Navigating to a Notebook in OneNote 2010

  • Article

Office Quick Note banner

Handy Programming Tips for Microsoft OneNote 2010: Learn how to programmatically navigate to a Microsoft OneNote 2010 notebook.

Applies to: Excel 2010 | Office 2010 | OneNote 2010

In this article
Add Library References to the Excel Workbook
Add a Standard Module to the Excel Workbook
Add the Code to the Visual Basic Editor
Run the Code
Next Steps

Published:   August 2011

Provided by:    Frank Rice, Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft OneNote 2010 enables you to take and organize notes, include images and web pages, record audio, share your notes with others, and generally keep information from the many parts of your life organized within one simple application. In this topic, you use the NavigateTo and GetHierarchy methods to navigate to and open a specific notebook. To complete this task, you must do the following:

  • Add Library References to the Excel Workbook

  • Add a Standard Module to the Excel Workbook

  • Add the Code to the Visual Basic Editor

  • Run the Code

  • Next Steps

Note

To use the code in this topic, you need to run it from a Microsoft Office 2010 host program. These include Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, and Microsoft Word 2010. However, OneNote 2010 is not considered a host program. Excel is used in this topic.

Add Library References to the Excel Workbook

To add references to the workbook

  1. Start Excel 2010.

  2. On the Developer tab, click Visual Basic. This opens the Visual Basic Editor.

    Note

    If you do not see the Developer tab in Excel, click the File tab, and then click Options. In the categories pane, click Customize Ribbon, select Developer, and then click OK.

  3. On the Tools menu, click References.

  4. Scroll to Microsoft OneNote 14.0 Object Library, and then select it.

  5. Next, scroll to Microsoft XML, 6.0, select it, and then click OK.

Add a Standard Module to the Excel Workbook

In this task, you insert a standard module into the Excel workbook.

To add a standard module to the Excel workbook

  • On the Insert menu, click Module. This adds Module1 to the Projects pane on the left side of the Visual Basic Editor.

Add the Code to the Visual Basic Editor

In this task, you add programming code to the Visual Basic Editor.

To add code to the Visual Basic Editor

  1. In the Projects pane, click Module1.

  2. Paste or type the following Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) code into the module window.

    Sub NavigateToFirstNotebook()
    ' Connect to OneNote 2010
    ' OneNote will be started if it's not running.
    Dim oneNote As OneNote14.Application
    Set oneNote = New OneNote14.Application

    ' Get all of the Notebook nodes.
    Dim nodes As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList
    Set nodes = GetFirstOneNoteNotebookNodes(oneNote)
    If Not nodes Is Nothing Then
        ' Get the first Notebook found.
        Dim node As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNode
        Set node = nodes(0)

        ' Get the name of the first notebook.
        Dim noteBookName As String
        noteBookName = node.Attributes.getNamedItem("name").Text

        ' Get the ID so we can use it to open that specific Notebook.
        Dim notebookID As String
        notebookID = node.Attributes.getNamedItem("ID").Text

        ' Create a message string.
        Dim strMessage As String
        strMessage = "Do you want to navigate to the " & _
            noteBookName & " notebook?"

        If MsgBox(strMessage, vbQuestion + vbYesNo, "Navigate") = vbYes Then
            ' If the user clicks Yes, navigate to the first Notebook
            ' and show the OneNote user interface.
            oneNote.NavigateTo notebookID, "", True
        End If
    End If

End Sub

Private Function GetAttributeValueFromNode(node As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNode, attributeName As String) As String
    If node.Attributes.getNamedItem(attributeName) Is Nothing Then
        GetAttributeValueFromNode = "Not found."
    Else
        GetAttributeValueFromNode = node.Attributes.getNamedItem(attributeName).Text
    End If
End Function

Private Function GetFirstOneNoteNotebookNodes(oneNote As OneNote14.Application) As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList
    ' Get the XML that represents the OneNote notebooks available.
    Dim notebookXml As String
    ' OneNote fills notebookXml with an XML document providing information
    ' about what OneNote notebooks are available.
    ' You want all the data and thus are providing an empty string
    ' for the bstrStartNodeID parameter.
    oneNote.GetHierarchy "", hsNotebooks, notebookXml, xs2010

    ' Use the MSXML Library to parse the XML.
    Dim doc As MSXML2.DOMDocument
    Set doc = New MSXML2.DOMDocument

    If doc.LoadXML(notebookXml) Then
        Set GetFirstOneNoteNotebookNodes = doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//one:Notebook")
    Else
        Set GetFirstOneNoteNotebookNodes = Nothing
    End If
End Function

    The NavigateToFirstNotebook procedure uses the MSXML library to parse the XML returned from OneNote 2010 and open the specified notebook.

Run the Code

In this task, you run the code.

To run the code

  • In the Visual Basic Editor, press F5 to run the code.

  • Observe that the code opens and displays the OneNote 2010 notebook.

Next Steps