How to get back “Send to OneNote” on Vista x64
I decided that my first post was going to be a useful one, so here it is:
Several users have been complaining about the missing “Send to OneNote” functionality after installing Vista 64 (see here, here and the several comments on an MSDN blog). The response from Microsoft has been rather indifferent, as they decided not to fix it before the next version of OneNote (see here). As it was one of the featurs I used most, I was seriously thinking about switching back to Vista 32 before a found a solution…
The workaround presented here brings back the support for printing documents into OneNote. Here is a detailled How-To:
- Install Zan Image Printer. The software adds a (actually two) virtual printers that generate images of the printed documents. You can get it from the Zan Image Printer download page. The tool has a 30-day trial and the full version is available for around 50$.
- Configure the Image Printer. The options are found by accessing the printer property page and going to the “Print Settings” page on the “General” tab (sorry I’m on a german locale):
- Go to the “Image” tab and select TIFF and modify the settings according to your preferences (or follow my settings).
- And now the magic bit! Switch to the “Settings” tab and select “Application” from the list box on the left side. Browse the OneNote executable (normally located in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12). In the box “Parameters”, add the following text:
/insertdoc "[%file]“
- Try it out! Open a PDF and print it to the Zan Image Printer. The virtual printer should now generate the image, run OneNote which shows the usual dialog:
BTW, once you are satisfied with your settings, you can disable the Zan Printer dialog on the “Save” tab.
Hope this is useful for you and comes on time to prevent you from resinstalling your whole system!
And hey MS, how do you want to convince users to install Vista 64 when your own software is not compatible???
Nils Kaiser
Can you please be more clear about exactly what to type in step 4. It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
No problem, but what exactly do you want me to elaborate on?
Cheers, Nils
My printed Zan Image file from a PDF does not appear in OneNote and, when I open it from its location (either as bitmap or TIF), using “Open With” and selecting OneNote as the program, I get an error box that says: “Files from other programs cannot be opened in OneNote. Select a OneNote file.” I believe that I faithfully followed your instructions, and have spent some time trying to tweak this to get it to work, but I’ve obviously missed something… Please advise! Thank you!
Open With doesnt work as you need to use the /insertdoc parameter for inserting images, Open With does expect a Onenote file.
Try the following command line (in the console or the run box in the start menu):
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\onenote.exe /insertdoc “IMGFILE”
(Replace IMGFILE with the location of the tiff file generated by Zan Image Printer)
Did you check the box “Run application after printing finishes” and the option “Application” (instead of “Launch default viewer”) on the Settings tab? Are you sure you use the right Zan Image Printer?
Cheers, Nils
I rebooted - sometimes a “power cycle” is golden - and got it to work. Perfecto! Thank you for posting this and for your speedy follow-up to my post! This is great! JG
Nils,
This worked great!! Saved me a rebuild to revert back to 32-bit Vista. Thank you for sharing.
Brian (Austin, Texas)
I really don’t understand why, but every time I try to make the changes you suggest in “Print settings”, and then click on “apply”, it doesn’t save the new settings. It always return to the default parameters. No matter how many times I try to set the Zan printers, it never opens One Note.
Do you have an idea why this is happening?
hey nils
I am following your instructions and i am up to #4 and I am having trouble finding the exe file. Can you help me?
Thank you Thank you Thank you! As a Med student I have been using the cut and paste “horrible method” to try and put in the pdf’s that I have been given and it has eaten up my time the solution you provided was excellent and worked well for me. By the way I found that if you drag and drop the file you want to copy into one note it seems to work also don’t know if it took so long because it was such a large file but it worked still. Once again thank you.
Nils, many thanks for your tip. Not as convenient as the original ‘insert file as printout’, but it works. BTW, the send to OneNote button in Outlook 2007 still works on my machine (Vista 64).
Daniel, for saving the settings in the Print setting dialog, it is required to have administrator privileges. Goto Start, Control Panel, Printers and put your mouse pointer at the ‘Zan Image Printer (color)’ icon. Right click, and move your mouse pointer to (1) ‘Run as administrator’ and (2) ‘properties’. Left click on ‘properties’ and repeat the steps as described by Nils. Then it will work.
