"Insert link to file"- where did this go?

Anonymous
2013-02-06T22:04:23+00:00

I'm an attorney, and I created a great litigation and trial-management system using only OneNote.  We put it to use in a large "mass action" case with over fifty plaintiffs and tens of thousands of exhibits.  The system allowed us to completely outmaneuver the plaintiffs at trial, and we were able to line up exhibits, deposition citations, and both direct and cross examination questions from a single program.   We all credit a great deal of our defense verdict to the system.

The key feature that let us build the various pages for trial quickly was the ability to drag and drop exhibit pdfs into the onenote pages as links to files.  Due to the sheer volume of exhibits, as well as the ease of using tables, links were far more effective than inserting the files directly, and certainly more effective than inserting printouts. 

With OneNote 2013, this mission-critical feature appears to be missing.  I can only insert the file, or insert a printout.  I don't want to do either- I want to insert a link.  I know that I can insert links using the manual "insert link" function, but that is slower and more error prone than the simplicity of the previous versions.  Am I missing a key option to trigger?  Or is this a missing feature from OneNote 2013?  If the latter, I suspect we will stick with 2010....

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  1. Anonymous
    2014-05-30T15:37:47+00:00

    Let me at first declare that I don't want to defend this design decision by MS ;-)

    But I think the reason behind is the resulting trouble from creating links to local files in a notebook which resides on Onedrive.

    These local links work only for the creating user. Not for any other user who shares this notebook.

    Bernd

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-05-29T21:14:33+00:00

    Yes, or you could even just hit ctrl-k to open the same dialog, paste in a copied path to the file, and give it a name.  Linking to files still exists.  But this is not the problem.

    The problem is that Microsoft removed the ability to easily create one or several links to files by dragging the files from file explorer onto a page.  This was an option alongside inserting a printout of the file onto the page, or a copy of the file into the page.  It is much, much faster to simply drag a selection of, say, 17 files from explorer to create 17 links than it is to manually create links to the files each and every time.

    This isn't a matter of asking for some new, impossible and difficult feature.  This was a feature of all previous versions of Onenote before 2013.

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  3. Anonymous
    2014-05-29T21:00:42+00:00

    There is a built-in way to link to a file, but it's a little more work.

    Click INSERT, then click the Link icon.  On the dialog that pops up, click the little folder icon that's below the "Address:" line, all the way to the right.  Navigate to your file and select it.  Click Ok.  Its link will then be placed on the page.

    Hope that helps.

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  4. Anonymous
    2014-05-15T18:03:51+00:00

    Any updates here?

    Seems like a highly requested feature... and just ran into the problem myself.

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  5. Anonymous
    2014-03-26T14:24:26+00:00

    Omer,

    I agree this is BIG DEAL.

    Drag and drop that just works has been one of the cornerstones of Windows productivity and is supported in all Office products.  At one point in time, drag-and-drop was being pushed at every turn as the BIG feature of Windows.

    This is really bad.  One of two things happened.

    1. Microsoft forgot to add drag-and-drop.
    2. Microsoft is moving away from drag-and-drop in their flagship products.

    The implications of either of these is very, very bad for me.

    If it's one, I don't know what to say about it.  Micrsoft is a heavy-hitting pro development shop?  Right?

    If it's two, I feel like the 46 year old stay at home mom with two kids, watching her husband chase a 20 year old intern at the office.  I have heavily invested in Microsoft tools because they are excellent productivity tools.  Microsoft really takes the time to engineer the productivity part of the products for expert users.  This is not common anymore.  In chasing after "simplified" no training UI's most other development companies have thrown the power users concerns to the wind.

    Want to add a time stamp quickly in OneNote?  alt-shift-f  Want to start looking at the web and taking notes? ctrl-alt-D.  Need a header? Ctrl-alt-1.  Need to make a check list item? ctrl-1?  I could go on  and on...

    Please Microsoft, don't ditch your power users.  We are invested in your products.  We've been faithful and supporting you for decades.

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