Updating the Page Sorter powertoy for OneNote 2010

Way back in 2007, Dan Escapa wrote a powertoy to alphabetize pages. He was good enough to send me the source code and after thinking about this for awhile, I finally figured out a way to get it update for OneNote 2010. Here it is (link is below my signature): enjoy! Eagle eyed readers might have spotted a hint for this update in my previous post...

Once you install it, you will get a Sort Pages command on the Addins tab:

It will turn this (the pages on the left) into this (the pages on the right):

Notice the multiple levels of pages - that was the big stumbling block for me. I never could get my mind around a good way to sort these, and finally decided on the algorithm of sorting the parents first, then the children pages. It seemed to make the most sense overall.

And if you sort pages and then immediately decide you do not like the new ordering, you can hit CTRL+Z to undo the changes. Let me know if you think this is useful.

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,
John

Sort Pages.zip

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 25, 2011
  Thanks John I've been missing this one, very useful!

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2011
  I did the download and install and have the Add-In my my 2010 Onenote.  I have multiple notebooks opened and converted to 2010 format. On my first attempt, I selected the Add-in and my pages did not sort.  On every attempt after, the "Sort Pages" command is grayed out and mousing over does not make the button appear and does not respond.  When I exit and restart One Note (WIN-Shft-N), the Sort Pages command is responsive for just one attempt but it does not sort and grays out again. Do I need another something else loaded to support it?

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2011
  Additional information to my previous comment.  I just checked the Trust Center and none of the options for Add-Ins are enabled. In OneNote options -> AddIns, I have one lagacy add-ins: OneNote 2007 Sort Pages. I just recently installed OneNote 2010 and copied my OneNote notebooks from another machine and only installed the one Add-In found on here as "Sort Pages.zip".  Did I get the wrong add-in?

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2011
  This is the correct addin for OneNote 2010.  Try this: uninstall the sort pages addin.  Then restart your computer, then reinstall.  Make sure you run the setup.exe and not the setupproject.msi

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2011
  No difference when uninstalling - rebooting - reinstall.  OS = Windows 7 Enterprise 23-bit, in a domain environment.  In my Control Panel -> "Uninstall or change a program" displays "OneNote 2010 Sort Pages" In OneNote -> Options -> Add-Ins I have:

• No Active Application Add-ins
• No Inactive Applciations Add-ins
• No Disabled Applciation Add-ins Installed OneNote legacy add-ins:    "OneNote 2007 Sort Pages" (cosmetic error?) This is avery new install with very little customization (sans of what our GPOs do).  I do have .NET Framework 4 Client Profile and .NET Framework 4 Extended.

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2011
  Yes, the 2007 name is left over from the conversion.  Are you an administrator running setup.exe as an admin?

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2011
  Do you have a sort feature for Sections?

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2011
  Yep - blogs.msdn.com/.../updating-the-sort-sections-powertoy-for-onenote-2010.aspx

• Anonymous
  February 06, 2011
  what a relief to have this. keeping the toys updated for 2010 seems just smart business for MS. thanks!! doug

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2011
  Is there any way to sort pages in ascending or descending order?  This way I can sort by the most current first (if I name my page appropriately) or is there another toy that allows for placing the newest page, highest on the list?

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2011
  Diane: I wrote a sorting utility that can do what you want: sort ascending/descending and sort by name or last-modified-date. You can download it here: www.onenotepowertoys.com/.../OneNote2010SortSetup.zip Hope this helps! Jan Roelof

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2011
  And the Table Sorting and Table of Contents powertoy may help as well: blogs.msdn.com/.../table-sorting-and-table-of-contents-powertoy-for-onenote-2010.aspx

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2011
  Thank you for such a valuable and useful tool!

• Anonymous
  April 06, 2011
  Brilliant, thank you! And thanks to Dan Escapa for the original addin. Did you add the undo feature? That's nice, that wasn't there before.

• Anonymous
  April 07, 2011
  <blush> thanks.  Undo should have worked in the first iteration - I did not try to see why it was not working before.  Glad it works now!

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2011
  This is a great tool.  Thanks!  I noticed that when you sort pages with a number title, it only references the first number when sorting and doesn't consider the entire value.  So if I have a list with 1, 2, 3, 6, 21, and 57 and then sort I get the following: 1, 2, 21, 3, 57, 6.  Any workaround for this?

