My solution to ON 2007 shortcomings.

[Grant Robertson]

So, I have been doing considerable thinking about this whole upgrade
thing. I like a lot of the new features in OneNote 2007 but there are
certain things that I still don't like in ON 07 and things I won't want
to give up from OneNote 2003. Plus some of the things in Journal (like
grouping and selection) are still better than either OneNote.

I finally decided to just use all three. I can use OneNote 2007 for my
overall organization and database. I can import documents, search for
text in them, and mark them up. However, when I want to take notes in
Outline form I can switch to OneNote 2003. When I am finished writing
them up and rearranging them then I can just bring them into ON 07 and
upgrade the file format. If I think I will be working on an outline in ON
03 for a while then I can just link to it from within ON 07. When I am
doing math, which is essentially drawing, then I can use Journal. I can
then copy and paste the finished product into ON 07 as a picture. Or I
can just link to the Journal file from within ON 07. Once Windows Desktop
Search 3.0 is finished I can even use it to search through all of my ON
07 files as well as the Journal files.

I had been contemplating switching to GoBinder 2006 but decided it
wouldn't give me nearly the amount of additional flexibility and
organization of ON 07. GoBinder has a great web clipping feature that
retains live links but it isn't worth loosing the organizational features
like hyperlinks that are in ON 07. Besides, ON 07 can recognize text
within a screen shot of a web page so that is almost as good. GoBinder's
outlining features are worse than ON 07's but it can't import ON 03 files
directly like ON 07 can.

 

[EMRhelp.org]

"However, when I want to take notes in Outline form I can switch to
OneNote 2003. "

Not sue what you mean by this.
And as well, you feel that ON 2007 doesnt do it ?
Fill me in.

Running ON 2003/2007 long term on the same box is likely to cause
unforseen problems.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Grant,

them up and rearranging them then I can just bring them into ON 07 and
upgrade the file format. If I think I will be working on an outline in ON
03 for a while then I can just link to it from within ON 07. When I am
doing math, which is essentially drawing, then I can use Journal. I can

Can you say specifically how Journal is better than ON for math stuff?
Is ON missing features or are these more subtle issues?

Have you already submitted feedback on connect for all the shortcomings
you see?


Patrick Schmid

 

[Grant Robertson]

"However, when I want to take notes in Outline form I can switch to
OneNote 2003. "

Not sue what you mean by this.
And as well, you feel that ON 2007 doesnt do it ?
Fill me in.

In ON 07 when you are using the pen the bullet and number buttons are
disabled, as are the indent and outdent buttons. To use these buttons for
handwriting you have to tap the text selection button. Then tap the ink
button go get back to inking. This is a lot of excessive button tapping
and it gets in the way of my thinking or causes me to fall behind in
taking my notes. I ON 2003 you can start to write a paragraph then tap
the bullet or numbering button. For each successive paragraph it
automatically adds a bullet or number. Most importantly, if you start
your next paragraph indented just the right amount ON 2003 will
automatically assume you want an indented paragraph and act as if you had
tapped the indent button. If you then start writing the next paragraph
even with the first level you wrote before then ON 2003 will set that
paragraph to the same indent level as that earlier paragraph. This makes
it really easy to create outlines that are true outlines using the pen in
ON 03. If you do the same things in ON 07 then it doesn't even start a
new paragraph. It just acts as if you inserted a really big space before
a particular word. If you change the width of the text box then the word
wrapping (which is great BTW) will put what you thought was the beginning
of a paragraph in the middle of a line along with that huge space before
the word. It is just like a text editor where you never press the enter
key. The cursor may be at the beginning of a line and you may press the
space bar a few times but you haven't created a new paragraph. If you
change the margins your "formatting" is all hosed up.

