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Can't search All Notebooks. Broken!!

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Theo

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Jun 12, 2009, 1:00:01 PM6/12/09
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Something weird started happening with my OneNote today. I typed a word in
the search dialog near the upper right hand corner. The results that come
back are only for the section that is currently visible on my screen. I know
for a fact that the word I am searching for is in multiple places in my
Notebook but it refuses to search anything but the section showing on my
screen. I've tried toggling the different search areas but nothing changes.

How can I get this thing to search All Notebooks again? What broke? I rely
on this search function to search my notes and now I cannot which will make
this thing useless to me. Please help.

Thank you.

Theo

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Jun 12, 2009, 1:06:02 PM6/12/09
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I forgot to mention...
This is OneNote 2007 fully updated and I have WDS installed which by the way
finds all instances of my search in my Notebooks but clicking on any one of
them does not pull it up in OneNote. Nothing happens. I rely on the search
in OneNote so I really need this fixed.

Theo

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Jun 12, 2009, 5:18:01 PM6/12/09
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Anyone know why my OneNote won't search All Notebooks anymore? Anyone?
Please?

Ron Rosenfeld

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Jun 12, 2009, 7:20:49 PM6/12/09
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On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:00:01 -0700, Theo <Th...@discussions.microsoft.com>
wrote:

I'm no expert, but just to the right of the search window there is a little
down arrow. Clicking on that down arrow reveals a menu where the search scope
can be defined. Probably you need to reset that there.
--ron

Theo

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Jun 15, 2009, 9:59:01 AM6/15/09
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Yes. I've tried every option in that drop down box. When All Notebooks is
checked, it still won't search All Notebooks. It wil only search the page
that is in my view. This is why I need help. The 'All Notebooks' search is
not working. Please! Does anyone know how to fix this?

Rainald Taesler

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Jun 15, 2009, 10:18:45 AM6/15/09
to
Theo wrote:
> "Ron Rosenfeld" wrote:
>> On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:00:01 -0700, Theo
>> <Th...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Something weird started happening with my OneNote today. I typed a
>>> word in the search dialog near the upper right hand corner. The
>>> results that come back are only for the section that is currently
>>> visible on my screen. I know for a fact that the word I am
>>> searching for is in multiple places in my Notebook but it refuses
>>> to search anything but the section showing on my screen. I've
>>> tried toggling the different search areas but nothing changes.
>>>
>>> How can I get this thing to search All Notebooks again? What
>>> broke? I rely on this search function to search my notes and now I
>>> cannot which will make this thing useless to me. Please help.
>>>
>>> Thank you.
>>
>> I'm no expert, but just to the right of the search window there is a
>> little down arrow. Clicking on that down arrow reveals a menu where
>> the search scope can be defined. Probably you need to reset that
>> there. --ron
>
> Yes. I've tried every option in that drop down box. When All
> Notebooks is checked, it still won't search All Notebooks. It wil
> only search the page that is in my view. This is why I need help.
> The 'All Notebooks' search is not working. Please! Does anyone know
> how to fix this?

The only thing that comes to my mind:
Run a "Repair" of ON from the list of installed software (Control Panel).

Rainald

Theo

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Jun 15, 2009, 11:25:01 AM6/15/09
to
Rainald,
Thanks for the suggestion. I just ran a "repair", re-booted, and it still
does not work. =( Interesting... As I started to write this reply an a
'Microsoft Error Reporting' window popped up. Here was it says," Some
unexpected errors have happened to software you recently used. You were not
asked to send these error reports at the time they occurred." I have never
seen this before. In the details pane it lists Microsoft Office as the
application and the Error Description is 'Microsoft Office Diagnostics
Report'. I'm on Windows XP fully patched by the way. I wonder if this is
related to the repair I just did. I have not opened any other windows since
the re-boot except IE8 and OneNote 2007.

Any other suggestions? Should I create a new notebook and start copying and
pasting my data into the new one and see if that helps? I'm really at a loss
here. Does anyone from Microsoft or the OneNote team read this forum. Is
there a way to contact the OneNote Team?

Thanks.

Theo

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Jun 15, 2009, 11:38:21 AM6/15/09
to
Hooray, I fixed it.

I decided to create a new Notebook. First I closed my existing notebook.
Then I tried to open it again to see if that would change anything. When I
clicked on File > Open it the Open Dialog pulled up my notebooks but they
were showing as being in my backup folder under my user's Documents and
Settings. This is not where my notebooks were. They were in My Documents
folder. So I changed the path to there, found my Notebook and re-opened it.
Ran my All Notebooks search again and walla.... it worked.

