I'm having a couple of weird things with Inserting and Removing extra
writing space in ON 2003 SP2.
Andrew, don't waste your time doing detect and repair. That is a cop out
answer because MVP's don't like to admit that there are real problems but
they need to keep up their reply rate to maintain their MVP status.
1. Remove Extra Writing Space no longer works. This may be related to
problem 2.
Remove Extra Writing Space in 2003 only works in areas where there is
absolutely nothing in the space you are removing. Otherwise how would
OneNote know what to remove? Even if you just added space and it looks
empty it may not be. See below.
2. Insert Extra Writing Space inserts blank "Paragraphs". I don't know if
this is intentional. But in any event, the paragraphs are sometimes the
default height, sometimes they are about 3/4 height, and sometimes they are
only half the normal height. This leads to all sorts of weirdness.
This is common behavior in ON 2003. It happens most often when you are
inserting space between handwriting.
For one thing, when I write what I consider to be a line of handwritten
text, if the para's are half-height, then some of the text will be linked to
one para, some the other. That's the biggest problem. The others are that
the text stops lining up with the rule lines, and that the noteflags vary in
size.
OneNote 2003 does a pretty bad job of guessing what "font" size to assign
to your handwriting. That, coupled by it trying to insert paragraphs that
match the grid size of the page (even if you aren't currently viewing a
grid) causes the odd paragraph sizes. If you put the text cursor in each
of those paragraphs you will see that OneNote has assigned different font
sizes to those empty paragraphs. I have found that I can just start
writing on that line, even if the assigned font height is tiny and
OneNote will often just adjust the assigned size to the size of my text.
The note flags vary because they are drawn to match the font size of the
paragraph.
These different size paras occur on the same page. It is not consistent,
like some pages have one size, some have another.
If you place the text cursor in various handwritten words within your
document then look up at the font size drop down you will see that the
"font size" that OneNote considers your handwriting to be varies a bit.
If you use the smallest grid or line spacing and fill that space OneNote
usually considers that to be about 20 point font. If you then convert to
text you will find that each word will be a slightly different font size.
It drives people nuts but the Most Vocal Proselytizers just downplay it.
You can select all of the text after you have done the conversion then
set it to a specific font size but that gets tedious really fast.
Many have complained about these issues in the past. You might try
searching back a few years to when OneNote 2003 first came out. Many said
that Microsoft should just allow the user to specify what font size
OneNote should assign to their handwriting, or even just always assign it
to the same font and size specified as the default. But they didn't do
anything about it. It doesn't look as if they have fixed the problem in
2007 either.
Having said that I just know that five MVP's are gonna jump in here and
say, "It's just a beta. It's just a beta." But, once MS betas have gotten
this far along they rarely if ever actually fix major things like this.
They just yank features out if they are too much of an embarrassment.
As to your problems with the EWS tool: I have found it works better to
just hand write the stuff you want to insert completelyy BELOW everything
else then drag it up using the paragraph handle. To prevent word wrapping
problems you should write it at the same indent level as you want it to
appear when you drag it up. This means you may have to write it well
below the current writing guide so you can start it however far to the
right you want. OneNote will assign it to heading level one but when you
drag it into place you can put it where you want and it won't have word
wrap weirdness.
I have written a 7 page article with diagrams explaining how to trick
OneNote 2003 into writing the way you want. Post a reply with a munged e-
mail address and I will send you a .PDF of it.