Also, once you have written a paragraph you can easily grab it's
"handle" and move it to a different place in the outline. You can move it
up or down or left or right. You can do this without switching to any
other modes or tapping any buttons. In ON 2007 you can't do this without
switching to text mode. Plus In 0N 07 you can't start a new paragraph
without skipping a line. Once you have done that then it permanently
glues the space from above and below the paragraph to that paragraph and
the space moves with the paragraph when you do move it. This causes some
paragraphs to have lots of space between them and others not. Finally,
when I move a bunch of paragraphs around for more than a few times (which
really does happen as I make up my mind about the organization of certain
notes) it starts to corrupt them. They may look the same but when you try
to select some of the words you will see that they are selected out of
order or your cursor will be in one place and the words will be selected
in another place. It is a real mess. I expect that they will recognize
this as a major bug and fix it but I can't use ON 07 for any kind of note
taking or brainstorming until this is fixed.

 

[Grant Robertson]

Can you say specifically how Journal is better than ON for math stuff?
Is ON missing features or are these more subtle issues?

Yes, the two main features that should be in ON are grouping and the
single item select for the lasso. Missing one is bad but missing both is
unworkable.

Have you already submitted feedback on connect for all the shortcomings
you see?

I have submitted a lot of feedback on the connect site. I just got tired
of writing all this up all the time. Heck, I was spending more time
writing up bugs than using the software. And I have homework to do. You
are welcome to copy from my posts to the connect site.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Have you tried doing outlines completely in ink? If yes, what issues do
you have with it?

Patrick Schmid

 

[Patrick Schmid]

I have submitted a lot of feedback on the connect site. I just got
tired

of writing all this up all the time. Heck, I was spending more time
writing up bugs than using the software. And I have homework to do. You
are welcome to copy from my posts to the connect site.

LOL. Welcome to beta testing I know the feeling. In earlier beta
versions, I'd work 5 minutes with a program and then spend two hours
filing the 10 bugs I ran into in those 5 minutes...

Patrick Schmid

 

[Grant Robertson]

Have you tried doing outlines completely in ink? If yes, what issues do
you have with it?

You mean in ON 07? Well, it should be pretty clear from the previous
message. I don't get automatic bullets. But, primarily, it just LOOKS
like an outline. It isn't really an outline. It is just some ink
positioned on a page in a manner that appears to be an outline to the
naked eye. You may say, "What is the difference?" Well, the difference is
if you change the size of the text box later or want to rearrange the
outline you find that it is just a bunch of words all in one paragraph
that just happen to have varrying amounts of space in front of them. What
you thought was an outline totally looses its structure.

And please don't use the argument that you never change anything after
you write it down. That is a terrible restriction to live with. I find it
really, really hard to believe that you never, ever edit ANYTHING after
you write it down. No one wants to pay $100 for a piece of software only
to find later that they can never edit what they have without screwing it
all up.

 

[Grant Robertson]

LOL. Welcome to beta testing I know the feeling. In earlier beta
versions, I'd work 5 minutes with a program and then spend two hours
filing the 10 bugs I ran into in those 5 minutes...

Yeah, I'm just not into that anymore. The way I see it a public beta like
this should be almost bug free and only be looking for those few last
things that only one in a million people will find. The things I am
complaining about are things that would affect every last person who uses
the software and would have been apparent within the first five minutes
of use. The bugs like corrupting the paragraphs and the "design
decisions" like completely disabling the use of outlining in handwriting
should have never made it out the door. I mean they sell the thing as a
program for taking notes in ink on a Tablet PC for crying out loud. But
then they make it nearly impossible to do so. And it worked pretty well
in ON 2003. All they had to do is clean up the few inconsistencies in the
way ON 03 did outlines to make things more "discoverable" for regular
users. They didn't have to just dump the features completely.

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Hi Grant,

I am not going to argue you on this one. I tried making an outline in
ink myself last night and got frustrated as well...

