Tabs: Copying-&-Pasting to OneNote (tabs, tables, horizontal outli

[AspiringGeek]

Greetings, I'm at my wits end when it comes to copying-&-pasting text with
tabs into One Note. I've had challenges with the default indent size, but
this is different.

Sometimes I don't WANT OneNote to treat pasted text as a table, but even one
embeded tab in a block of text can make a mess of my pasted text. Trying to
remove the tab can lead to seemingly unpredictable results, and goodness
forbid I have multiple tabs in the text, or--egad!--in an effort to exploit
OneNote's otherwise very cool outlining capabilities I actually try to indent
the pasted text. (I'm sure you've all experienced this phenomenon--some text
gets all scrunched up and wraps and there seems no easy way to fix it--though
I've tried experimenting with the Format > List settings.)

I'm a master at manipulating tables in Word, yet I'm apparently not clever
enough to be able to finagle things in OneNote.

Pasting data from Excel is a guaranteed invitation to the deities of chaos.

I have read everything I can on the topic without success. Can someone
point to some guidelines for me? I'm willing, indeed EAGER even to buy a
book which contains the arcane information I seek.

While I'm at it, anyone with information, ANY information on mastering
anything involving tabs, tables, horizontal outlining, etc., in OneNote is
eagerly sought.

Thanks!

 

[Alex]

Let me "attempt" to help.

So it sounds like this usually happens to you when pasting from excel? If I
understand you correctly, it sounds as though the text on the clipboard
contains inline tabs (which is the simple way to represent tabular structure)
and onenote is creating a mess of it for you when you paste.

Well, there is no way to strip out these tabs once they get on the
clipboard. But, you can resize the "columns" that get created as onenote
attempts to represent this tabular structure. To do this, click into the
"cell" that is wrapping in a disagreeable way, and the choose "Change Column
Width" from the Format menu. This should allow you to change how the text
wraps. It isn't the easiest to use unfortunately, so it may take a couple of
tries to get used to it.

We are hoping to improve this in a future release. Please let me know if
this helps, or if I haven't quite addressed your problem.

-Alex <MS>

 

[AspiringGeek]

Alex, yes this has helped. But what a pain in the patooticles it is to do
this each time I pasted text.

My problem lies not merely with Excel, but with all manner of text with
embedded tabs, e.g, Word (especially simple tables), also my snippets of
Transact-SQL code.

I appreciate your help, and hope "we" can work on this. How's about for
SP2, eh?

Also, perhaps I'm lame, but I certainly didn't see your very useful tip
anywhere which was easy to find in OneNote help (of course, now that I know
about it, I'm sure to see it ubiquitously). Seriously, thanks for your help!

 

[AspiringGeek]

In addition, the post-paste Smart Tag provides some options which I've found
somewhat useful.

 

[Alex]

Glad I could help. This is something we hope to improve as soon as we can.

-Alex