Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Save Surface Pro storage space with OneNote Web Links

So, we all know that you can right-click on a page in OneNote to get a link…

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…that we can then paste into another page as a convenient hyperlink to that page:

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But did you know that, assuming the page is stored in the cloud (OneDrive, SharePoint), if you paste that link outside of OneNote, you also get a link to the web version of that page?…

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Results may vary depending on where you paste – in Notepad, for instance, it just pops in two huge ugly URLs – but Yes one of them is a Web link and the other a local link.

This also works on the modern UI version of OneNote; haven’t tried on the free desktop version.

Why is this important? Let’s say I want to look at a link to a page that resides in a really large notebook. If everything’s local, it’ll work – by opening a local copy of that notebook, and proceeding to sync down onto my device all the other pages that I might not be interested in.

But by using the Web link, I get to see the page (including handwritten notes) w/o worrying about my device storing all the extra files. This is also a good practice when sharing links with colleagues – let them decide whether they want a local copy of your notebook, or if they’d rather just take a quick peek at the Web version.

You’re welcome…  ; )

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