I cannot figure out how or why it was lookiing in my backups folder. The
notebooks in there look identical to the notebooks in my OneNote folder
located in my My Documents folder. Oh well. This was frustrating but
problem solved.

Thanks everyone for at least reading this and thinking about it. Much
appreciated!!!!

Rainald Taesler

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Jun 15, 2009, 1:31:35 PM6/15/09
to
Congratulations!!
Thanks for your success report.
Glad to hear that you got things going again.

I've no idea on why the backup folders might have got into the game.
For safety reasons pls check the paths in
Tools | Options
Then close all notebooks and re-open them from proper location.

Rainald

Paul Kraemer

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Jun 15, 2009, 2:56:01 PM6/15/09
to
Hi Theo,

Thanks for posting what you learned. I had almost exactly the same problem,
and following your lead, I simply closed all of my notebooks and reopened
them. This seems to have solve my problem too.

Unlike you, when I started having this problem, I would search all notebooks
and OneNote would return results from my current notebook and also from
*some* other notebooks - it just wasn't returning *all* of the results that
it should have been.

Now I don't feel like I can trust OneNote's search capabilities at all.
After all, how do I know that it is returning everything that it should, and
how do I know how often I should do your fix of closing and reopening all
notebooks?

I wonder how many people other than you and I have come across this problem.
If this is pretty common and we will have to do your close/reopen fix fairly
often, hopefully Microsoft will come up with a fix so we do not have to keep
doing this and so that we can feel like we can rely on OneNote - because I
really do think it is a good product.

Thanks again for your post - and hopefully Microsoft will help us out.

Kind regards,
Paul
--
Paul Kraemer

Rainald Taesler

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Jun 15, 2009, 5:29:25 PM6/15/09
to
Hi Paul,
I for one cannot recall to have ever had this problem.
I had problems based on the WDS indexing not working properly, however.

In order to make MS aware of the problem you had to face, you might post
a
bug-report in OneNote, the place for bug-reports and suggestions.
www.connect.Microsift.com/onenote

Rainald

Paul Kraemer wrote:
> Hi Theo,
>
> Thanks for posting what you learned. I had almost exactly the same
> problem, and following your lead, I simply closed all of my notebooks
> and reopened them. This seems to have solve my problem too.
>
> Unlike you, when I started having this problem, I would search all
> notebooks and OneNote would return results from my current notebook
> and also from *some* other notebooks - it just wasn't returning *all*
> of the results that it should have been.
>
> Now I don't feel like I can trust OneNote's search capabilities at
> all. After all, how do I know that it is returning everything that it
> should, and how do I know how often I should do your fix of closing
> and reopening all notebooks?
>
> I wonder how many people other than you and I have come across this
> problem. If this is pretty common and we will have to do your
> close/reopen fix fairly often, hopefully Microsoft will come up with
> a fix so we do not have to keep doing this and so that we can feel
> like we can rely on OneNote - because I really do think it is a good
> product.
>
> Thanks again for your post - and hopefully Microsoft will help us out.
>
> Kind regards,
> Paul
>

Theo

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Jun 26, 2009, 11:24:01 AM6/26/09
to

Wow. I'm glad my post helped someone. God knows I've been helped by other
people's posts many, many times.
Take care Paul.

DPH

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Aug 22, 2009, 9:00:01 AM8/22/09
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While this solution works, it's annoying to have to close and re-open all my
notebooks nearly every time I open OneNote. The search function appears to be
going to the backup in the application data folder rather than the main
notebooks folder, as was pointed out earlier. (The search function wasn't
working, and after I backed everything up it worked, but if I wrote something
new before doing another backup, the search engine couldn't find it.) Is
there a way to change the path the search function uses?

Rainald Taesler

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Sep 7, 2009, 4:48:15 PM9/7/09
to
DPH,
are you still listening?

Rainald

aprilsh...@gmail.com

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May 5, 2014, 11:14:59 AM5/5/14
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David Whitworth

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Jun 22, 2023, 11:06:40 AM6/22/23
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I know this is old, but have to say, I was having a similar issue, unless the page with the item I was searching for was active/open, OneNote wasn't finding it. Closing and re-opening the notebooks worked. I also typically work with 2 instances of OneNote open at a time, 2 windows, and that seemed to throw it off as well. Maybe having it open on my phone was throwing it off as well.
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