Office on Much Ado About IT

OneNote Missing Features

Julian Knight — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:31:45 +0000

Microsoft have announced the deprecation of the desktop version of OneNote. They claim that the Windows Store version is as good or better. But it really isn't! Here I try to list the missing features. I will update this post as things change.

Office 2019 (due for release late 2018) will no longer contain a desktop version of OneNote. Microsoft are telling everyone to move over to the Windows Store version (AKA “OneNote for Windows 10”), also seen in this blog post by William Devereux.

Microsoft claim that OneNote for Windows 10 is the only one now getting development other than fixes & that it is already “better” than the desktop version in “many” areas.

OneNote 2016 (the full desktop version) will continue to be available separately but will stop receiving any updates in 2020.

You can also keep track of what has been updated in OneNote for Windows 10 in the What’s New post.

However, there is a LOT missing from OneNote for Windows 10 - I’ve compiled this list in order to track what is missing and whether anything is done about it.

The marketing post by Microsoft “What’s the difference between OneNote and OneNote 2016?” gives Microsoft’s official view on which is best.

I’ve tried to be accurate but if you see anything wrong or anything missing, please leave a comment below.

Tell Microsoft what you want!

If you want Microsoft to fix some of these missing features:

Vote or raise feedback on the OneNote UserVoice site
Contact them directly if you are an enterprise customer. You should have access to a Technical Account Manager at least, possibly also an industry sector technical lead, and industry sector account manager.
Join the OneNote Group on LinkedIn
Try the UserVoice suggestions site
Take to Twitter, copy in @msonenote and William Devereux (@MasterDevwi)
Use the Give Feedback link and/or give feedback via Windows 10
Leave a review on the Windows store.

They do generally listen. They don’t always do what you want of course!

Missing Features

Revision History
- ~~No page versions view~~ Finally found this hidden under the RMB menu in the page list. Very poor UX though, to be fair, this option is in the same place in ON 2016. It’s just that isn’t the only place, it is also on the Ribbon.
- No recent edits view
- ~~No recycle bin view - to allow recovery of accidentally deleted items~~ Yes, this is present, just well hidden again. RMB over the notebook in the notebook list - which is probably normally hidden for you as it ends up taking up too much horizontal space.
UI/General Usability
- ~~No Insert Date/Time/Date & Time~~ You can, in fact, insert date and time. But don’t bother looking for something simple if you aren’t using a keyboard, it is only available via a keyboard shortcut. Insert Date = Alt+Shift+D, Insert Time = Alt+Shift+T, Insert Date & Time = Alt+Shift+F. Really not very helpful for mobile/tablet users!
- No symbol insert (Coming soon)
- No page templates - no way to create a boilerplate template - e.g. for meetings
- No custom ribbon or quick access toolbar - giving quick access to tools relevant to users workflows
- No way to change paste option after pasting
- No quick way to flip between notebooks without taking up half the screen. You have to click back to get to the list then select. On desktop, you can quickly switch between notebooks using a pop-over. The only alternative is perhaps to create separate tiles pinned to the start menu and then have multiple notebooks open at the same time.
- Inefficient use of screen space - all navigation is forced to the left-hand side of the screen. On desktop, notebooks can be in a drop-down and tabs go across the top, this is a lot more efficient.
- No way to change paragraph and line spacing - I find that the default text layout has too little white-space, especially between paragraphs. This makes large blocks of text difficult to read unless you manually include empty lines - which, in turn is not helpful if you later paste into other tools.
- No “Record Video” feature
- No control over audio recording quality
- No internal control over audio recording device selection - can only use the Windows default
- Uncertain whether recognise text in recordings is available or working
- No ability to move navigation sidebars to other side
- No floating new page button for note list so no way to create a new page in a chosen location without using the mouse/long-touch - which also changes the page
- ~~No way to turn off or correct auto capitalisation~~ - immensely annoying when using OneNote for keeping technical notes (e.g. Programming). UPDATE: OK, not quite true, you can turn it on/off in settings but you can’t turn it off temporarily - for a single instance - like you can in the desktop. (thanks to Albin, see the comments)
- Fewer size options for drawing pens
- Only limited example equations for insert
- Even less ability to automate than before
- ~~No way to set the language for text~~ - you have to change the input keyboard to the language you want before typing, a terrible experience for multi-lingual use. UPDATE: Also not quite true, you can select some text and right/long click then you get an option to change it. (again, thanks to Albin)
- No way to translate text (Coming soon)
Integration
- No integration with Outlook or other Office applications - you can only integrate with Outlook.com or O365 so if you have a different Exchange email service as your default, there is no integration.
- No Outlook task integration - I know some people use this extensively so that they get reminders in Outlook for expiring task dates
- Why does meeting integration to outlook.com/O365 require me to log in again? I’m already logged in.
- No integration with Office(?)
- No office autocorrect.
- No grammar checks
- No access to custom spell-check dictionaries
- No Thesaurus
- No docked note taking with linked notes
- No Very limited addins/extensions - not even from the Office Store
  
