OneNote Print Driver – A 64 Bit Solution
UPDATED: I have released an updated solution that fixes the issues some people had on 64 bit Windows 7. It also enables optional printing to single page or separate sub pages. More details here .
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Short version: I have a solution for those of you needing a 64 bit OS solution for printing to OneNote. Read on for details.
Well… it’s been a long time between posts. Without making excuses, suffice it to say we’ve been crazy busy working on the next release of OneNote. And given strong feedback about the 64 bit print driver issue, I decided to put what little spare time I had into trying to develop a 64 bit OS solution for printing to OneNote 2007 for you, rather than blogging.
So after spending some time over Thanksgiving and Christmas vacations and more than a few evenings coding I now have a solution you can download to enable you to print to OneNote 2007 from 64 bit Vista (and Windows 7 beta if you have it…).
You can see the details, download, installation and usage instructions for the XPS2OneNote 64 bit OneNote print driver solution on codeplex.
I hope it works well for you. Please feel free to leave me comments and suggestions here.
Some additional comments
You can ignore all of this… unless you’re interested in context.
- First, please let me repeat my sincere and humble apology that the included print driver didn’t work for 64 bit OSes as I wrote in my original post explaining why the Send to OneNote 2007 print driver doesn’t work on 64 bit OSes. I know it seems lame.
- Second, please note that while this solution I’ve created works quite well, it’s something of an expedient hack. It leverages the XPS print driver included with Vista and watches a folder for XPS files landing in it. It’s not the sort of solution we could ship as an integrated part of OneNote in its current form. It’s not architected in a way to cleanly integrate into the product (it’s basically a separate watcher exe…). There is a whole lot to shipping release quality software that this doesn’t cover (handling numerous edge cases and exceptions, internationalization and support in a hundred or so languages, patching support, accessibility, full test passes on a multitude of configurations, the ability to support the code base for 10 years and an abundance of other details).
- Given that, here are some caveats: I’m releasing this as a CodePlex project. It was created in my own personal time. It’s not Microsoft officially supported software. I will endeavor to do my best to address any issues that come up. I will make the source code available on CodePlex (once I’ve cleaned up a couple of things), so others can feel free to improve it too. And don’t judge Microsoft by the quality of the source. I’m actually the Group Program Manager for OneNote and I’m not paid to write code professionally these days. We have much smarter people to do that…
- As I wrote in my previous post, the MODI print driver that the original Send to OneNote 2007 print driver is based on is a very old code base that’s frankly a big hairball. Making it support 64 bit wasn’t really viable. I’ve gotten some feedback along the lines of “surely this must be doable, or easy because how hard can a print driver be… or some other print driver supports this”. Well, yes in software anything is possible. And sometimes if you have the right code to start with it’s even easy. But that’s really not the case with the MODI code base. Our solution is to migrate OneNote in the next release to use a print driver code base (that was developed by printing experts elsewhere in Microsoft) that IS modern, DOES support 64 bit and has all these nice flexible characteristics you expect software should have. But unfortunately it didn’t exist yet when we originally created OneNote 2003…
- This migration involves a significant enough shift in the way it integrates with OneNote that it’s not practical to do this as a patch to OneNote 2007 (i.e. it would very materially impact other important things customers have told us they want). So we’re doing it as part of the work for the next release of OneNote.
- I’ve gotten a few heated comments (yes I was even told I was “a gimp” who should “suck rotten eggs”), implying that somehow we’re malicious and conspiratorial, don’t care about our customers and this is all a secret plot to make people pay us more money to upgrade. I will confess that kind of hurt. I can assure you it’s not true. We love OneNote. We want our customers to love OneNote. We work ridiculous hours to try and make that happen and bring you the best product we can. We’re actually a pretty small team. We’re just doing what we can with finite resources.
- And while I know it’s not much consolation, we wrote in the System Requirements from day one that the print driver was not supported on 64 bit OSes. That’s on the box, and it’s on the web site. I know, no one reads System Requirements these days but really we weren’t trying to hide it and 64 bit OS support for the print driver never was a feature of OneNote 2007. So we didn’t remove a feature that was already there as somebody implied.
With that all said I hope this solution works for you and feel free to leave me comments about it.