Cheers, Dela
Try out this cool little tool. It essentially does the same thing for free and without a print driver.
http://www.borlik.net/blog/archives/000097.html
I hope this can save some people $50.
Nils, I am in the same boat as everyone else. Bought Vista 64, expected it to run the latest Office 2007 (and most importantly OneNote, a key product) and it doesn’t.
I have downloaded the programme and followed your instructions and this is what happens for me: I go to print, select the Zan Image Printer, I get the printing dialogue as it zips along and then I get the Image Printer Dialog box open on the ‘Settings’ tab. I see that the ‘Run application after printer finishes’ tab is ticked and it is set to ‘Application’. In the box I have C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\ONENOTE.EXE. Then I get the ‘Tips’ pop up and when I click ok, I get one of two things. If I am doing this for the first time, I get the image file saved in the location in my documents, but it doesn’t launch OneNote and it doesn’t get added. If I try again I get a warning page giving me options to overwrite it.
I do have the /insertdoc”[%file]” in the Parameters and I have tried adding the following to the application run box:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\ONENOTE.EXE/insertdoc “F:\Users\NWR\Documents\Scanned Documents\”
and
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\ONENOTE.EXE/insertdoc”[%file]”
In essence, the Zan ‘Run application’ is not launching OneNote for me and is simply saving a tiff image of the document into my chosen default save location. Do you have any ideas? Could this be to do with permissions etc? I am set up as an administrator. The settings save fine on closing and reopening the print set up window.
Any help you can give would be massively appreciated!
Nils, an update to the above, If I open OneNote before I try to print to it, I get an error message:
The file name insertdocF:Users\NWR\Documents\test Page.tif is not valid. File names cannot contain any of the following characters: ?*\/:`|*
I sort of see this as progress, just not sure what I need to change to make it work?
Hello Gadgeteer,
To prevent the error message in your second post, we use the ” ” around the file name, which tells OneNote that it is one argument - it thus can contain spaces.
In your first post, both command lines contained errors:
- you need to have a space between the exe (OneNote.exe) and the parameters, and another space between /inserdoc and the file argument.
Additionally, the last parameter (the one which will be set to [%file] in the Zan Printer configuration) needs to point to an image file. In your example it pointed to a directory.
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\ONENOTE.EXE***/insertdoc***“F:\Users\NWR\Documents\Scanned Documents\doc.tiff” (replace *** by a single space character).
Hope this helps,
Nils
Nils, thanks for your prompt post. I get it now. I have put in the spaces and pointed it to doc.tif and it worked first time. Fantastic! Many thanks
Gadgeteer
Nils,
Great fix. I was going to “try” return my new tablet because of this glitch.
Now it works like it should…
J
Very good option. When I saw the grayed out One Note function, I figured it was related to 64bit. This unfortunately is becoming familiar. Thank You Nils for a good alternative. Maybe you could teach Microsoft how to solve their issues.
By the way Travis on August 7th, 2008 posted another option, however, it primarily works with importing Power Point presentations. If that is the file type interested it does work.
However, your solution with the Print driver option is more similar to the native functionality in the 32bit version. Good Job and a great first post!!!
Thank you so much for your help, took a weekend off during med school to setup my new vista x64 machine only to find on sunday night onenote insert as printout was disabled! You’re a life saver!
First off, great product. You’ve saved me a refresh, like most other people.
However, I’m having problems with multiple pages showing up. When I “print” a one-page document, it’s smooth sailing, but when I try to print multiple pages, I only get the first page and the rest are…gone. Any idea?
Once again, you’re a lifesaver.
I can’t find the OneNote executable file. Can you help me out?
Thank you so much for this. It worked perfectly! You are a complete life saver.
Ya that’s nice… their is an alternative method… perhaps you notice the “Print as XPS” option in all programs…
xps is like a xml file that says how the file looks so a printer can print it…
It’s a pdf file basically… and it is possible to view them: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=b8dcffdd-e3a5-44cc-8021-7649fd37ffee&DisplayLang=en#filelist
I had to install the eps viewer (i’m on vista ultimate 64bit)
After that i can now print stuff as xps file… and open it with viewer.