  Albin points out in the comments that this is not quite true. There is a version of the GEM addin for ON UWP. It is US$18 which may be too steep for some but it does add one or two useful things such as inserting a horizontal line and coloured code syntax. Mostly seems to make up for some of the issues listed here though. Uses a Windows menu overlay.
- No “Insert Excel Spreadsheet” or “Insert (Visio) Diagram”. UPDATE: According to Albin, this is coming in a future release.
- No way to access notebooks on local or network drives
- No way to export notes - e.g. to a .one file - even the Surface Hub lets you do this.
- No way to share just a page or a section, only the whole notebook
Tags
- No custom “tags” (on roadmap?)
- No text style tags
- No “Find Tags” feature
- No “Create Summary” feature, allowing tagged paragraphs from different pages/notebooks to be pulled together on a single page.
Search
- Much more limited search view - no visibility of “recent” ~~nor of the difference between search terms in titles vs page~~
  
  So it seems that the search results do differentiate between results in the title from the body. You wouldn’t be able to know this without reading the help though since the difference is that a search term found in a title is highlighted in bold+purple. Hmm, very intuitive - not.
- No pop-over - results limited to same width as current sidebar so a lot less usable unless you change the width - which you then want to change back afterwards
- No control over searching AV for words - can it even be done?
- You cannot search closed notebooks - I suppose this is because it now only supports OneDrive, OneDrive for Business and SharePoint Online for storage.
- No search and replace. To be fair, this is a failing of ON 2016 as well.
Tables
- No convert to excel for tables
- No way to include/exclude heading row for table sort
- No way to create a table with a specified number of rows/columns (by number)
- No way to hide the borders of a table (Coming soon)
Security
- No notebook local backups
- No control over cache file location
- ~~No page password protection~~ Eventually found this under the RMB menu for a section. Poor discoverability.

Other Issues

Drag and drop from Outlook is SLOW, have to keep the mouse over OneNote with the LMB pressed for an appreciable amount of time

What do we get that is “Better”?

May start faster on many systems.
Insert an image from your PC’s webcam - use the intelligence of MS Lens to improve document and whiteboard captures.
More colours for the pens - pen colours may be retained when converting to text.
A ruler.
Marginally better touch/pen handling.
Dictation.
Stickers(!)
Pin to start - you can pin Notebooks, Sections and Pages to the start menu. You can also have a transparent start menu entry. Note that “recent” entries in the jump list don’t work properly on the UWP version and not at all on the desktop version.
Uses system “share” capability to more easily share notes to other apps and share info from other apps to OneNote.
Built-in accessibility checker - be kinder to colleagues with accessibility issues.
Use the Immersive Reader for focused reading and improved comprehension.
Some simple equations can be charted or “solved”. You aren’t always given an option to chart however - such as for the desktop app’s example “A=πr^2” equation. Make sure you use “x” and “y” as variables to get round this limitation.
Use the pen to take a note even if the PC is locked.
Use the Edge browser to ink over a web page and save to OneNote.
Use Cortana to add a note.
“Better” sync engine is “coming soon” - though honestly, we may have to take MS’s word for that at the moment. The current sync engine seems to be the best one MS have in my view. However, it does start to struggle on mobile devices if your notebook gets too large, especially with embedded files.

Updates

2018-07-31:

Updated the “better” list following the comment from @DragosStefan. Also added further entries to that list based on the Microsoft blog posts.
Cross referenced to MS Power User blog post.