Comments
Anonymous
April 22, 2009
This is great! I just upgraded to Vista (x64) and came to the upsetting realization that the printer driver was not supported. How exciting that this was posted literally as I was surfing and trying to find a solution. After toying with it a bit the only issues I can find is that if a file is more than one page it inserts into OneNote as a page with subpages rather all on one page like the Send to OneNote option. I can deal with that. I also had a pdf file that was all garbled when it inserted into OneNote. I tried another pdf as well as a Word file and an internet page printout with no issues so it may be the actual pdf file rather than the program. Great fix! Thanks for using your spare time to satisfy all of us cranky OneNote users.Anonymous
April 22, 2009
David Rasmussen released a solution for the Send To OneNote printer not working on 64 bit systems. Anonymous
April 22, 2009
OneNote Group Program Manager, David Rasmussen just released a much requested new powertoy, the "SendAnonymous
April 23, 2009
There's a new website called iheartonenote.com . It's a place to discuss OneNote with other people, shareAnonymous
April 23, 2009
Good old David Rasmussen who is Group Program Manager of OneNote has built (in his "spare" time) a wayAnonymous
April 23, 2009
I have a Tablet PC running Vista Ultimate, and I also have OneNote. I was very excited to read about xps2onenote, but after I tried it for the first time, I received the following error: "had an error in file change handler... The type initializer for 'XPS2OneNote.OneNoteHelper' threw an exception." Any ideas??? Thank you, Joe GrabowskiAnonymous
April 23, 2009
@Joe I'll take a look at this. A couple of quick questions. What version of OneNote do you have installed? I presume it is OneNote 2007? Do you have the SP1 (Service Pack 1) installed? You should be able to see in the help about information. From the exception message, it's possibly an error in the way the code initializes its reference to the OneNote app. You could also try a machine restart and see if it still happens.Anonymous
April 23, 2009
@David It's OneNote 2007 (12.0.6316.5000) SP1 MSO (12.0.6320.5000), part of the Office Ultimate suite. I'll try restarting the computer like you suggested, and will post the results of that later. Thanks for looking into this! I love OneNote, and I've been using it for a few years now, even before I got the Tablet PC last fall. To me, it's an indispensable part of my everyday life -- I returned to college last year after a 20-year "break", and am taking all my classes online. OneNote has been a tremendous help and resource to me in keeping it all straight and organized. But I digress... Thanks again, JoeAnonymous
April 23, 2009
You were right! A reboot fixed the problem! Thanks so much! Can't wait for the next version of Outlook! Take care, JoeAnonymous
April 23, 2009
OneNote Group Program Manager, David Rasmussen just released a much requested new powertoy, the "SendAnonymous
April 23, 2009
Can you do a similar personal free time project to convert OneNote 2007 files to 2003 and vice versa? The incompatible format is another PITA.Anonymous
May 01, 2009
The 64 bit driver works like a charm and deserves the "Wow!" factor accolades. Much thanks to the developer who gave up his free time to get this working on our behalf. I'm using it right now to export some of my Evernote files into Onenote via printing. Though there should be a dedicated Onenote importer for Evernote .enex files which maintains the tags and note titles but that's another story.Anonymous
May 02, 2009
Many thanks! I am new to onenote and quickly found it awesome. I just got my first 64bit machine and not having printing to onenote capability was a pain but a quick search and voila! The download was exactly as you indicated. Works great. My only question: In your notes on codeplex you indicate the software will clean out the folders once sent to onenote. Mine does not clean the folder. Not a big deal since this is easy to do but I thought I'd mention it. Thanks again for spending your personal time on this. I really apprecaite it and it saves a LOT of snipping tool time! Tell them I said you could take a week off work, with pay, for doing this!Anonymous
May 02, 2009
Hey -- could you put up the source code? Personally I don't care how "clean" it is - you should see some of my projects! But I'm getting a silent error and I'd like to be able to download and debug...Anonymous
May 04, 2009
Many thanks for this. I suspect it'll be a bridge to far to get this working on win 7 rc 7100, but I'll give it a try. I'll report back here what I find. Cheers, Josh P.S.: This is just for kicks and I don't expect (or want) David to try and troubleshoot it if it fails - he should be whipping his team to get us the next version of onenote ;)Anonymous
May 04, 2009
Hey Josh, Actually it should work fine on Win 7 RC 7100. That's what I'm running. In fact I developed this on Win 7 (earlier builds) which I've been running internally for 9 months or so now... So Win7 should work fine. Let me know if you have issues. I have some other fixes queued up based on feedback.Anonymous
May 04, 2009
