Onenote becomes practically useless as outlines grow in size

[John Sanders]

Both of these are serious problems that drastically reduce the usefulness of
OneNote for me:

1) When I use OneNote and develop "large" outlines (currently .one file size
is at 3MB -- the file includes text and pictures), the performance of my
computer degrades drastically while editing the file as my CPU is forced to
work at 100%. I am not even one-quarter through my law school semester and
OneNote has become impractical to use for making course outlines (on one
page).

2) Also, while working in a larger file for a period of time, the text that
I am adding suddenly disappears and the display does not update with the
changes being made with the keyboard. The only solution I have found is to
close OneNote and open it again, and the problem goes away for some period
of time until it returns.

QUESTION:

That being said, is there on the market, any combination of RAM and CPU that
can handle the demands of this software when using "large" files? I might
be willing to upgrade my processor if it will help significantly.

I have the same problem on my Desktop (P4 2.4 GHZ, 1GB RAM, XP Pro SP1) and
Laptop (P4-M 2.0 GHZ, 1GB RAM, XP Pro SP1).

-- John

 

[Andrew Watt [MVP - InfoPath]]

Both of these are serious problems that drastically reduce the usefulness of
OneNote for me:

1) When I use OneNote and develop "large" outlines (currently .one file size
is at 3MB -- the file includes text and pictures), the performance of my
computer degrades drastically while editing the file as my CPU is forced to
work at 100%. I am not even one-quarter through my law school semester and
OneNote has become impractical to use for making course outlines (on one
page).

John,

Those words "on one page" may be the key to your problem.

By the way, are you using the original release of OneNote or SP1?

Secondly, is one section/page the only problem or are you seeing it on
several sections/pages?

I remember significant performance issues occurring occasionally with
the original release but not (so far at least) with SP1. That may be
because I tend to split material so that I benefit from the section /
page / subpage hierarchy. So any one one page or subpage is fairly
short.

I started using the section / page / subpage structure months ago as a
quick way to navigate around. So have few if any really large
individual pages now.

Of course, that highly structured approach may not work for your use
case.

2) Also, while working in a larger file for a period of time, the text that
I am adding suddenly disappears and the display does not update with the
changes being made with the keyboard.

That was a problem mentioned occasionally with the RTM release. So, if
you haven't already updated to SP1 I suggest you do that.

Andrew Watt
MVP - InfoPath

 

[John Sanders]

I am using OneNote SP1. When I used the original OneNote, the disappearing
text problem would occur quite frequently. The problem does not occur as
often, but it still occurs.

If I break down the oultine into seperate pages the performance problem goes
away. I still prefer to have it all one page, however, because on certain
law school exams, I am only allowed to bring in a hard paper copy of the
course outline rather than use what is on my computer.

Its somewhat ironic that I will be buying a more powerful computer to take
notes instead of playing 3D games. Perhaps Bill is in league with the PC
manufacturers.