2018-07-26:

Many thanks to Albin LABELLE who has provided some really useful updates. Do check out his OneNote blog, especially his Closing the Gap post, he is keeping an eye on changes there. He also has some great OneNote tweets.
Twitter link from OneNote Central

A long-time fan of the desktop version of #OneNote for Windows, IT pro Julian Knight is taking a closer look at where the current feature set of the OneNote for #Windows10 app stands compared to his favorite version. https://t.co/b0FUEQq4LA
by @knightnet pic.twitter.com/1GvNEAux8O
— MSEdu Central Marjolein Hoekstra (@MSEduCentral) July 26, 2018
Twitter question from @msonenote

What could we do to make it better? We're always open to feedback. 🙂
— Microsoft OneNote (@msonenote) July 26, 2018

2018-07-21:

Many thanks to Kjell for the comments via Disqus. I’ve updated the entries for the Recycle Bin and Insert date/time.

2018-07-19:

Updated the list after publishing today when I went through some other posts and through the OneNote for Windows UserVoice site
Blog post by William Devereux, OneNote product manager, who has been kindly communicating with me and the OneNote LinkedIn Group. Detailing some new updates (actual update on his Twitter feed).

Hey OneNote fans! We just released a new update on Windows 10 (version 16.0.10325.20049) with a number of features based directly on your feedback. As always these features are rolling out, so if you don't see one of them yet then check back soon. Here's what's new for everyone:
— William Devereux (@MasterDevwi) July 18, 2018

Office 365 Autosave

Julian Knight — Tue, 08 May 2018 10:20:16 +0000

I am sure that whoever in Microsoft came up with the idea of an autosave flag, they thought it was a great idea. And indeed it is. **However**, when they made it default to _on_, they made a logistical nightmare for the majority of users. This post discusses why and what you could do about it.

With autosave on by default, every shared document that you open in Word, Excel or PowerPoint is subject to the whims of the Office client software. This means that it is all too easy to accidentally make a change that is then autosaved changing a shared document, throwing out version control processes, possibly approvals, etc. To say nothing of annoying other colleagues with random changes.

When the “feature” was introduced at the start of 2017, Microsoft gave no way to change the default from on to off. By the middle of the year, however, they introduced a set of registry settings.

Somewhat inevitably for a poorly thought through feature, they compounded the issues by making these registry flags permanently disable autosave instead of allowing a change to default to off. :sigh:

Well, for what it’s worth, here are the registry codes you need to permanently disable autosave in the three client applications:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Word]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\Excel]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\16.0\PowerPoint]
"DontAutoSave"=dword:00000001

You can save the above code to a text file ending in .reg. Then right-click on the file in Windows File Explorer and chose the merge option to turn off autosave.

If you want to undo the change, set the values to 0 instead of 1.

Macro to open a web URL from Outlook

Julian Knight — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 10:31:45 +0000

Many of us spend most of our work time in a few applications such as Outlook (email) and a web browser. This example macro for Microsoft Outlook will let you add a button to the Outlook Ribbon that will open a specific website URL.

To use this macro:

Open the VBA Editor window (ctrl-F11)
Double-click on Project1 > Microsoft Outlook Objects > ThisOutlookSession in the Project pane (top-left)
Paste the code below
Customise the Ribbon
Add a new Group (you can’t add your own entries to the standard groups)
Add the openGoogle macro (or whatever you’ve added), rename and change the icon if desired

Note: This version will only work for the 64-bit version of Microsoft Outlook. To use on the 32-bit version, remove the word PtrSafe.

Option Explicit

Private Declare PtrSafe Function ShellExecute _
 Lib "shell32.dll" Alias "ShellExecuteA" ( _
 ByVal hWnd As Long, _
 ByVal Operation As String, _
 ByVal Filename As String, _
 Optional ByVal Parameters As String, _
 Optional ByVal Directory As String, _
 Optional ByVal WindowStyle As Long = vbMinimizedFocus _
 ) As Long

' WARINING: THIS MUST ONLY BE GIVEN SAFE URLs!
' DO NOT USE WITH DIRECT USER INPUT
Private Sub openUrl(url As String)
 Dim lSuccess As Long
 lSuccess = ShellExecute(0, "Open", url)
End Sub

Public Sub openGoogle()
 openUrl "https://google.com"
End Sub

Outlook 2013 URL Protocol Handler

Julian Knight — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 21:07:40 +0000

Outlook has a custom URL protocol that allows interaction with different elements such as folders, mail and calendar items and contacts, Since Outlook 2007, this has been restricted for use only within Outlook itself but there are some tremendous opportunities for use from simple web systems. This post explains how to turn it on, even for Outlook 2013 (Office 365 version). It also gives pointers to other articles on how to use the protocol.

