Make Subpage addin updated, and a Lenovo update

 

Thanks to a couple of testers (pebuaa and Joe), Jeff Cardon patched his make subpage addin to work in section groups.  Update as of 3/12/2009 - the download link is at the end of this blog entry after my signature.  I'm marking the next paragraph NA - winisp is no more...

 

A few people have been having intermittent problems with this domain.  Winisp is a site run by a team here at Microsoft and we get to use the server for free.  We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch, though, and the price we pay is providing feedback for the different configurations the team applies to the server.  And there are some weird problems as well that crop up from time to time.  ZIP files getting "corrupted" is an error I'm still trying to isolate.  For now, using Firefox to download the files seems to work well, but IE sometimes reports they are corrupt.  Embarrassing?  Yes.  Is there something we can do to get around the problem?  Again, yes.  Use Firefox - and file a bug against IE :(  .

 

So here's is what I need to do to get started trying to find this bug.

1. Use WinXP and Vista to create a set of compressed folders and upload them. These are the only 2 versions I have used to make the files I upload, and this prevents me from needing to install Windows 2003. I'll also take a look in depth at my machine configurations to see if there is some long-forgotten addin which may be causing problems.
2. Install WinZip and use it to create zipped files. I had version 11.1 installed on one machine for a short period, but did not keep track of whether I used it to create any of the files on the server.
3. For downloading, I will use Windows XP and Vista, with IE 6 and IE7. I will also use Winzip to unzip the files as well as the functionality built into Windows to try to narrow the repro. I'm guessing at this step - while several people have reported problems, details of the system they are using are much harder to get. Things like installed firewalls, virus checking utilities and download managers could all come into play. For now, though, I am going to start small and expand. The "test matrix" can rapidly get very large at this step.
4. Lastly, I need to contact my ISP and let them know about the problem. They may already know about it and may be working on a fix at the server level, or this may be the first they heard of it.

 

We'll see what I can find.  If anyone has experienced problems, details about step 3 would be great!

 

Comments, questions, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

 

PS: Quick comment on the Lenovo:  I was just getting ready to turn it into a lab machine for performance testing (at which point the screen behavior, broken latches, etc… are immaterial to the running automation) when the orange battery light started flashing.  Yep, it had one of the recalled batteries.  A coworker had a battery from Dell which got recalled: Dell sent him a replacement and a postage paid envelope to mail the old battery back for free recycling.  Lenovo sent me a new battery in a thrice used box and a letter encouraging me to be responsible and recycle the battery on my own.  My city charges a fee to recycle computer equipment, and I think I'm going to be out $5 if I wanted to handle this myself, or Microsoft will be out $5 if I bother to bring the bad battery to them. 

 

The Gateway is working great!

makesubpage.zip

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2007
  Why would you need an add-in (extra complexity, no matter how simply or unobtrusive it may be) if you can simply highlight several pages, right click and select Group Pages. The top one becomes the Page and all others become sub-pages of the first one.

• Anonymous
  September 11, 2007
  Well, I didn't like the top page selected NOT getting made into a subpage, and this changes that behavior.  This also works with one page at a time, and grouping requires multiple selections. John

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2007
  This is not working for me at all. I click a page and then the button nothing happens, except it disables the button and it will not enable unless I quit OneNote and start again... J

• Anonymous
  September 13, 2007
  Also I noticed in: C:Program FilesMicrosoftOneNote Make Subpage I only have toolBttn.bmp - should all the addin files be there? If so...

• Anonymous
  September 14, 2007
  Yes, there should be a dll as well as the image.  Did you happen to download with Firefox or IE?  And does uninstall/reinstall help? John

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2007
  Tried both FF and IE, they both behave the same way...

• Anonymous
  September 17, 2007
  Aha - the dll gets installed to the GAC (global assembly cache).  Look in windowsassembly (it may be a hidden folder).  RIght click the dll from there and uninstall it, then reinstall the app. I was playing with this addin this weekend and manually moved the dll to the same folder as the toolbar icon and that worked as well.   Sorry for the hassle, John

• Anonymous
  September 19, 2007
  So, I have the same problem with makesubpage not working.   I tried uninstall/reinstall of the app, using the setup, to no avail. Next I tried the uninstall from the GAC...but it does not like that "Assembly MakeSubpage could not be uninstalled because it is required by other applications".   So I used brute force and copied it with a dos copy (to the OneNote Make Subpage folder) and then removed it from the GAC using rmdir. Still the same problem...clicking the menu icon just disables that icon and nothing happens FYI - I downladed with IE....not sure why that would matter as the msi and setup unzip just fine.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 11, 2008
  It is the server: I contacted them and in some cases, they corrupt zip files.  Can you contact me through email and I can send you the setup files directly? Sorry for the problems, John

• Anonymous
  February 27, 2008
  I got my Gateway to replace the Lenovo which had given me problems. The Gateway had been working great

• Anonymous
  November 12, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  November 12, 2008
  Can you email me the bitmaps of what you are seeing? Thanks, John

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2009
  This addon didn't work for me either until I ran across another page that made reference to ".NET Programmability Support" (this is an option you typically choose during OneNote installation, although you can easily add it afterwards as well.) Once I did that, I was in business. So to get this addon to work, go to the following page and read through item #1: http://blogs.msdn.com/johnguin/archive/2007/09/07/make-subpage-addin-updated-and-a-lenovo-update.aspx Hope that helps.

• hyde PS: Perhaps someone could add that up front to each of these webpages - a basic statement about system requirements, and any other essential config info for the addon. And/or a README file included with the package.

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2009
  Doh!  Add the requirements in a readme file - why didn't I think of that? Thanks for the tip, Hyde, John

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2009
  Could you post this powertoy as an attachment, like you have with some others? For some reason I keep getting a "network timeout" when trying to download from winisp, but I can download those that you have posted as attachments. I scoured the net seaching for another host for these toys, Jeff Cardon has a few on his blog, but for the most part you're the only person with all of them. P.S--Have you considered creating a .torrent for all the toys? Thanks