OneNote DROE AutoHotkey Tool

Carl, thanks for this great tool. I thought I’d share with you and other DROE Tool users how I’ve been using this tool on multiple PCs.

I’m in a clinic and have 4 exam lanes with PCs as well as my desktop in my office and my laptop on which I run Outlook, OneNote and basically runs my life.

Ideas or todos would often strike me while in the exam rooms and I got tired of sticky notes scattered throughout multiple rooms and frequently ideas would get lost.

With DROE Tool I set it up so that I’ve got a shared folder on my network which I’ve mapped to Z: on all my PCs. I then setup the DROE tool in this folder and edited the DROE.ini file to use a text file [Z:\DROE\DROE.txt] within the same folder. I then put a shortcut to Z:\DROE\DROE_Tool.exe file in the Startup folder on each PC.

At first this caused problems with Win XP Pro as it wouldn’t launch an .exe file over the LAN, but by a change to Control Panel | Internet Options | Security | Local Intranet | Sites I fixed the problem (just uncheck “Automatically detect intranet network” and check the other 3 boxes). Now each PC automatically launches DROE_Tool.exe over the intranet automatically. I could have installed DROE_Tool.exe on each local PC, but then every time I change the .ini settings I’d have to change every PC – too time consuming. This way when I make a change to the .ini file, all PCs are automatically changed the next time they reload the .ini settings.

Now during the day if a thought occurs to me I hit Win-N at any PC to launch the text version of DROE. All my notes wind up in the same text file [Z:\DROE\DROE.txt]. Whenever I have a moment at my laptop and I’m working on my Doing|DROE page in OneNote, I open the DROE text file and cut and paste into my OneNote Doing|DROE page. To make this simpler, I’ve put the link to the DROE.txt file in my BELOW IS PROCESSED divider (as per your Outlook/OneNote system). I then save and close the DROE.txt file (NOTE: because I cut and paste the text from DROE.txt, my file is now empty. I want to save it that way so that I know the next time that I open the DROE.txt file that everything in there is unprocessed. If you prefer to copy/paste then you’ll have to delete all the text in the file, then save/close the text file).

So to summarize I have 5 PCs using DROE with one text file and a laptop using your Outlook/OneNote method. I just transfer everything from the DROE.txt file into OneNote at least once a day and this works great for multiple PCs. I plan to eventually use DROE for OneNote on my laptop, but that will have to wait for your OneNote 2010 version. Definately add me in as another who is waiting for the update for OneNote 2010.

Thanks again Carl for this great tool. I hope I’ve explained my use well enough to make sense to anyone who reads this.

- Bruce

This is a great tool! But before I found this, I had already made a small tool for myself to quickly capture “stuff” in OneNote, so I’ll just share it here. So this is OneNote only.

My main GTD Inbox is a section “Inbox” in a OneNote notebook “GTD” that has its home on SkyDrive, so I can access it anywhere. Each Inbox item is a separate page in the Inbox section.

I have written a small Windows console program called “note” that will take the command-line arguments and save them as a new page in the Unfiled notes section, or any section you prefer (GTD/Inbox in my case).

So, if I hit Win-R and then type “note email Sandra” (without the quotes) and then hit Enter, a new page “Email Sandra” is created in my GTD/Inbox section in OneNote. Very quick, very unobtrusive, very low-threshold.

If anyone wants to try it, you can download it here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=23622.0

- Jan Roelof

Hi Carl,

Thanks for this great tool. It’s been a big help for keeping track of what I’m doing at work. I just had one question regarding the time stamp. Is there a way to add the week or day number in the time stamp format in the ini file?

Hello, this tool is very useful, but it is not effective for office 2010. Waiting for your updating.