Programmatically Opening and Closing a Notebook in OneNote 2010

Handy Programming Tips for Microsoft OneNote 2010: Learn how to programmatically close, open, and 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 CloseNotebook, OpenHierarchy, and NavigateTo methods to close, open, and then navigate to a notebook in a new window. 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

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 CloseOpenAndNavigateToANoteBook()
       ' 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 Notebook name.
           Dim noteBookName As String
           noteBookName = node.Attributes.getNamedItem("name").Text
           ' Get the Notebook path.
           Dim noteBookPath As String
           noteBookPath = node.Attributes.getNamedItem("path").Text
           ' Get the Notebook ID.
           Dim notebookID As String
           notebookID = node.Attributes.getNamedItem("ID").Text
   
           MsgBox "Closing notebook " & noteBookName, vbInformation, "Closing"
           ' Close the selected notebook.
           oneNote.CloseNotebook notebookID, False
   
           MsgBox "Opening notebook " & noteBookName, vbInformation, "Closing"
           ' Open the notebook that was just closed by
           ' passing the path to OneNote. In addition, pass a parameter
           ' to get the new ID for the notebook which could be used
           ' for other operations.
           Dim reOpenedID As String
           oneNote.OpenHierarchy noteBookPath, "", reOpenedID, cftNone
   
           ' Using the reOpenedID to navigate to the re-opened Notebook
           ' and show it in a new Window.
           oneNote.NavigateTo reOpenedID, "", True
       Else
           MsgBox "OneNote 2010 XML data failed to load."
       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 CloseOpenAndNavigateToANoteBook procedure uses the MSXML library to parse the XML returned from OneNote 2010 and then get the list of notebooks. It then uses information about the first notebook found to first close it, then re-open it, and finally to navigate to the notebook in a new window.

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 displays messages that the OneNote 2010 notebook is being closed, opened, and then displayed in a new window.

Next Steps

• Quick Note Scenario: Handy Programming Tips for OneNote 2010