Chris Pratley’’s list of onenote powertoys
Chris Pratley’’s has posted a list of onenote powertoys. He writes:
PowerToys are little programs that automate OneNote to do things that are useful. By their definition, they are not supported code, so you use them at your own risk. If they don’t work, you are at the good graces of the author to get them working. Fortunately, most of the tools people use are “supported” by the OneNote newsgroup.
There is a competition running that means if you write the best onenote powertoy, you will win a Toshiba m4 Tablet.
I like Chris’ suggestions for powertoys.
- System Hotkey to send any selection anywhere to OneNote. Even better if I get the option to then hit another key to put the selection in any of 30+ predefined sections I choose.
- Send IM conversation to OneNote.
- Edit <object> (e.g. equation) in OneNote
- You might ask how this could be done if there’s no OLE support or Export capability for OneNote’s SP1 extensibility. The way to do this is use a different program to make the equation, then insert it into OneNote as an image while also saving it in some location the equation editing app can find it again. Include a link below the inserted image saying “To edit this equation, click here”, and the link points at the equation file, which then launches the equation editing app (or points at the app and includes a command line param - not quite sure that is possible). The equation editing app needs to remember the GUID of the page and the object it inserted originally so that when you finish editing the equation the second time, you just click done and the image of the equation is re-imported in the same place (i.e it is updated with your changes). The same technique can be used for any object such as a photo, org chart, diagram, Organic Chemistry diagram, etc.
- Send to OneNote from any Office app
- Send to OneNote from classroom tools like Blackboard
I particularly like number 1 and 4. Maybe wouldbe onenote powertoy developers could have a gander at zoot’s zooter as it is a pretty slick way to get data in and out of an application easily.
Head on over and check out his list of existing powertoys to cover the waiting time until the competition concludes. Chris hints that within Microsoft there are a number of powertoys that have been written but haven’t yet been released. Here’s hoping they will be soon!