Unfortunately it lacks the important feature of letting you copy it (which is what i used one note for… i.e. SEnd to OneNote… then open one note and copy it to word (ya i had weird reasons for that… basically programs that printed graphs and i wanted to insert the graph into my document)
So i’m sure with a little looking a program can be found that better handles xps so you can copy pages as images
An outstanding alternative. So david and daniel…… the code is too large? the Task too great? It doesn’t fit with current product priorities? It seems to be all too familiar.. why implement a simple elegant solution when a large lengthy, and costly approach will do.
Quark.
Evista breast cancer….
Side effects of evista. Evista. Buy evista online….
So will this solution not work with multiple pages? (Referring to a few posts back.) I don’t want to shell out $50.00 if it is not going to work.
Are there any freeware printer drivers that feature the same functionality as Zan? I’d rather not have to shell out $50 if I don’t need to.
Will I still be able to “Search” after installing this?
PDFCreator, which is free and open source can also accomplish this task without you shelling out $50.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
after you install it (you may need to run the installer as an administrator) you can change the options so that it defaults to outputting TIFs instead of PDFs. You can also define an action to be performed after printing. Pretty much the same procedure as listed above. It’s just cheaper.
Thanks Tim! That sounds great, I will have a look at it and update the article to use PDFCreator instead!
Cheers,
Nils
“”And hey MS, how do you want to convince users to install Vista 64 when your own software is not compatible???”"
Cant agree with you more. Vista is a complete wreck of a operating system and Ive hated it since day one. Ive been in complete frustration over this onenote thing and im a student, so it would have been useful if MS can get off their lazy asses and try and make a operating system that runs all their own software and then stream off all these vulnerability fixes every other day for this junk of a OS.
Anyways, glad someone found a fix, I think Acrobat Pro supports a save in tiff format option so that might also be a option (mind, it will print each individual pdf slide as a single page and then those have to all be imported into OneNote). Thanks once again!
Great stuff here. Just wanted to confirm that Tim’s suggestion to use the free PDFCreator (open source app above) works great.
I named the printer using the PDFCreator driver “Print to OneNote” in Windows and added the after save action to run OneNote with the parameter as per above and all is well.
cant make it work with pdf creator i use /insertdoc “[%file]“ but the file dont go to onenote
Thank you Nils. This solution worked exactly as you said it would. In Gratitude … tomas
Jason:
how did you make pdfcreator work ? what are your settings?
Regarding using pdfcreator:
double click on pdfcreator icon (desktop) after install the program
click on Printer tab (there are 4 tabs: Printer, Document, View ,and ? )
choose”options”
under “Save”, choose “TIFF” for “Standard save format”
under “Actions”, at Program/Script: choose Onenote.exe by: (vista64)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\ONENOTE.EXE
at Program parameters: i put /insertdoc “[%file]” but it doesnt quite work for me.
Anyway, once , when you try to print a pdf file with pdfcreator, it will be saved as *.TIFF file at the location you want,
After that, all you need to do is: open OneNote, insert the new .Tiff file that you just convert, then boom! it will be just like print file option.
I am trying to get the PDFCreator version to work. I am able to print as a TIFF and I am also able to get it to open OneNote. However, I can’t get it to insert the TIFF file in OneNote. I used /insertdoc “[%file]“ in parameters but it doesn’t work. It simply opens OneNote on a blank page in the Unfiled Notes section.
Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Muna and Dylan,
In the program parameters field write:
/insertdoc “”
That should solve your problem. I prefer Nils’ Zan Image Printer workaround (thanks!); however, when I print PowerPoint presentations to OneNote all the slides are rotated 90 degrees clockwise! I’m trying to figure out a solution to this but in the meantime has anyone encountered and solved this particular problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated!
OK, forgive my HTML ignorance. Just enter in
/insertdoc
followed by a space, in front of the text that’s already in the Program parameters field.