Interesting... It installed cleanly but didn't seem to detect when a file was printed to the directory - at least it didn't do anything that I could detect. I tried restarting several times and no dice. I'm going to try reinstalling it tomorrow, knowing that it was developed on win7 makes me think it might be my office 2007 setup - I only install onenote, word, powerpoint and excel, but not outlook, which I know onenote has multiple hooks into. Also SP2 required several attempts to install, suggesting there may be some other conflict that I haven't identified. Version is 12.0.6415.1000 SP2 MSO. If it is the lack of outlook, that will make an interesting dilemma for me whenever win 7 hits stores. Cheers, JoshAnonymous
May 04, 2009
Hey Josh, That is interesting. I highly doubt it has anything to do with Outlook so you shouldn't have to worry about that. Have you tried restarting the machine since you installed? Some people have found that for some reason or other they had to restart before it started working. If that doesn't work, I'd be interested in any other details. Did you do a clean Win7 7100 install or was it upgrade from beta?Anonymous
May 04, 2009
I am hoping that the search engines will pick up this string for Send to OneNote 64bit, OneNote printAnonymous
May 04, 2009
We have reports of the "Send To OneNote 2007" printer disappearing or stop working. We're lookingAnonymous
May 04, 2009
I just got this from Bruce on the OneNote Test team: It's not optimal, but it does work. I use it hereAnonymous
May 04, 2009
There has been a bunch of feedback and many comments regarding our lack of support for 64-bit WindowsAnonymous
May 06, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 06, 2009
ikes, You shouldn't have to open the file at all. If you're printing the XPS file to the right location ( into the drop folder created on your desktop) then it should automatically pick it up. The main thing to check is whether the app is running. And then confirm you're printing the file into the right location. Do you see the extra OneNote looking icon in your system notification tray? If you right click it it should say "Settings" and "Exit" (just to not confuse it with the somewhat similar OneNote side note icon in the system tray.) Try again with a short document (say 1 page) and see if it works. If it doesn't I'm curious if you have any more details about your configuration. Thanks. An aside on the FireFox issue that shouldn't matter:...The message you're seeing from firefox when you try to open the XPS file is that normally when you double click on an XPS file it opens in Internet Explorer (if that's your default browser) and IE has an add-in associated with it to render and view the XPS files. For some reason when FireFox is your default browser you get the error message you're seeing, because it tries to open it in the default browser and FireFox doesn't know what to do with an XPS file. HOWEVER, this should have no effect on the Print to OneNote solution here, because you should never have to open it, and the XPS2OneNote powertoy should be picking up the file automatically.Anonymous
May 06, 2009
Excellent! I tried a small one page document, then retried my class document and it worked! Very impressive fix, Thank you very much for your time!Anonymous
May 07, 2009
When I try to send to a password protected tab I get a .Net error. I can get around it by sending to the unfiled section but just wanted to share.Anonymous
May 12, 2009
I installed the software but no folder was created in my desktop. I manually created one with the same name, but its not working. Any help please???Anonymous
May 19, 2009
Gonzalo, You shouldn’t need to create your own folder. Can you confirm that the app is running in your system tray (the notification tray to the right of your windows task bar). You should have the regular OneNote icon there and then a slightly different OneNote icon for the XPS2OneNote printer. You can check it’s the right one by right clicking. It should only have two menu items “Settings" and ”Exit”. If it’s not there try restarting your machine and see if it shows up. If it doesn’t then can you try installing it again? If that still doesn't work can you send me mail using the form on this blog with details of OS version, OneNote version and some more details of your steps. Thanks.Anonymous
May 26, 2009
I appreciate your work on this solution and don't expect any support. But I was wondering if there's an obvious fix for the error I'm getting. I am running Windows 7 RC x64 and get an unhandled exception error, "Object reference not set to an instance of an object." I have reinstalled and rebooted and still get this error every time I save the XPS document and select the notebook section for insertion. I can post the specific exception text and loaded assemblies if you think it would be an easy fix. Thanks!Anonymous
May 28, 2009
I have made great use of this Craig! Thanks again for posting this. I've noticed I can no longer do screen snippets (Win+S) from the onenote helper app (normally in the tray). I can live with this because I can still do screenshots using Onenote directly if I have the app open, but if this is a quick fix...?Anonymous
May 30, 2009
Hi there, I was thrilllllled to see that this had been developed... but not so thrilled when I continued to get the "had an error in file change handler... The type initializer for 'XPS2OneNote.OneNoteHelper' threw an exception." Error even after reboot :( I'm using Win7RC 6.1 Build 7100 64-bit, clean install on a newly formatted partition. I'd love to be able to take advantage of all 4gb of my RAM, but OneNote is an absolute necessity for me. Any ideas? Thanks!Anonymous