Update 2018-04-24: Having changed roles at the start of 2017, I am no longer getting quite the volume of email that I used to. So I no longer need to manage my email in quite the same way. However, the Outlook URL protocol handler remains very useful, especially when creating To Do lists in other tools and linking back to Outlook emails.

One of the nice features about older versions of Microsoft Outlook was that it had a set of URL Protocol Handlers (like [outlook:inbox][1]) defined that could be used system wide to trigger actions in Outlook such as opening a folder, creating or editing an item.

Unfortunately, along the way, these got gradually toned down so that they only worked from within Outlook itself.

This can still be useful. I’m not sure how many people realise that you can create “folders” in your Outlook mailbox. Choose Properties .../Home Page and set a URL – maybe your blog or Intranet. Now when you click on the folder, you will see the web page instead of a set of mail items or whatever.

When using this feature to do some more clever stuff such as creating To Do lists from incoming mail, you might choose to use a dynamic web system to handle the list. CouchDB or Node.JS are lightweight web systems that come to mind.

Then you might find yourself wishing that you could create links in your To Do system back to the original email in Outlook. Well you can! Sort of.

It turns out that, although the external use of the Outlook: protocol hasn’t been available since Outlook 2003, it can still be turned on, even in Outlook 2013. There is a useful article on the TeamScope web site that shows you how to turn on the outlook: protocol system-wide.

One minor wrinkle though if you use Office from an Office 365 subscription – the location for Microsoft Office applications is different! You will find them at: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office 15\root\office15.

Here then is the registry code that you need to enable the protocol:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook]
"URL Protocol"=""
@="URL:Outlook Folders"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\DefaultIcon]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office 15\\root\\office15\\OUTLOOK.EXE\""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\shell]
@="open"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\shell\open]
@=""
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\outlook\shell\open\command]
@="\"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Office 15\\root\\office15\\OUTLOOK.EXE\" /select \"%1\""

Simply save this into a .reg file and open it to install the changes.

Now you can use the outlook: protocol anywhere on the system, great for dynamic web systems. One minor word of warning though – there are dangers! Don’t open links unless you know what they are, where they go and what they do!

To find out how to use the Outlook protocol handler, try one of the following articles:

Slipstick: Using Outlook Links – articles on Slipstick are always useful and knowledgeable.
What’s new for Outlook 2013 developers
How to hyperlink to Microsoft Outlook messages

One final note. I’m now looking to create some tools that link between Outlook and CouchDB. CouchDB provides a very lightweight NOSQL database that uses JSON and JavaScript to great effect. I’m already using it to track statistics on incoming/outgoing emails, linking the web interface back to Outlook via the home page method mentioned at the start. I’m going to have a go at creating a task monitor too if I get the time. I am currently reading only around a quarter of the emails in my work inbox and I really need some tools to improve the situation. Food for some more blog posts hopefully. [1]: outlook:inbox “Activate Outlook and show the inbox”

Microsoft 64-bit Application Support (lack-of)

Julian Knight — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 13:08:44 +0000

Microsoft's 64-bit support is still sorely fragmented as we find out with a brand new laptop trying to access Microsoft SharePoint.

The joys of working with Microsoft products!

So I have a brand-new, shiny 17″ HP laptop. 64-bit throughout. 6GB of RAM and comes pre-installed with 64-bit Windows. You would think, then, that you would want to use 64-bit applications right? Wrong!!

I automatically use the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer to access some Microsoft specific sites (Outlook Web Access and SharePoint 2007). I install and use the 64-bit version of Microsoft Office. Does this work well with SharePoint (from Microsoft)? No!

For starters, you cannot upload an Excel spreadsheet to a SharePoint list like you should be able to. You get an error:

Next you try to switch a list into a “Datasheet” view – which looks a bit like a spreadsheet. Inevitably, you get another error:

To fix these errors, you then have to download and install “2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components“. And you have to use the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).

Low-cost Information Management, Communications and Collaberation Tools

Julian Knight — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:00:47 +0000

Although much of the work I do is for very large organisations and extremely costly projects, being an adopted Yorkshire-man, I’ve always an eye open for a bargain! More seriously, there are many small to medium sized businesses and charities that cannot afford big IT budgets but that still are crying out for good information management, communications and collaboration tools. In this article, I’ve tried to highlight a few tools that I think are worth looking at. I’ve not included anything in this article that requires a monthly or annual cost. All the tools here are available for free at least with limited features. The feature lists given are for the free versions with paid-for key features noted where appropriate. I also note if any of the web sites are blocked by typical enterprise firewalls. There is a lot more than what I’ve shared here, I’ll try to update this article from time-to-time.