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2011
  that's a (strange) limitation of the Sort method.  It does not differentiate between digits and letters, so strictly dollows the "nothing before something" rule of sorting.  I think of it as 'a' comes before "aa", so it sort of makes sense.  But only from a narrow, computer science point of view. The only workaround would be to come up with a new sort routine and code the addin to use it.

• Anonymous
  May 31, 2011
  Alright.  I will play around and see if I can get something to work.  Thanks for the quick response.  

• Anonymous
  June 16, 2011
  Any chance that you could release the Visual Studio solution and source code? I'd like to see if i could create an addition plugin to coexist with your in my environment, except that the sorting would be by creation date of the pages. Sometimes I like to sort by title, and other times I like to sort by creation date, depending on the notebook/context.

• Anonymous
  June 16, 2011
  Let me dig around and see where the code is - this was actually written by Dan Escapa and I may need a some time to locate the location we had the code.

• Anonymous
  June 18, 2011
  Mark: I point once again to www.onenotepowertoys.com/.../OneNote2010SortSetup.zip. This powertoy will sort sections and pages, by name or last-modified date, and if you wish recursively over section groups and pages with subpages. Hope this helps.

• Anonymous
  June 19, 2011
  @janRoelof: I am aware of that tool. However, what I really need is a sort based on creation date. Thank you for your suggestion.

• Anonymous
  July 01, 2011
  Works greate except for one thing. When I try to sort he pages in my "Unfiled Notes" I get an error stating "Could not UpdateHierachy from OneNote: error code: Exception from HRESULT:0x8004200B"

• Anonymous
  July 04, 2011
  John, thank you very much for providing this add-in. Just what I needed.

• Anonymous
  August 12, 2011
  Is there a way to "integrate" the OneNoteSort.exe behavior directly in the OneNote UI instead of having a separate exec? Thanks very much

• Anonymous
  August 12, 2011
  Fabrice - not sure what you mean.  OneNoteM.exe is the little utility that launches OneNote if you create a screen clipping or print to OneNote.  It's pretty small (a few hundred K) compared to many MB for OneNote.  If you want OneNote running always, you can add it to your startup group.

• Anonymous
  August 17, 2011
  Is it possible to sort by the date and time at the top of the page (the one at the top of the page that can be changed, not the last modified date)?

• Anonymous
  August 17, 2011
  Seems possible - the code is at blogs.msdn.com/.../looking-at-the-code-for-the-sort-pages-powertoy.aspx if you want to make that change.  If you do, let me know and I can post your update here!

• Anonymous
  October 10, 2011
  I'm loving this page sorting!  I loved it so much that I installed the Section sorting as well, but it appears that the Section sorting has overwritten the Page sorting in the Add-ins.  Can they both play in the same sandbox?

• Anonymous
  October 12, 2011
  Lisa - no, they use the same id.  Sorry for the bad news, John

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2012
  Thanks so much!

• Anonymous
  February 07, 2012
  Gem for OneNote (http://officeaddin.weebly.com/) allows users to sort pages alphabetically or by page time, and can also sort sections.

• Anonymous
  February 09, 2012
  Pretty slick - I like how the ribbon is set up.

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2012
  Thanks heaps. Made OneNote that little bit more appealing.

• Anonymous
  February 29, 2012
  You rock!

• Anonymous
  May 25, 2012
  I just started using OneNote 2010, downloaded and installed this in 5 seconds, and it works perfectly.  My compliments to the chef.

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2012
  does it work only for English written text?

• Anonymous
  August 24, 2012
  a duplicate page remover option is also a must have feature i don't know why OneNote lacks these essential and basic features always make it's users angry

• Anonymous
  September 10, 2012
  Well done, sir!

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2012
  John - is the Sort Pages source code subject to a license of any kind (MIT, BSD, etc.)?

• Anonymous
  November 06, 2012
  Just the general terms of use for sample code on MSDN:  msdn.microsoft.com/.../cc300389.aspx  The license information is at the bottom.

• Anonymous
  December 03, 2012
  It seems that this loses the ability to link to Outlook. I used to highlight a task and link to outlook tasks - can't do it since installing add-in. Ideas?