June 01, 2009
Just a quick update. I see a number of you are getting errors where the XPS2OneNote is getting an error (the exception in type initializer and the unable to get an instance of an object) when using this on the Win7 7100 RC build. I just wanted to let you knonw that I'm looking into this. For some people a restart has fixed this problem, but obviously not for others... I will update when I work out a solution to this issue. Thanks, DavidAnonymous
June 14, 2009
Is the source code going to be posted sometime soon?Anonymous
July 07, 2009
The first time I used it, my PDF file printed into the drop folder but the next menu asking where to put the page in onenote never came up. I restarted my computer and tried again, and now when I open my file (I use adobe reader 9.1.2) and try to print I get as far as naming the file to go into the drop file, but when I hit 'save' my adobe reader becomes non responsive and I have to cancel. Can you advise?Anonymous
July 14, 2009
Hi, Thanks for your comment but no luck : The XPS print to OneNote is showing in my task bar, but is not creating a drop folder. Even if I create it manually, it does not identify when an xps file is in it and it does not send it to OneNote. I have installed it and restarted my tablet several times, but it does not work. I have windows vista ultimate 64. With Office 2007 (SP2). any ideas? Thank you! GonzaloAnonymous
July 15, 2009
Any progress on getting this to work with Win7 7100 RC build? I'm getting the exceptions that others are reporting. Reboots not helping. Thanks.Anonymous
July 18, 2009
Thank you very much for trying to resolve this. The time saved for End Users is enormous and we desperatly need this functionality. While your working on the next gen of OneNote and Office, please make certain that 64 Bit is considered as well as the 32 bit deployments - I believe we have reached a tipping point and 64 bit is eminantly coming of age. I am experiencing the same exception using Win 7 RC1 64 Bit and Office 2007 with all critical updates and patches applied.Anonymous
July 28, 2009
Thanks much for the stopgap solution, David. One thing I've noticed with this workaround: the resolution of the .pdfs I'm inserting into ON2007 seems to be quite low. When I compare them side by side to the same file open in Acrobat there's a noticeable difference in clarity. When printing from a ON2007 inserted file there is also a noticeable blurriness to the printout. I've also tried to print the file as a 600 dpi image but the printout quality is still low. Any ideas? Thanks for your help.Anonymous
August 12, 2009
Is there a way to have the print outs go to just one page in OneNote?Anonymous
August 21, 2009
I have the same question as drayel. I use pdfs that are typically 30 pages in length, and they show up in OneNote as 30 separate tabs.Anonymous
August 27, 2009
Try this solution. It prints everything to the same page/tab. It basically works just like you'd expect it to. http://onenoteprintdriver.blogspot.com/Anonymous
November 21, 2009
The comment has been removedAnonymous
November 21, 2009
Sorry forgot to mention.....its Win 7 Pro, latest Retail version Thanks. DabAnonymous
November 22, 2009
I am also running Windows 7 64-bit Pro now and am also unable to use the program now. When I try to use it I am seeing what everyone else is seeing. "Unhandled exception has occurred in your application" Do you think you would have time to look at this? Thanks Happy Turkey Day!Anonymous
December 19, 2009
It works great! I was very lucky to have found your blog postings as I was searching for a way to fix the "Print to OneNote" problem with my Windows 7 OS. Although there are definitely more steps to inserting a file as a printout now than before when I had Windows XP, I am completely grateful for this option. I just installed it today and all seems well. Thanks for working to find a solution to this problem, David. It makes me feel much better about being an MS user.Anonymous
December 19, 2009
I've noticed that since installing the XPS2 now my "Publish as PDF or XPF" under the File menu in Word and OneNote is gone as well as on Internet Explorer 8. Is there a way to fix this?Anonymous
January 28, 2010
I noticed in a post on Microsoft connect you mentioned you would be updating the XPS2OneNote powertoy to support the option to not set as background images. I was wondering how this is going and if you were also going to be working on this to make the text searchable in the images being printed into onenote? Thanks!Anonymous
August 16, 2010
tengo problemas con el msn que no kiere entrar por favor arreglenloAnonymous
August 28, 2010
Thank you so much, this is amazing. I highly recommend this program to students in general and medical students in particular. My notes have never been more easily organized.Anonymous
September 14, 2010
Program works but my pdf file pages print side-ways or upside down for some reason.... is there anything to remedy this?Anonymous
September 14, 2010
Thank you so much for your hard work :) the program definitely works. However I have a question, my pdf file pages print into OneNote side-ways or upside down for some reason.... is there anything to remedy this?Anonymous
November 08, 2010
