Every command that updates a page, have an option to copy to clipboard - workaround for page edit issue

[jasonjac2]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. When oneMore edits a page it has to update the whole page and for me this means I can't use them because I need to keep the editor history of who edited which paragraphs.

Describe the solution you'd like A good solution would be to have a top level option that you can easily turn on and off and when you turn it on, instead of it updating the page when it would normally insert something, it just copies it to the clipboard. When invoked you could get a popup (as in a non-modal, hint) saying "copied to clipboard"

Describe alternatives you've considered

• Run the command, copy the insert, undo the insert, paste the insert
• Ask to get these updates done via a more reliable vector - GraphAPI
• Get more detail on the issue, so I can lobby MS via the forums to fix the problem.

Additional context Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

THE FINE PRINT This is a hobby project that I started for myself. I'm happy to take requests and will promise to consider each one carefully but offer no guarantees that I will ultimately agree to their usefulness or have time to implement any of them. If OneNote offers a "close enough" work-around then I will probably reject the request - you've been warned!

[jasonjac2]

Experiential Branch... :-).

[stevencohn]

OneMore doesn't use the GraphAPI. It only relies on the COM API provided by the desktop edition of OneNote. It does this so the user doesn't have to be online or use MFA to get it working in the desktop app.

Regardless, it's not really possible to copy "changes" to the clipboard. These would be expressed in OneNote's 2013 XML schema which is not directly compatible with the GraphAPI which would be a complete rewrite of OneMore... and an entirely different app in the end.

[jasonjac2]

Thanks Steven for the explanation on why it won't work by using Graph API. That was my "Describe alternatives you've considered". My main request was to be able to copy the changes to the clipboard.

"Regardless, it's not really possible to copy "changes" to the clipboard. These would be expressed in OneNote's 2013 XML schema which is not directly compatible with the GraphAPI which would be a complete rewrite of OneMore... and an entirely different app in the end."

Are you saying the changes you make via the COM interface couldn't be copied to the clipboard and then me interactively paste them where I want? I thought it would work because you already have items where you copy stuff to the clipboard that I can paste directly into ON pages.

If that is the case, then I guess the only other 2 options are:

• Have a scratch page target that is a kind of "instead of injecting into the page, inject onto the scratch page"
• Have an "after command" hack like I do - select change, copy, undo, click where you want it, paste.
• Have you or anyone logged the issue with MS, i.e. somewhere I can +1 and lobby for MS to fix it.

[stevencohn]

So I'm not going to extend every command in OneNote to provide the option to work off of a scratch pad regardless of the implementation. This vastly complicates not only the code but also the user's workflow.

If we go back to your original concern of tracking users, is it about basic auditing, tracking who made what changes? Doesn't the built-in page history tracking solve this already? When you enable page version history, all changes are tracked by OneNote itself and you can always go back and view historical changes along with who made those changes.

[jasonjac2]

"So I'm not going to extend every command in OneNote to provide the option to work off of a scratch pad regardless of the implementation. This vastly complicates not only the code but also the user's workflow." I totally get that. I was hoping there may have been a generic "updated" method that could be intercepted.

"go back to your original concern of tracking users," Not really for audit, but all our valuable pages have evolved over time and the who le page is rarely reviewed in one go. So there is the timeliness of the information, e.g. I'll be looking at a page on "resizing a disk" and there is a process and the page has been improved. I'm reading and wonder when it was edited, so I right click and can see that the zyx step was last edited by bob 8 years ago or 1 week ago - it changes how I react / perceive the relevance of the data. "When you enable page version history," This is turned on by default, but suddenly there is a lot of friction to find out when and who and so you don't use it all the time.

What I would normally want to do is: goto a page, update the ToC immediately to know I am can see the scope of the content, then read relevant sections or as I am reviewing, just add a back and forward link to another part of the ON notebook. I can't do that with an add-on without doing my Invoke, copy, undo, paste.

I am coming to realise that the way I / we use ON must be pretty unique and it may be that pages are used for years and bits and pieces are updated.

Thanks for considering it though :-). As I think I posted here or elsewhere, even the GraphAPI seems to break pages on "replace".