Office Applications

Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations are the core of an office application suite. Additional tools might be included such as email, calendar, note taking, formula editing, diagrams, mind mapping.

SSuite Office Software I’ve not tried this free, Microsoft Windows only, office suite but it certainly looks interesting.
Microsoft Office I know that it may seem strange to include this in an article about low-cost solutions. However, you can get Microsoft Office at a very low price from a number of legitimate sources. These include enterprise licenses that allow home use and student licenses if you have a full-time student in the house. Cut-down versions of the MS Office suite are also often bundled with computer sales.
Google Docs This free offering from Google provides a reasonable choice for straight-forward documents but may be blocked from some enterprise sites. You get 1GB of free space and can pay for more if you need it.
Gliffy

Web-based diagramming like a simple version of Microsoft Visio. Free version is limited to 1 user, 5 diagrams and 2mb storage. Otherwise a monthly fee is required starting at US$5 per month.
Other options: Libre Office (forked version of OpenOffice, good enough for most people, not as good as MS Office), AbiWord, KOffice (Linux), iWork (Mac), …
Options not to bother with: Microsoft Live – far too simplistic, unreliable logins, poor sharing compared to Google (though you do get 25GB of free space).

Web Conferencing

Should provide instant messaging, voice, video, whiteboard (shared drawing space) and desktop sharing between computers as a minimum. May also provide meeting management tools, recordings of meetings and other facilities. Will generally be web applications that just require a web browser to access though plugins such as Adobe Flash may also be required and some may provide specific mobile tools.

AnyMeeting

Web-based. Free, advert supported. Up to 200 attendees, 6-way video conferencing. Polls and surveys, invitations, registration forms, optionally charge attendees. Flexible audio options: audio broadcast, conference call, VoIP (computer microphone & headset)
Vyew

Web-based, requires Adobe Flash. Free, advert supported. Up to 10 attendees. Forums, record activity, shared annotation of documents. Additional attendees and other features available on premium versions requiring monthly fees.
Other web-based alternatives: WebEx, GotoMeeting, GoToWebinar, Adobe Connect, Microsoft LiveMeeting.

Voice

Phone-to-phone voice calling.

ChatTime An iPhone app that uses local access numbers in many countries allowing international calls at low rates. Doesn’t require 3G or data access. Note that they still recommend using local SIM cards when roaming. International calls between 2 ChatTime users do not incur additional charges (both users have to call their local ChatTime access numbers).

Project and Task Planning

Tools that help teams and organisations plan complex tasks.

Asana

Team and project online task manager. Free for up to 30 members. Calendar sync, mobile web compatible, multiple workspaces (project categories), multiple projects, email in (new tasks by email), receive email updates, activity feed for each task, SSL connection, iPhone app
ReqMan

Totally free, unlimited users and projects. Project planning, time management & recording, requirements gathering, questionaires, reporting, WIKI, workflow, change requests, test cases, issues.
HappyToDos Online to-do and task management. Projects & tasks, estimate completion dates, estimate effort (hours), time reporting, team collaboration & file sharing.

Other Possibles

I’ve not yet looked at these but will do at some point

zeropc.com (blocked at enterprise site as possible malware)
https://podio.com/ (blocked at enterprise site as “Social Networking”)

Things to remember

When using web-based tools, remember that you may want more than connection security. Many tools claim to be “secure” by using SSL but that only secures the connection between you and them. Your data is unlikely to be stored encrypted on their servers and even when it is, it is even less likely that you can specify your own secure key so that server administrators at their end are prevented from accessing the data. In addition, remember that there are rarely enforceable service level contracts with web suppliers, if their systems fail, or they themselves fail; your data is history.

Microsoft Word Wildcard and Regular Expression Search and Replace

Julian Knight — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:20:05 +0000

One often missed aspect of the Find dialog in Microsoft Word is the ability to use wild cards. In fact, Word not only has the simple wild cards (* and ?) but uses simplified Regular Expression (REGEX) searching. In this article, I’ve put together a number of examples of advanced finds and replaces that I’ve found useful. I’ll update it from time to time.

Reference

[], groups (), repeats @, {}, anchors < > and exceptions ! ^p (to find a paragraph mark) does not work when using wildcard searches. Use ^13 instead. But you cannot use ^13 in the “replace with” field, it doesn’t work. Use ^2 to find a footnote mark Word wildcard searches are “lazy” (they stop at the smallest possible match not the largest as most regular expression tools would).