Patrick Schmid

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Yeah, I'm just not into that anymore. The way I see it a public beta
like

this should be almost bug free and only be looking for those few last
things that only one in a million people will find. The things I am
complaining about are things that would affect every last person who uses
the software and would have been apparent within the first five minutes
of use. The bugs like corrupting the paragraphs and the "design
decisions" like completely disabling the use of outlining in handwriting
should have never made it out the door. I mean they sell the thing as a
program for taking notes in ink on a Tablet PC for crying out loud. But
then they make it nearly impossible to do so. And it worked pretty well
in ON 2003. All they had to do is clean up the few inconsistencies in the
way ON 03 did outlines to make things more "discoverable" for regular
users. They didn't have to just dump the features completely.

From the MS point of view, it's not really a public beta. It's still a
closed technical beta and they just happened to make the beta version
available as preview to everyone. Hence for the MS teams working on
this, their timeline as to what bugs to fix by when is dictated by the
technical beta, and not by what is being made public or not.
ON is actually somewhat of an exception, as it offers Connect. None of
the other 2007 programs accept any kind of bug submissions from non-tech
beta members. For example, you will not find a single bug from me on
Connect, as I am using the private tech beta bug submission mechanism.
As to discovering a lot of these things in the first few minutes of
using it: If you get that far in the first place. Ink was horribly
broken in the first beta version: You better not tried to move ink
around at all. The second beta still had a bunch of ink issues, and I
wouldn't be surprised if they didn't get fixed all before Beta 2. You
might easily be encountering bugs that MS already knows about, but just
couldn't get fixed before Beta 2. In my opinion, ON 2007 is on a steady
path to being quite bug free by RTM (judging from the improvement I have
seen so far). They'll get there and make it a great app to use with ink.
The outlining issue came up earlier, but I don't know the resolution.
I'm trying to get a conversation on the topic started again to see what
MS is thinking about this.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Alex]

Sorry, what do you mean by "single item select for the lasso"?

 

[Grant Robertson]

Sorry, what do you mean by "single item select for the lasso"?

In Journal (and every other program I have seen) you can select a single
item by just tapping on it with the lasso tool. You don't necessarily
need to draw a "lasso" all the way around the object. This is handy when
there are several smaller objects that would be within the "lassoed
area" that you don't want to select. You can't do this with the lasso
tool in ON 2007.

I have noticed that you can use the text select tool and drag it over a
small area of a picture and it will select that picture. This helps
somewhat. However, if you draw several ink objects near or overlapping
each other then they get put in the same text box. If you try to use the
above trick on one of those ink objects then it selects the whole lot of
them. So you can't use the text select tool to select just one of the ink
objects.

 

[Rainald Taesler]

... I find it really, really hard to believe that you never,
ever edit ANYTHING after you write it down. No one wants to pay
$100 for a piece of software only to find later that they can
never edit what they have without screwing it all up.

Isn't it the main purpose of an Outzliner to make scribbles and then
sort and correct things and move things around, up and down in the
hierarchie?
So editing and changes are the core of it all ...

Rainald

 

[Alex]

In current builds, with the lasso tool or text selection tool you can tap on
ink strokes to select them. This "punches through" whatever the structure
is, so you get just the stroke selected, and not whatever onenote thought was
the word or paragraph.

 

[Xin]

A couple of tricks on creating an ink outline on OneNote:
1) Use bullets:
Dash,
bullet points like dots,
number with a period,
letter with a period,
number with a circle,
letter with a circle,
number with a right parathesis,
letter with right paranthesis etc...
But bullets like i) ii) or i. ii. does not work as well

2) Make the bullets well separated from the rest of the line:
But putting down all bullets before you make out an outline is not such a
good idea

 

[Grant Robertson]

In current builds, with the lasso tool or text selection tool you can tap on
ink strokes to select them. This "punches through" whatever the structure
is, so you get just the stroke selected, and not whatever onenote thought was
the word or paragraph.

Excellent!

 

[Grant Robertson]

A couple of tricks on creating an ink outline on OneNote:

Are you referring to ON 03 or ON 07?

 

[Xin]

Are you referring to ON 03 or ON 07?

 

[srd]

These current builds are internal, right. Yet, the OneNote download does
change from day to day. The "upgrade" button is gone and replaced by
"Install now."