I figured out the PowerPoint problem. In the “Print what” drop-down menu in the Print dialogue box choose Handouts and use 1 per page to get the biggest slide possible. I have the “Scale to fit paper” and “Frame slides” checkboxes checked as well, though it may work without them being checked (I haven’t tried). The slideshow should now appear in OneNote in the correct orientation. Thanks again Nils!
The PDFCreator is a great idea, however like the above users, when doing this, there’s a blank page opened. I think the parameters need to be different. What would be the appropriate parameters for PDFCreator since the parameters for the Zan printer don’t work here.
for PDFCreator, try:
Program parameters:
/insertdoc “”
Also, uncheck the “Wait until program/script is ready”. If you don’t PDFCreator will pause until you close OneNote and you won’t be able to print into OneNote while it is open.
… that worked for me — using PDFCreator’s own mark-up language.
—-
As a note, PDFCreator will save the command fine, but it doesn’t seem to like it if you try to re-open options after this (it gives a series of error messages, which you can continually click “Next Command” to get through; it will also reset some of your settings if you try). But it works fine if you don’t go back into the options.
If you do go back into options, I suggest a reboot (or for the more technically savvy, ending the PDFCreator process via the task manager).
—-
For those looking at supressing the PDFCreator pop-up at print, you can choose to enable Program -> Auto-save. Check the box and set the type to TIFF.
Just for simpler file management, I would also update the Filename to (it’s default set as a datestamp only), and change the Auto-save directory to PDFCreator\. This should make your filenames more intuitive and easier to mass delete (which I intend to do)
oops… for the above it is:
/insertdoc “(less than)OutputFilename(greater than)”
where (less than) is replaced by “”
I can never remember my html escape characters…
Updated instructions for a fully automated print to OneNote solution with PDFcreator.
Regarding using pdfcreator:
double click on pdfcreator icon (desktop) after install the program
click on Printer tab (there are 4 tabs: Printer, Document, View ,and ? )
choose”options”
Optional: under “Save”, choose “TIFF” for “Standard save format”
FULLY Automated solution: under “Auto-save”, choose “TIFF” for “Autosave format”, “sendtoonenote” for “Filename”, “C:\” (or path of personal preference) for “Use this directory for auto-save”
under “Actions”, at Program/Script: choose Onenote.exe by: (vista64)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\ONENOTE.EXE
at Program parameters: i put /insertdoc “c:\sendtoonenote.tiff” (else update with path of personal preference)
NOTE: I’ve unchecked “Wait until the program/script is ready” to resolve some PDFcreator hand-ups that seem to occure when OneNote is open.
The tiff file can grow up to a 1GB for large multi-page documents, though it is overwritten just fine by PDFcreator on next use.
Also PDFcreator doesn’t seem particularly stable but when it works it’s worth it as a x64 OneNote print driver until the MS Office team gets a clue.
Ok, so I followed the updated instructions from “AltTab” exactly. And I still can’t get it to work. When I do it, I just get a blank page in OneNote.
I’m stumped.
My best guess. Good luck.
Literal entry for program parameters under the action after saving section:
/insertdoc “c:\sendtoonenote.tiff”
This is command line parameter which requires quotes.
AltTab - thank you so much for your post using pdfcreator! It works perfectly. My tablet has a new life (and saves me the very long process of backing up, reformatting in 32-bit, and then restoring everything).
Dylan - just check the name of the file. I think by default pdfcreator saves it as a *.tif, not a *.tiff. This may help.
Again, many thanks.
Whenever I follow these exact instructions, here is what happens: I print to the PDFcreator driver…. OneNote opens up to a blank page in Unfiled Notes section…..PDFCreator asks me where I want to save the TIFF…..I click save……The TIFF then opens up with my picture viewer.
Good catch. Tif with one f is correct. Here are a few pictures of a working config. Uninstall/reinstall if you have too and match this config and you should be good.
http://i43.tinypic.com/1z72d84.png
http://i41.tinypic.com/euj7f4.png
On a related note:
If anyone knows how to improve the text quality in PDFcreator; do share. ‘As is’ it’s just good enough that I don’t want to dig into this but… it is not as nice as the x86 Onenote print driver.