Examples

Don’t forget to turn on “Use Wildcards” to use these examples. It is in the “More” part of the find and replace dialogs.

Remove leading multiple spaces

If you have ever pasted from an email or text document, you may have come across the problem of some indented and manually wrapped text:

You can find the leading multiple spaces with the code (note that there is a leading space):

So selecting some text, putting this into the “find what” box and doing a “replace all” with nothing will remove all of the leading spaces in the selection. Actually it will remove everything that has at least 2 spaces followed by the start of a word.

Remove single paragraph marks to join lines

Search for: >^13 and replace with a single space. Note that you can combine this in a single step with the previous example as (note again leading space):

Though it should be noted that this can fail. For some reason if the last character on the line is a “/”, Word fails to find a match. Unexplained failures in Word’s find feature is not at all uncommon, it is rather buggy! To replace manual line breaks instead of a paragraph mark, use ^| instead of ^13. The special characters can be inserted from the “Special” button but do note the warning in “Reference” above and in “What you cannot do!” below regarding some of the marks you cannot find.

What you cannot do!

Recently, I needed to replace a load of text in a very large table (around 100 pages). I knew that the text to replace all appeared at the end of table cells but I couldn’t immediately work out how to search for this. My first thought was to do:

It turns out that you cannot search for this! Well, not outside of some VBA anyway. The character is actually an ASCII 07 so you should be able to do:

And using Replace to add to the text, you would have been able to use:

Which would have resulted in “Done in 1.4a but there is still more to do” wherever the original text appeared at the end of a cell. Sadly though, wildcard searches don’t find end-of-cell marker. Thankfully, there is another way that works for most searches.

Will find that text at the end of a cell. The leading * consumes all of the leading text in the cell forcing the search to occur at the end. Putting the * in brackets instead of the search text would allow the leading text to be retained in a replace. Putting both in separate brackets would allow the end text to be moved to the start of the cell with a replace string of:

Links to more information

Microsoft’s Facebook Docs.com fails at the first hurdle

Julian Knight — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 19:00:23 +0000

Had my first test for Microsoft’s new [docs.com][1] this week – and it failed badly. In case you don’t know, Microsoft recently announced a new beta [Office Live link-up with Facebook][1]. You can log in using your [Facebook][2] login instead of a Microsoft Live Id. So you would think that it would be possible to use [docs.com][1] as a collaborative document editor and I suspect that you are supposed to be able to – as long as your documents don’t contain anything complex – such as comments! My wife wanted to share a spreadsheet with some friends – very simple – just a few lines to help them schedule some transport for the kids during an upcoming dance show. [Docs.com][1] seemed ideal for this as they are all on [Facebook][2] so it should be much easier than using [Google docs][3].

The first problem is that [docs.com][1] doesn’t always pick up your existing Facebook login so you have to log in again.
The second problem is that even when you are logged in, there is a large banner asking you to sign up for the Beta programme – very confusing.
The third problem is that the interface does not work correctly with [Firefox][4] – there is no warning of this but there are some things, such as adding viewers and editors, that fail with no proper explanatory error message.
The fourth problem is that only the original creator can add other editors or viewers, there is no way of delegating this.
The fifth, and most serious, problem comes from using cell comments to annotate cells. Apparently Microsoft’s shiny new [online Office suite][5] cannot cope with this. Not only does it not show them on the web page, it will no longer let you edit the spreadsheet online! To compound the problem, when someone else (who has been given edit rights) then downloads the sheet as instructed – there is no way to get the edited sheet back online!! OUCH – it is, in fact, much easier to simply email the document back and forth. Of course, we could have used [Google docs][3] for this. In fact, [Google docs][3] seems to have much better compatibility with [Microsoft Office][6] than Microsoft do!! It had no problem with cell comments. You can also set the document to not require a login, handy as many people don’t have Google logins. But by this time, the audience had lost patience with the technology and done things a different way. It may only be in Beta but Microsoft seem to be determined to demonstrate that they don’t understand user interactions in a collaborative sense nor do they have any comprehension it seems for the need for simplicity. 1 out of 10 for [docs.com][1] then – must try better! UPDATE 2010-06-18: Tried again, this time with [Google docs][3]. I set the document so that anyone can edit it (without needing a Google login), shared the link using Facebook messages and everyone is happy. You can even work on the document together, you actually see other people updating the document. Given that it also supports more useful features than docs.com, [Google docs][3] gets the thumbs up – 10/10 PS: Sorry about comments, I’ve updated the [Blogger][7] theme and it seems to have broken the old comments. If you are desperate to get in touch, feel free to use my [comment form][8]. I’ll put any comments on here manually. [1]: http://docs.com/ [2]: http://www.facebook.com/ [3]: http://docs.google.com/ [4]: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/ [5]: http://www.officelive.com/ [6]: http://astore.amazon.co.uk/muadabit-21?_encoding=UTF8&node=4 [7]: http://blogger.com/ [8]: http://www.knightnet.org.uk/comment.html

