OneNote Testing
What it is like to be a tester on the Microsoft OneNote team and day to day life as an SDET in Office. Plus a few tips for using OneNote and an occasional powertoy.
OneNote 2007 Powertoy to change section colors
Way back in January of 2008 and again in 2009 I mentioned the colors in OneNote can appear much more...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/10/2010
Some quick notes on updating OneNote 2007 addins for OneNote 2010
I was asked how to do this and wrote up some "down and dirty" notes on what I found works well....
Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/09/2010
Update hardware status week for the test team
We're starting to settle down from the shipping of OneNote 2010 with our new team. Of the many tasks...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/07/2010
Getting my OneNote printer to install
I have a new laptop with Windows 7 at home and just installed Office 2010. There was a PDF I wanted...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 06/03/2010
The case of the mysterious boomeranging tablet PC
It's Memorial Day here in the states. Since there is no work to write about today, here's a true...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/31/2010
“Pocket OneNote” and some misc. updates
This is what I was reduced to yesterday: I was in meetings all day and did not want to distract...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/27/2010
A (small) best practice results from needing to set a registry key
Automation cleanup continues. Last week I needed to set a registry key before an automated...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/24/2010
Paragraph Spacing in OneNote 2010: Here’s how
I saw this tweet the other day and wanted to respond. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/24/2010
Commenting getting turned off on 5/16 for an upgrade
Just a quick note that comments will be disabled on 5/16 as the platform gets upgraded. I won't be...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/14/2010
Using OneNote to help complete a half marathon
Nothing directly related to testing today. Instead, a few of the folks on the test team and I went...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/13/2010
Follow up to "reading your tweets" - folks are paying attention to your OneNote comments
Way back I started a little laptop sitting in my office window and pointed a browser to a page that...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/12/2010
Zombies and OneNote
Our advertisements for OneNote are getting good:...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/10/2010
OneNote 2010 Linked Note Taking addin for Firefox
I just noticed that Mao Chen, who was on the team for creating the Linked Notes feature in OneNote...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/06/2010
More OneNote Automation Cleanup
So here's what I'm doing for the task library - simply updating the logging. Since our task library...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/06/2010
Quick explanation of the task library we use for automation
Still cleaning up our automation. The next task I am working on needs a little explanation about how...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 05/03/2010
Automation cleanup in OneNote
One of the tasks the test team can look forward to completing over the next few weeks is...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/29/2010
Finishing some verifications for the printer script
From last week, I had the printer test doing these tasks: Opening a text file Printing it to the...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/26/2010
Some days start off more fun than others for the test team
Because stuff like this is waiting for you: 6 new machines. Quad Core, 16GB, 3 hard drives - 2TB -...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/22/2010
Working on a verification for printing to OneNote
Spent some time last week working on a script to verify that the printer actually works when...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/19/2010
Software test automation is insurance?
I was listening to some other testers in Office the other day and heard the phrase "Automation...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/15/2010
Check out Linked Note Taking with OneNote and Powerpoint
Check this out - our own program manager, Alex Simmons, wrote a guest post over on the PowerPoint...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/14/2010
A nice tip to create desktop shortcuts to OneNote pages
Saw this over on the discussion group: too good to not pass along. Pete Wood gives a good step by...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/10/2010
Getting the printout manager to work with the beta version of OneNote 2010
A bigwig at Microsoft came by earlier this morning and wanted to know if we had an addin or powertoy...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/08/2010
An adventure with printing business cards
A few months ago, I had a little free time on the weekend and decided to print myself some business...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/05/2010
An example of lightweight To Do management with OneNote
A question I get now and then is "Does the OneNote team use OneNote to get work completed?" The...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 04/01/2010
That little line in the OneNote context menu is supposed to be there…
This is what I saw last week that caught my eye as I was working with the OneNote 2010 Beta: I had...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/29/2010
Helping out on the discussion group for making notes “permanent”
I saw this question on the discussion group a few days ago: "I am new to onenote, I have set up...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/25/2010
Math and OneNote and art
Looking around my email last night, I found this note I had left for myself: "yrs ago I fell in love...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/22/2010
Helping to control the “cost beast” with OneNote
I came to the OneNote team just over three years ago. As I've mentioned before, I still use sticky...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/18/2010
More hardware problems
I came in today ready to follow up on my Broken Skull Theory of software testing, but my Lenovo...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/15/2010
Broken Skull Theory of software testing
I mentioned Von Koenigswald last time, and that in turn leads me to my (rather violently named)...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/11/2010
All day training, and an odd week in test for me
We had an "all hands" training session today. It looped in everyone in OneNote and was a productive...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/08/2010
"My One and Only OneNote 2010" song updated
You know you have a great application when it has a theme song. Mike Tholfsen has updated his song...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 03/02/2010
A neat tip for user name with OneNote (and other Office apps)
Here's a quick tip I found after playing with my user name that works for me to help make my changes...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/25/2010
Not the only OneNote tester with a funny name
Way back when, I mentioned my name was not "John Guin". If you don't want to jump back and...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/22/2010
Yesterday was “one of those days”
Sigh. I had been running Windows XP on my tablet to help get coverage with OneNote on that operating...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/18/2010
Optimizing a test virtual disk for distribution over our internal network
Last week, someone sent me a Vista image to copy to my machine to use for testing. This image is a...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/15/2010
Nothing at all to do with testing
Amazing the odd things that bring up memories of college. I was taking a literature class and one of...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/11/2010
A challenge with helping OneNote users
One point of confusion that can come up when we try to help OneNote people with questions is...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/08/2010
Follow up on the monitors
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned Gary had some extra monitors sitting in his office. I wanted to...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/04/2010
A nice tip for a Windows theme to work with OneNote 2010
Sigh. Somehow or other I have seem to have lost my permissions to install our internal builds...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 02/01/2010
A pet peeve of mine when logging values in our automation scripts
Way back in November 2008 I mentioned a code review of some test scripts. I remembered something I...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/28/2010
Looking at a notebook which is shared on one machine but not the other
While showing off OneNote a while back, I had a notebook open on 2 computers. The notebook was...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/25/2010
Monitoring the OneNote test hallway
Testers at Microsoft are busy. I know that is a simple statement to write and not all the...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/21/2010
OneNote project for Azure support (iPhone and Palm Pre)
I was pointed at a really slick OneNote 2007 project over at CodeProject. Lionel Laske has put...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/18/2010
A partial pile of paper printouts
One of the many test tasks we perform is verifying that we can print to a wide variety of printers...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/14/2010
Some perf tweaks I need to keep in mind if I report a bug
A question I get asked now and then is what condition my "dogfood" machine is in. For...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/11/2010
A quick look at numbering in OneNote 2010
If you've downloaded the beta for OneNote 2010, you may have noticed we tweaked the way we handle...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/07/2010
Powertoys from the OneNote test team for 2009
The test team has been very busy this year working on OneNote 2010 (you can get the beta here:...
Author: JohnGuin Date: 01/04/2010