How do I keep a drawing tool selected until I unselect it?

[Marcia]

I've read questions from others that are similar to my issue, but apparently,
my issue is different because the solution given to other users doesn't seem
to work for me - i.e., the "Tools --> Options --> Pen --> uncheck
'Automatically switch between Pen and Selection Tool'" solution does nothing
to fix my problem.

First, I'm using OneNote in the Office 2007 Student Edition on a Gateway
laptop running Vista 32-bit Home Premium, in case that's relevant.

Here's what I'm working with:
The reading materials for my classes come from journal articles that are
posted online by my professors in PDF format. Unfortunately, the PDF
articles were created from scanned images rather than OCR text which means
that's how they get imported into OneNote. Needless to say, because OneNote
can't recognize the text within the image, I can't select text and highlight
it in the usual way. Instead, I'm using the rectangular drawing tool to
create highlighted boxes around the text I want highlighted.

The problem:
I have to keep reselecting the rectangular drawing tool each time I use it.
Normally, this wouldn't be a problem since reselecting the rectangular tool
is really no different than having to reselect the highlight tool. But at
least with the highlight tool, I can select everything I need to select at
once. With the rectangular tool, however, I can only select as much as the
width of the tool is set too. So for example, if I have to highlight 4 lines
of text, I have to select the rectangular tool 4 times.

Is there a way to get OneNote to keep the rectangal tool selected until I
unselect it? Or is there a way to disable the selection tool as the default?
This seems like such a basic request that it would be an assumed OneNote
feature.

[Ilya Koulchin]

If you're talking about the rectangle drawing tool, click the button
with three rectangles on top of each other. Somewhat confusingly, its
tooltip says "duplicate shapes", but really, it means "keep drawing the
same shape until I select something else".

[Rainald Taesler]

Marcia wrote:
> The reading materials for my classes come from journal articles that
> are posted online by my professors in PDF format. Unfortunately, the
> PDF articles were created from scanned images rather than OCR text
> which means that's how they get imported into OneNote. Needless to
> say, because OneNote can't recognize the text within the image, I
> can't select text and highlight it in the usual way. Instead, I'm
> using the rectangular drawing tool to create highlighted boxes around
> the text I want highlighted.

AFAICS the best workaround under the given circumstances.
The annotating features in ON are not really sufficient - mainly because
the necessary grouping/anchoring features are missing (one of the most
serious drawbacks in ON). {siiiigh}
Your rectangles will not stick to the place where you put them whenever
the PDF-images is moved or resized.

If you want to mark things in/in a PDF and/or add comments and stamps,
import images etc. I can highly recommend the "PDF Annotator" [1]. It's
a most versatile instrument which offers a lot.
One would basically work work with two steps:
Open the original PDF in PDFAnnotator, add all highlights an annotations
and then print it to ON.
In order to allow for additional annotations in the future one can save
the annotated document and insert a link to it in ON.

An alternative would be to use SnagIt [1]. The new version 9 is a
fantastic tool not only for creating screen-shots but a most versatile
application for commenting images of all kind/formats and other
manipulations like re-sizing, cropping rotating etc.
One can either copy the image from to SnagIt an re-import it after the
annotations or start with printing the PDF to SnagIt. And there is a
"PowerToy" for OneNote.

Both applications are available as fully functional trials. And there
are "educational" rebates for both.
Just try them out.

On my computers both are ranking among the "top 10", together with ON
they are making a perfect bundle. I guess that you might benefit a lot
too.

HTH
Rainald
[1] http://ograhl.com/en/pdfannotator/
[2] http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp

[Rainald Taesler]

Marcia wrote:
> The reading materials for my classes come from journal articles that
> are posted online by my professors in PDF format. Unfortunately, the
> PDF articles were created from scanned images rather than OCR text
> which means that's how they get imported into OneNote. Needless to
> say, because OneNote can't recognize the text within the image, I
> can't select text and highlight it in the usual way. Instead, I'm
> using the rectangular drawing tool to create highlighted boxes around
> the text I want highlighted.

AFAICS the best workaround under the given circumstances.