Retrieving Notebook Metadata in OneNote 2010

  • Article

Office Quick Note banner

Handy Programming Tips for Microsoft OneNote 2010: Learn how to retrieve notebook meta-data from Microsoft OneNote 2010.

Applies to: Excel 2010 | Office 2007 | Office 2010 | OneNote 2010 | PowerPoint 2010 | Word 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 GetHierarchy method to retrieve meta-data and other data about a 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 ListOneNoteNotebooks()
    ' Connect to OneNote 2010.
    ' OneNote will be started if it's not running.
    Dim oneNote As OneNote14.Application
    Set oneNote = New OneNote14.Application

    ' Get the XML that represents the OneNote notebooks available.
    Dim notebookXml As String

    ' notebookXml gets filled in with an XML document providing information
    ' about what OneNote notebooks are available.
    ' You want all the data. Thus you provide 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
        ' Find all the Notebook nodes in the one namespace.
        Dim nodes As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNodeList
        Set nodes = doc.DocumentElement.SelectNodes("//one:Notebook")

        Dim node As MSXML2.IXMLDOMNode
        Dim noteBookName As String
        Dim temp As String
        ' Walk the collection of Notebooks.
        ' Read attribute values and write them
        ' out to the Immediate window of your VBA host.
        For Each node In nodes
            noteBookName = node.Attributes.getNamedItem("name").Text
            Debug.Print "Notebook Name and Location: "; vbCrLf & " " & _
                 noteBookName & " is at " & _
                node.Attributes.getNamedItem("path").Text
            Debug.Print "Additional data for " & noteBookName
            Debug.Print "  ID: " & node.Attributes.getNamedItem("ID").Text
            ' Not all notebooks will have all additional data below.
            Debug.Print "  Color: " & GetAttributeValueFromNode(node, "color")
            Debug.Print "  Is Unread: " & GetAttributeValueFromNode(node, "isUnread")
            Debug.Print "  Last Modified: " & GetAttributeValueFromNode(node, "lastModifiedTime")
        Next
    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

    The ListOneNoteNotebooks procedure uses the MSXML library to parse the XML returned from OneNote 2010 and outputs the notebook metadata to the Immediate window of Excel.

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.

  • Examine the results in the Immediate window.

Next Steps