Nearest Postcode Search in Microsoft Excel

Julian Knight — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:52:30 +0000

I need to find a load of addresses by proximity to a postcode. I have the addresses in a Microsoft Access database.

Download Paul Jenkinsâ€™s UK Postcode csv and import into Access as a table
Create a query on your own table adding the following calculated field:

<pre>PCregion: Trim( Left( [My Table]![Postcode], InStr( [My Table]![Postcode], &#8221; &#8221; ) ) )</pre>

Create a second query that joins the above query to the imported postcode table. Join on the “PCregion” field created above. Also add in the latitude and longitude fields from the postcodes table
… Well, I couldn’t be bothered to fight with Access so I exported the key tables and used Excel instead! The principals are the same. Load the tables as tabs, load the Postcode data as a tab. Create a front sheet containing the reference Postcode (Create a Named Cell for this “STARTREGION”). Translate the reference Postcode to Latitude and Longitude by doing a VLOOKUP to the Postcode table, e.g.:

Where RC2 contains the reference Postcode and “UK_PostCodes!C1:C4” is the postcodes table (column 3 contains the Latitude and 4 the Longitude). Note that I’ve used R1C1 reference style as it is easier to mix fixed and relative references. Now use the same formula in the main data tables so that you have Lat. and Long. columns added based on the Postcode on each line. Finally add a “Distance” column to each data table with the following formula:

In this case, we’ve used the STARTREGION named cell and the Lat./Long. data is in columns 28 & 29 respectively. The calculation and Postcode reference data came from HM2K’s website: [How to search by nearest uk postcode in php][1]. [1]: http://www.hm2k.com/posts/how-to-search-by-nearest-uk-postcode-in-php

Copy and Paste to OneNote (AutoHotKey script)

Julian Knight — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 09:05:00 +0000

After yesterdays OneNote tool post, I thought I’d do another while I think about it.

Another annoyance of OneNote is it’s lack of control over pasting information from the clipboard. I’ve raised a suggestion with MS to improve this; you can see my comment in the newsgroup.

To ease things a little if you need to copy and paste lots of stuff to OneNote, here is an AutoHotKey script to help. You need to assign this to a hot-key and have OneNote open in the background. Select something and press the hot-key and it will be pasted (using the current default paste option as this cannot be controlled) into the current note in OneNote.

AutoHotKey Script to copy pre-selected stuff from the currently active window
; to the currently open note in OneNote
;
; Usage: #include in your main AutoHotKey.ahk assigned to a hot key
; Limitations:
; 1) OneNote must be open - maybe change this in the future so that content goes to a new unfiled note
; 2) Doesn't swap back to original application
;
; Author: Julian Knight, http://www.knightnet.org.uk/contact.htm
; Version: 2009-04-01 v1.0

; We need a partial title match but we will also reset to previous setting
oldTitleMatchMode := A_TitleMatchMode
SetTitleMatchMode, 2

; Settings
winTitlePart := " - Microsoft Office OneNote" ; Partial title of ON windows

; Copy currently selected stuff
SendPlay, ^c ; Use sendplay to avoid unexpected interactions with Win key

; If OneNote is not started, give up
IfWinExist, %winTitlePart%
{
 ; Save the currently active window title
 WinGetTitle, actWin, A

 ; If OneNote is not active, activate it now
 IfWinNotActive, %winTitlePart%
 WinActivate, %winTitlePart%

 ; Check again, if ON active then paste else error
 IfWinActive, %winTitlePart%
 {
 ; Paste to ON &amp; Add some blank lines
 SendPlay, ^v`r ; Use sendplay to avoid unexpected interactions with Win key
 ; Switch window back to previously active
 WinActivate, %actWin%
 }
 else
 MsgBox, Could not activate OneNote window.

