Bringing together OneNote and PDF Annotator

So you have all these PDF Files flying around. Research files, Professor Handounts, ebooks etc. etc. You love annotating with PDF Annotator ( check out the new version - IT SIMPLY ROCKS), but everything you have is in OneNote. Do you just shrug and print the PDF to OneNote and suffer?

You don’t need to. OneNote has this great feature called Insert -> File ( note :- not as PrintOut). This creates a copy of that file and embes it into OneNote. Clicking on it will open it in the associated program, but the file still remains embedded in OneNote. Now clicking on the PDF opens it in PDF Annotator where you can edit it. I recommend deleting the original file after inserting it into OneNote so that there is no confusion. Optionally, you can drag a file into OneNote and it will ask you whether you want to link to it or embed it.

The only drawback of this is that the embedded file is not searchable in OneNote. And be careful, otherwise you’ll soon find yourself using OneNote as a Windows Explorer replacement !!

For those interested in knowing how the files are actually embedded into OneNote follow this excellent post on how OneNote embeds file on Dan’s blog. http://blogs.msdn.com/descapa/archive/2006/09/22/766897.aspx

Inserting a File Steps from the Office Help Website

Diigo: Mark up the Web

Have you wished you could mark up a website? Highlight, add notes and the share it with others? Diggo is a solution to all your needs. Ok I exaggerated, it doesn’t have ink support (damn). However it lets you highlight, annotate, tag , bookmark, blog and share webpages. Isn’t that awesome? If you are tired of printing all those webpages to OneNote just so that you could highlight up the important parts, Diggo is your solution. Sign up, don’t hesitate to download the firefox/IE tool bar, give it a spin and well leave me a note of thanks :).

Go Sign up now http://www.diigo.com/

Marking up PDF’s

There are several solutions/ workaround to getting this done. I just want to share my thoughts on some of them

1) Print to OneNote : This method works pretty well for single page/ small pdf files. A major disadvantage though is the loss of page demarcation as printing just puts them all together. All together a clumsy solution if the PDF is more than a few pages. Also printing large pdf files takes a very long time.

2) PDF Annotator : Great for filling out forms etc. since it opens the PDF file directly. No need for conversion. It however takes a serious performance hit for large files with frequent errors. It’s better than OneNote since it atleast retains the formatting but fails when it comes to annotating large PDF’s. I also find the double scrollbar really irritating.

3) Windows Journal : I just discovered it yesterday I assume most users neglect Journal in favor of OneNote. However the minimalistic nature of Journal is simply great for marking up PDF’s. I printed a 600 page pdf to journal in less than a minute. Journal also gave each page in the PDF it’s own page. In my opinion it beats OneNote and PDF Annotator for annotating PDF’s. PDF annotator has the advantage that it can work directly with PDF files, but Journal coupled with PrimoPDF ( free PDF printer) can achieve the same effect. So if you have large PDF files ( e-books) which you want to mark up, give Journal a try. Note: There is a loss of quality when using the Journal Writer. Thus if the PDF is not of high quality, you are better off using PDF Annotator I think.

Sample Renderings of a PDF Page

1) Adobe Reader

2) OneNote

3) PDF Annotator

Along with the frequent error message

4) Windows Journal

Does anyone have a better solution? Feel free to comment on how you mark up those PDF’s.

Ani