• Anonymous
  December 18, 2012
  This does not affect Outlook interop - can you repair Office and try again?  

• Anonymous
  December 21, 2012
  Update for OneNote 2013? The 2010 plug-in doesn't show and I can't find it to add it manually.

• Anonymous
  December 26, 2012
  @Jan Roelof - Wed, Feb 16 2011 4:48 PM - Great work !

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2013
  For some reason sortpage plugin for OneNote 2007 has disappeared from the internet. So I switched to OneNote 2010 and sortpage (for 2010) worked. However this time sort sections wouldn't work. You can buy a Chinese plugin (OneNote Gem) and its sort page and section both work on OneNote 2010.

• Anonymous
  April 27, 2013
  Using windows 7 64 bit with OneNote 2010 I intalled Sort Page and Sort Sections. The icons appear, but clicking them doesn't give any results. With the exception that the words 'Sort Pages' turn to grey. Any suggestions?

• Anonymous
  April 29, 2013
  Doesn't John Guin reply anymore?

• Anonymous
  April 29, 2013
  Well, I had a busy weekend :) If you look in the folder to where you installed the addon, there should be a log file there.  Can you see what error code was logged?

• Anonymous
  May 01, 2013
  Sorry John for my late reaction, but my last post didn't get registered. So once again: In Program Files 86)/ ONote PowerToys / OneNote 2010 Sort Pages there is logfile to be found. Only: OneNote2010_red_allformats.ico & SortPsAddinl.dll

• Anonymous
  May 02, 2013
  Hey there, Can this add in also sort the notebooks on the left panel?

• Anonymous
  May 02, 2013
  Lily - no, no one has written a sorter for that.  Most folks only have a few notebooks so drag/drop to sort may actually be faster. Jeff - I'm looking through the repository to see what I can find here.  Can you also contact me via email (link is at upper right)?  I want to get a diagnostic file from your machine that may help troubleshoot this.

• Anonymous
  May 15, 2013
  Just a note of thanks for the great utility!

• Anonymous
  May 30, 2013
  Works a dream and many thanks!

• Anonymous
  June 13, 2013
  The algorithm used to sort leveled pages isn't correct. It in fact decouples the children from the parent (e.g. Training is the root, Tasks is the parent, and Glossary is the leaf) when sorting is done you have Training at the root (sorted properly), then you see Glossary (two levels in) and then you see Tasks (one level in) and so it effectively decoupled the child from the parent.

• Anonymous
  June 13, 2013
  Michael - you are correct.  I had noticed that long ago but never remembered to try and fix it.  If you like, you can fix it and I can post your update here.  Just contact me through the email link at the upper right if you want.

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2013
  Is there a version that will work for OneNote 2013?

• Anonymous
  July 13, 2013
  I have not updated it for 2013 and need to admit I won't have time.  If anyone does update this, I can give out the source code and post your updates here - any takers?

• Anonymous
  August 29, 2013
  Thanks very much.

• Anonymous
  October 21, 2013
  AWESOME worked like a champ DANK U

• Anonymous
  November 11, 2013
  Anyone find a way to sort pages in Office 2010 64-bit ? all of these powertoys add ins throw errors! Think i will abandon onenote.. evernote?

• Anonymous
  March 28, 2014
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 21, 2014
  It should only be Ribbon changes and a simple namespace change.  Malte Ahrens did a nice article on how to get ribbon addins working so that might be a good place to start. If you update this, let me know and I can post it here if you like.  Thanks!

• Anonymous
  April 28, 2014
  I am using OneNote 2010 and find it invaluable. You've just made it even more invaluable for me. Thank you very much for this. It appears to work a treat! Best regards, Nathan

• Anonymous
  August 01, 2014
  This is great but my work computer requires an admin password to add anything like this, so I am stuck

• Anonymous
  January 20, 2015
  This doesn't work when I used it. The Sort Pages button is in the toolbar, but clicking just disables the button, and it does nothing.

• Anonymous
  July 29, 2015
  You have really helped improve on OneNote 2010. Well Done. Having the pages sorted ... Fantastic. I ran the .exe file As Administrator. :) Thanks Eamon