Our Notebooks have the following structure

Notebooks = teachers
Section Tabs = students
Pages = weekly lesson notes

We often want to locate past students' notes quickly via ON Search but
cannot. There are over 1,000 section tabs split across several teachers.

Does ON2007 find text in the Section Tabs? or just text in the Notes.

Perhaps we need to add the student's name separately in the body of the
notes for Search to locate the student quickly?

Sorry if this has been asked and answered. I've looked through the NG
archives but could not find this point addressed.

--
Regards

John Waller

Do you have Windows Desktop Search 3 installed? It should find them
without a problem...I have thousands of pages, and it very rarely fails
to find an item. My OneNote is quite similar to yours.

Here is a caveat, the notebooks MUST be open for OneNote to search them.
Meaning, if you have 30 teachers, you must have 30 notebooks open
(that is assuming teacher A has one notebook and teacher B has another).
If that is a problem, you could try opening the folder that contains
all of the teacher's folders as a notebook, and then the teachers would
all show up as "section groups". This might serve you better...

let me know if that helps :)

erik

John Waller wrote:
> Our Notebooks have the following structure
>
> Notebooks = teachers
> Section Tabs = students
> Pages = weekly lesson notes
>
> We often want to locate past students' notes quickly via ON Search but
> cannot. There are over 1,000 section tabs split across several teachers.
>
> Does ON2007 find text in the Section Tabs? or just text in the Notes.
>
> Perhaps we need to add the student's name separately in the body of the
> notes for Search to locate the student quickly?
>
> Sorry if this has been asked and answered. I've looked through the NG
> archives but could not find this point addressed.
>

Hi Erik,

Thanks for the response.

> Do you have Windows Desktop Search 3 installed? It should find them
> without a problem...I have thousands of pages, and it very rarely fails to
> find an item. My OneNote is quite similar to yours.

Yes, it's currently re-indexing. I'll see if it improves when the
re-indexing is complete.

> Here is a caveat, the notebooks MUST be open for OneNote to search them.
> Meaning, if you have 30 teachers, you must have 30 notebooks open (that is
> assuming teacher A has one notebook and teacher B has another).

Yes, that's how we work. We have 5 teachers opening their notebooks on their
PCs reading the Notebook data from a server.

All teachers have all notebooks stored on the server (i.e. all teachers
notes plus archived student lessons which we store in a separate notebook)
open each time they open ON2007. ON2007 is open all day, every day on each
teacher's computer.
http://www.leannehoad.com.au/temp/on2007_screenshot.png

> If that is a problem, you could try opening the folder that contains all
> of the teacher's folders as a notebook, and then the teachers would all
> show up as "section groups". This might serve you better...

Hm, I'll have a think about that option.

Thanks again, Erik.

--
Regards

John Waller

John,

thanks for the screenshot. You won't need to do the section group
option (5 isn't that many).

Here is my recommendation for the index...go to the index options and
change the scope of the index to not index any folders. The OneNote
index is just a file (it is a long filename that shows up in the
"indexed files" area--or whatever it is called). IMHO, my OneNote
search is much more important than searching other files on my computer,
so, I removed everything but the OneNote and Outlook indices.

Technically you don't have to remove the other files from the index,
but, I have found that it does improve my index stability. Also,
closing and opening a notebook will do a "brute" index, so, it might
help to close and reopen a notebook.

If this is the first time running the WDS index, you may want to let it
run overnight.

How big are the notebooks on the server (filesize)?

Go to Olya veselova's blog. She is the MS product manager in charge of
searching in OneNote. She has some really good tips about how to test
your searching functions. Now that I think about it, here post about
searching was actually posted on Daniel Escapa's blog.

Lastly, how is it working on the other computers? They all have their
own index file, so, you can test things out on other computers as well.

holy cow, sorry about my rambling...

erik


John Waller wrote:
> Hi Erik,
>
> Thanks for the response.
>
>> Do you have Windows Desktop Search 3 installed? It should find them
>> without a problem...I have thousands of pages, and it very rarely fails to
>> find an item. My OneNote is quite similar to yours.
>
> Yes, it's currently re-indexing. I'll see if it improves when the
> re-indexing is complete.
>
>> Here is a caveat, the notebooks MUST be open for OneNote to search them.
>> Meaning, if you have 30 teachers, you must have 30 notebooks open (that is
>> assuming teacher A has one notebook and teacher B has another).
>
> Yes, that's how we work. We have 5 teachers opening their notebooks on their
> PCs reading the Notebook data from a server.
>
> All teachers have all notebooks stored on the server (i.e. all teachers
> notes plus archived student lessons which we store in a separate notebook)
> open each time they open ON2007. ON2007 is open all day, every day on each
> teacher's computer.
> http://www.leannehoad.com.au/temp/on2007_screenshot.png
>
>> If that is a problem, you could try opening the folder that contains all
>> of the teacher's folders as a notebook, and then the teachers would all
>> show up as "section groups". This might serve you better...
>
> Hm, I'll have a think about that option.
>
> Thanks again, Erik.
>

I've tweaked the WDS3 indexer, done a full index on OneNote files only and
followed Olya's blog etc.

It appears that only the notes are being indexed and not the text in the
Section Tabs.

Every time I do a search for a student's name, search cannot find the
Section Tab.

If I put the student's name as a text note in a page, that note is found
instantly but it is "Page 1 of 1" only.

Is there a way to index the text in the Section Tabs so Onenote Instant
Search can find the relevant section?

--
Regards

John Waller

I've never tried to see if stuff from sections get indexed. Maybe you
could get in contact with Olya.

As a workaround, you can always add the name of the student to the first
homework assignment page. Kindof a hack, but, it will work.

Hoping that Olya chimes in here...

erik

John Waller wrote:
> I've tweaked the WDS3 indexer, done a full index on OneNote files only and
> followed Olya's blog etc.
>
> It appears that only the notes are being indexed and not the text in the
> Section Tabs.
>
> Every time I do a search for a student's name, search cannot find the
> Section Tab.
>
> If I put the student's name as a text note in a page, that note is found
> instantly but it is "Page 1 of 1" only.
>
> Is there a way to index the text in the Section Tabs so Onenote Instant
> Search can find the relevant section?
>