Got it! Ghostscript has parameters for improving image quality. Now I’m 100% happy with PDFcreator.
Improve the default print quality by adding the following under ‘Ghostscript’:
-dTextAlphaBits=4 -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4
http://i41.tinypic.com/10z1b4k.png
For folks having issues with landscape printing vertical… your dealing with images not text. Read this: http://tinyurl.com/98oam7
I image PDFcreator’s auto-rotate is just a feature for use in producing PDFs and I haven’t seen it rotate tifs.
Though when the source is PDF>Onenote, I find that Foxit PDF reader has a robust print system which allows me to turn off the Windows ‘auto-rotate’ (in any printer) as needed. Leading to the correct Onenote orientation; but with white space above and below.
Ok folks enjoy. AltTab out.
Thanks to all of you for this work around.
One problem I had that I tracked a solution down on PDFCreators sourceforge bug tracker is that I had to disable DEP for PDFCreator.exe. PDFCreator installed fine, but when I clicked on the “Options” button I would get an error and the app would close. You can view the thread at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2126891&group_id=57796&atid=485457
Thanks again, all works good now.
I’m confounded. The TIF with one F kept it from opening with my picture viewer, but it still isn’t working correctly. I set up my PDF Creator options exactly like the 2 screen shots that Alt-Tab provided.
When I print to the PDFcreator driver…. OneNote opens up to a blank page in Unfiled Notes section. If I check the save folder that I specified in the filepath in Auto-Save, the TIF file is there but it just won’t insert into OneNote.
Argghhh….
Dylan, here are my settings, maybe they’ll work for you.
Under the Autosave section:
Enable the ‘Use Auto-save’
Filename is:
Check “Use this directory for auto-save”
Choose a directory
make sure “after auto-saving open the document with the default program” is NOT checked.
Under Actions and then Actions after saving, do the following:
Check the “Action after saving” check box
Next to Program/Script, click the … button and then find the OneNote executable, mine was in: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\ONENOTE.EXE
Program parameters should be: /insertdoc “”
I have the “Wait until program/script is ready” box checked, but I guess others don’t use that.
I think that is all that I changed. Good luck. Also, just to make sure, you are using onenote 2007 right? I don’t know if OneNote 2003 uses the same command line parameters.
Ok, I’m really confused.
I’m using Zan Image printer.
I followed all directions word for word but after going through all the steps (print pdf, change to Tiff, change the settings, ect.) there is no final Image or document…
After clicking OK to print, with all the settings correct, another box appears indicating the printing status (which is normal). after that reaches 100% it closes, but there is no final document anywhere on my computer…
is there an issue with the set up? How do I fix this?
Thanks!
I’m using PDF Creator and got it to work. Thank you for this website and the info to get it working. Only problem is when I try to print, especially with PDF files I cannot get the orientation landscape. I got it to work in portrait but there are a lot of white space. Has anyone figured out how to get TRUE landscape?
same here, HELP
Thank you! I got it to work using PDFCreater after a bit of fiddling.
Can someone explain (in moron terms, so I can understand) how to disable DEP for PDFCreate? I keep getting the error messages when I open options, so I want to try to change this setting. I’m using Vista 64 Home Premium.
thanks!
Kal,
I had to do the same thing and this worked for me.
I’m using Vista x64 Ultimate so I think you should be able to follow these same steps.
1. Click START>Rt click COMPUTER>Lft click PROPERTIES
2. Lft click ADVANCED SYSTEM SETTINGS, you should get a UAC prompt, click Continue
3. Click the ADVANCED tab
4. Click SETTINGS under the PERFORMANCE section
5. Click the DATA EXECUTION PREVENTION tab
6. Click ADD and browse to the executable for PDFCreator, on my PC the path is C:\Program Files (x86)\PDFCreator and in the PDFCreator directory you will find PDFCreator.exe. Select it and click OPEN.
7. You should see PDFCreator.exe listed in the window within the DEP tab and it should have a check in its checkbox.
8. Make sure that the radio button is selected for “Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those I select:”
9. Click OK and OK on the next window and you are good to go
Good luck!