Thanks so much... :) This surely has saved me tons of printer paper for lecturesAnonymous
February 19, 2011
it's not working for me now. It used to work for me until a month ago when it just wouldn't save in the XPS print to OneNote folder. so you know what is going on there?Anonymous
February 28, 2011
I often print pdf files into OneNote. While your fix works, I find the picture quality to low for small print pdf files. Particularly, I get very poor results when using Onenotes OCR function. Can I get your fix and the XPS printer driver to produce higher quality images? ThanksAnonymous
March 12, 2011
Its not working in my system windows7 64bitAnonymous
March 13, 2011
thanks so much for your time and effort... you are my hero!!!!! the install was easy and works great.. i got my windows7 64bit yesterday and it wasn't long until i needed this application......... should i try to figure out why they don't have an update for this??? they should also have an update for the,,,,, right click,,,,,,,, "move to folder/copy to folder" drop down... i had to install that too. i missed it a bit sooner than the "print to onenote".Anonymous
June 12, 2011
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 13, 2011
Sharada, Not sure why your "Send to OneNote" print driver has gone. Try to do a repair of the Office 2010 install and that should fix it. Go to "Programs and Features" in the Windows control panel. Find Office 2010. Right click it, and choose "Change" then choose the option to "Repair" the installation.Anonymous
August 18, 2011
Thank you so much! Works perfectly!Anonymous
November 14, 2011
Have just found and installed your fix - works well but not as easy as the original "Send to" and "Print to" options. Had recently got a new PC running Win 7 64 bit but can't afford to upgrade from Office 2007 to 2010 yet due to Microsoft's business orientated prices, so happy to be able to use OneNote again! thanks!Anonymous
January 06, 2012
Thanks a million! I have been reading for 24 hours or more and finally come across your blog and it was a blessing. I've tried all the things out there like creating a generic printer to who knows what now as I thouoht I was going to have a melt down. I got my wife a new computer for Christmas and couldn't get her OneNote to work for anything. Thanks again!!Anonymous
February 08, 2012
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March 01, 2012
I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you! This is a great help!!Anonymous
April 01, 2012
Thanks for all your time. I am running Windows XP Pro 32 bit and can not use the "print to OneNote" feature, when trying, OneNote 2010 comes up and as soon I say "print" it immediaty brings up a warning that says OneNote needs to shut down and it does just that. I'm quite sure I have all the upgrades and service packs installed. Also I have tried the repair function. Oh by the way OneNote 2007 works like a dream on this machine. Any Ideas??? Thank YouAnonymous
April 28, 2012
I gave up trying myself and contacted Microsoft. I was told that kernell32.dll was corrupted and that I would have to restore Windows XP. I did and now OneNote is running the way it should. Thanks, KenAnonymous
May 01, 2013
The comment has been removedAnonymous
June 09, 2014
I had the Send to Onenote on an older machine and loved it. When I switched to Vista I installed your version and it worked great. Then when I went to 7,, I reinstalled it and it works great,,,, most of the time. I never turn my machine off, I just let it sleep. A few times a year,,,, out of the hundreds of times I use Send to Onenote,,, it sends it to the drop folder but not to Onenote. I'm not sure if it has a mind of it's own or something I'm doing but if I turn my machine off and restart,,, everything goes back to normal. A minor inconvenience,, compared to the benefits. It happened again,, a few minutes ago,, so I thought I'd let you know,, in case others have had this "minor" problem, and possibly my cure might work for them. Also,,,, after years of using your product,,, I wanted to thank you for your time and effort.. As a Send to Onenote addict,,,, thanks to you,,,,,, I'm still hooked....Anonymous
October 16, 2015
I appreciate your solution. I had a Vista Home Premium 32-bit OS system and the student version of Office 2007. I upgraded to Windows 7 64-bit Home Edition and Office Professional 2010. A OneNote Onedrive application was installed and the OneNote print driver went away. I downloaded your solution and can use it in most cases just fine. However, many times printing to the XPS printer not only locks up my entire system, but I've noticed that I have to switch the print view to landscape as it cuts off the text. I've also noticed that it only prints the 1st page. When my system locks up, I have to press the windows key to get to the shut down option; press "shut down" and then cancel the shutdown immediately. Usually, when printing to XPS afterwards, it prints to an XPS document without locking up my system again. I used to use OneNote to save job descriptions to refer back to when applying for jobs, and it captured the entire web page for how ever many pages the description was. The XPS solution isn't accomplishing the same thing. Do you have any suggestions as to the settings to prevent my system from locking up and to give me the ability to capture all of the text and pages? Thank you!