschmid.net/office2007/ribboncustomizer
OneNote 2007: http://pschmid.net/office2007/onenote
***
Subscribe to my Office 2007 blog: http://pschmid.net/blog/feed