Nils,
Please delete my last post and this one. After fighting the problem for half an hour all of a sudden I can click drag the pages.
Go figure….
Sorry to waste your time
I have read and tried everything listed up above but I am still having trouble. I am using the Zan Image Printer and I am only able to get a blank page in OneNote. Under Applications I have C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12/ONENOTE.EXE and under Parameters I have /insertdoc “c:\sendtoonenote.tiff” and still not working right. Also the wait for completion box is not checked. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
YOU ROCK! Thanks for posting this! ~D)
Gotta say, thanks, I spent many hours, if not days trying to figure out how to get PDFs into OneNote 07, and this finally works. I do get errors going back into the options of PDFCreator, but it just seems to change auto-save from tif back to pdf, not sure why, think it’s the DEP thing, but as long as I change it back it’s fine, and I don’t think I’ll be changing the options much, so I hope it sticks after a restart, I guess I’ll test that in a few. Anyways I was going through the options of OneNote, trying to change the template, found something that might be interesting for those who haven’t found this yet. But if you go to “Tools>Options,” then go to the “Send to OneNote” section, you can have it send the pages directly to the current section, instead of a new section. Seems to work for me so far.
You rock!
I am a doctoral student, and I only upgraded to 64-bit because I got a great deal on a used processor that came with 8 gigs of RAM. Here I thought I’d be on the cutting edge… and I couldn’t run one of the functions I have come rely heavily on in my work!! Argh….
Thank-you so much for finding/creating this work around. Hey Microsoft… go **** y******f if you can’t fix your own software to work with your own operating system!
Hi there,
Thanks you techy friends. I just found this thread a this morning and I up and running with the freebie PDF Creator. It opens and inserts just fine all on it’s own. Whoopee!
Thanks again for sharing,
I have tried and tried to get the free PDFCreator to work because I am too cheap too pay for Zan Image Printer. But PDFCreator never works quite as I want it to when printing to OneNote.
Here is another solution that I came across to print to OneNote on 64 bit OS. It is called XPS2OneNote.
I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it is on my list of things to do. If anyone else tries it, post your thoughts.
Here is the link: http://xps2onenote.codeplex.com/
I have been using the XPS2OneNote solution for about a month and all works well.
Herb Tucker,
That is good to know. I might have to give it a whirl.
Thanks
I have tried the PDFCreator solution, but cannot get it to work, except when I “Print Test Page” from within the PDFCreator Options–>General Settings dialogue.
I also tried the XPS2OneNote solution, but it throws an error and never gets to OneNote.
Oh well.
edsager
Whelp, as stated above in at least one post, a restart of the computer really does make a difference. I restarted and the PDFCreator solution works. I am a happy man now.
Thank you for the solutions provided,
edsager
I wanted to thank Nils and the other here for this easy solution to the OneNote import/64-bit issue. I’ve implemented both this and the XPS2OneNote solution, and have found the solution here perhaps a better choice for me: no consumption of memory, and no screens to have to fll in along the way (as long as you set matters into the auto mode)–a near automatic process.
The power of people-solving (thanks again, Nils), and people working together!
Wow this is awesome. PDFcreator is the way to go.
If you are having trouble try what AltTab has posted, it worked (for the most part) for me. I had to change the auto-save directory from c:\ to My Documents. If you do this … remember to adjust the action parameters to point to the right spot. (when following AltTab instructions change C:\ to the path of your directory)
Thanks
anyone know how to increase the clarity of files when they are transferred to OneNote? I have having trouble seeing some of my complicated slides after using zan to print into onenote.
thank you
Just set up the PDFCreator and it works perfectly. Too bad Microsoft is so messed up that they can’t fix this any faster. Now with this fix, I don’t care! Thanks soooo much for posting this!!
I was wondering if anyone knew how to make it delete the tif file after inserting it into onenote?
Just had to drop you a line that this solution, combined with the PDF Creator tip, is just great. Now I have my Send to One Note back from Windows 64.
Thanks again: Micheal Axelsen