} else
 MsgBox, Can't find ON [%winTitlePart%]

SetTitleMatchMode, %oldTitleMatchMode%
return

Technorati : AutoHotKey, Configuration, Development, Microsoft, Office, OneNote, Scripting Diigo Tag Search : AutoHotKey, Configuration, Development, Microsoft, Office, OneNote, Scripting

Setting list item gaps in Microsoft OneNote (AutoHotKey script)

Julian Knight — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:58:00 +0000

Although I like Microsoft OneNote and use it continuously, it does have a few failings. One of these is the inability to set the default styles and layout for text. In particular, when you create a new paragraph or list entry in OneNote, the default – non-changeable – setting is to have no white space between the paragraphs. This is very poor design and makes more than a small amount of text quite unreadable. I’ve raised this with Microsoft but who knows if or when it might be sorted. In the mean time, I need a far quicker way of changing this. Currently, I’ve had to:

Select the container with the text I want to format
Use the menu to show the List Task Pane ([alt]o/L)
Mouse click on the text box to change (you cannot tab into it)
Change the 0.00 pt default to something like the 6.00 pt that I prefer
Close the List Task Pane Not nice! Having determined that there is nothing clever that can be done in OneNote, I decided that the old standy “AutoHotKey” would be useful. So I’ve created a script for AutoHotKey that will change the inter-list gap for the currently selected container.

OK, so it’s a bit rough-and-ready but it does save a whole lot of time. I’ve got this in my default AHK script so it is loaded whenever I log in and is activated with [win]z.

Technorati : AutoHotKey, Configuration, Development, Microsoft, Office, OneNote, Scripting Diigo Tag Search : AutoHotKey, Configuration, Development, Microsoft, Office, OneNote, Scripting

Critical Bug in Outlook 2007

Julian Knight — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:34:00 +0000

I’ve recently stumbled on a bug in Outlook 2007. Apparently it is quite well known and the only reason that I hadn’t found it was that I don’t use Outlook as my main email client. In fact I only use email on it to handle meeting requests. The bug is that Outlook 2007 ignores the setting regarding sending reply requests for IMAP accounts. If this seems rather irrellivant to you, you might want to think again. If you have an email account that receives SPAM and you access it via IMAP, Outlook 2007 will ignore your setting for reply requests (the setting is defaulted to prompt). Since many SPAM emails have reply requested turned on, you will suddenly find that Outlook is trying to send a whole load of email messages that do not appear in any folder! You haven’t been asked, it is just doing it. This is bad enough as you are now leaking information about your account out onto the Internet – but it gets worse! Outlook does not send the replies out using the account that recieved the SPAM, it sends them out from the DEFAULT account. So if you have, lets say for example, a work account that doesn’t recieve significant SPAM and is your default account in Outlook. Then you have a second, personal account perhaps, that does recieve significant SPAM. You will suddenly find that Outlook is sending hidden emails from your work account – these are the reply responses from your personal account. Now you are leaking information about your work account. Now, there is a new, big update to Outlook 2007 that has just been released. It is not yet on Windows Update but Microsoft are touting it as the biggest and best set of updates for Outlook ever – see Jimmy May’s blog post for more information. Sadly though, despite the hype, the new update does not fix this critical bug. The update – which will be part of the Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Office 2007 – certainly does vastly speed up the operation of Outlook 2007 so there is some good news.

Technorati : IMAP, Microsoft, Office, Outlook, Software, Windows Diigo Tag Search : IMAP, Microsoft, Office, Outlook, Software, Windows

Office on Much Ado About IT

OneNote Missing Features

Tell Microsoft what you want!

Missing Features

Other Questions

Other Issues

What do we get that is “Better”?

Updates

Office 365 Autosave

Macro to open a web URL from Outlook

Outlook 2013 URL Protocol Handler

Microsoft 64-bit Application Support (lack-of)

Low-cost Information Management, Communications and Collaberation Tools

Office Applications

Web Conferencing

Voice

Project and Task Planning

Other Possibles

Things to remember

Microsoft Word Wildcard and Regular Expression Search and Replace

Reference

Examples

Remove leading multiple spaces

Remove single paragraph marks to join lines

What you cannot do!

Links to more information

Microsoft’s Facebook Docs.com fails at the first hurdle

Nearest Postcode Search in Microsoft Excel

Copy and Paste to OneNote (AutoHotKey script)

Setting list item gaps in Microsoft OneNote (AutoHotKey script)

Critical Bug in Outlook 2007