Pasting Code to OneNote 2010 with Formatting and Colors

[Update 1/2915]
Head over here for a solution for OneNote 2013.  Annoying, but it works!

I use OneNote as a SQL script repository, and in most respects it’s a great solution:  it’s searchable, the notebooks make organizing easy, and its integration with SharePoint (and SkyDrive) is pretty good. There’s one problem, though, that has made it less than ideal:  color formatting doesn’t come through from SSMS. Notepad++ is my go-to editor for long scripts (if you’ve not used it, you should check it out), and it has what ought to be a perfect combination of plug-ins for the job:

• First is the excellent Poor Mans’ T-Sql Formatter.  This is a first-rate SQL formatter that integrates with SSMS and Notepad++.
• Second is NppExport (included with NPP), which allows you to copy the selected text to the clipboard as HTML.  Unfortunately, OneNote doesn’t really handle HTML (even!) very gracefully:  NppExport html is rendered by OneNote without any line breaks.  It should be noted that this appears to be a limitation in the rendering that OneNot does, not in the HTML generated by NppExport.

Rant aside, please allow me to say that *this should work!*  I’ve been on a crusade to figure out how to paste my code from SSMS to OneNote while retaining the color formatting, and it’s taken awhile to find a good solution. After a lot of searching, I ran across NoteHighlight on CodePlex.  The instructions (and the installer) are written in Chinese, so the hyperlink here is to the Google Translation link to that page.  I have this to say about it:  It. Works. Well. In OneNote 2010.  If you're using ON 2007 or (like me, now) ON 2013, I'm afraid there's still not a good option.

Here’s what my code looked like when pasting formatted SQL from NppExport:
 

I'm guessing, by the way, that this is a result of NPPExport using the White-space:pre tag in the exported HTML (css, really).  It would appear that ON doesn't do full HTML.  See this connect item for an upvote on fixing that.

Update:  Microsoft has removed Connect options for OneNote, so there's no longer a good way to submit or track bugs.


Here is the same SQL when pasted from NoteHighlight:
Better, huh?  Note that the colors aren’t the same:  NoteHighlight actually does some parsing of the code and does its own coloring.  You can choose from a variety of syntax color schemes.

Update 8/26/12:  Bad news for folks using ON 2007:  this only appears to work with OneNote 2010.  Thanks to +Edelman for pointing that out.  The NoteHighlight page on Codeplex appears to be pretty static, too, so I wouldn't hold out a lot of hope for feature requests and the like.

Installation

Since the installation is in Chinese (documentation here), it’s a little hard for us non-sinophones to follow it.  Happily, the installation appears to allow for (mostly) default click-through.

Make sure you have the correct version: most of us run the 32-bit version of office, which is the second choice on the download page. If you install the wrong version, the plugin simply won’t appear in OneNote.

When you run setup, you’ll see a window like the one below:



This would appear to be a EULA. And in fact, if we paste this text into a translator, it appears to be the Microsoft .Net 3.5 EULA (more or less).  Sure enough if we click accept (A) (not the default), we see dotnetfx35setup.exe run.  So it’s checking to see if we’ve got .Net 3.5 installed.

Next we get the main installation window: The default button (N) appears to be Next.

The next window allows, at the least, for you to pick the installation location:

I’m guessing that the (M) and (E) choices refer to “Me” and “Everyone”.  As in “Make this available to just me or to everyone who uses this computer.”  I can verify that selecting the defaults worked just fine for me.

 Ready to install?

And complete.

Now, when I launch OneNote, I have new tab on the ribbon:

You can see that you get a lot of language options.  Because I only care about SQL, I’ve included that button in the Quick Access Toolbar (circled) so I don’t have to switch over to the NoteHighLight tab to get to it. Now, you can click on the SQL (or other language of your choice) button and you’ll see a window like this: 

The Style drop-down allows you to choose the color scheme you’d like to use.  I prefer the default colors for SQL. The Line Number option actually includes the line numbers in the text.  I don’t really like that option, as it keeps me from being able to copy and paste my scripts to SSMS.  But I can see where it’d be useful, sometimes.

When you click OK, your color-highlighted text is pasted into OneNote. Do note that NoteHighLight is a syntax highlighter, not a text formatter:  it’ll highlight your code nicely, but it won’t change the text layout at all. This is pretty much the only option I’ve found that isn’t a Visual Studio (not SSMS) plugin.  I’m pleased to have found it, and I’m grateful to the author.  I hope it’s useful to you, too.