# Storing Useful Trading Ideas & Information



## gav (18 June 2010)

I was wondering how people store useful trading ideas and information.

About 6 months ago, I started collating ideas and information into a Word document if it helped me understand something, could be applied to my trading, or if I thought it would be useful to me in the future.  It could be a post on a forum, an article, a website, a certain page or chapter in a book, or a book I might like to read in the future, etc.

I would copy the link into the Word document (or page/reference if it is a book), and write a brief once sentence description beside the link or reference for when I refer to it in the future.  I have heaps of useful information now, and I regret not doing this when I first began to research trading.  However over the past 6 months, this Word document has now become a few pages long and is starting to resemble a dogs breakfast.  

I'm thinking of creating several word documents for different trading topics - that way when I want to go over a particular topic, I simply refer to that topic's Word document.

I'm sure there are many of you who save useful ideas and information too.  What methods do you use to organise or store useful information?


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## professor_frink (18 June 2010)

gav said:


> I was wondering how people store useful trading ideas and information.
> 
> About 6 months ago, I started collating ideas and information into a Word document if it helped me understand something, could be applied to my trading, or if I thought it would be useful to me in the future.  It could be a post on a forum, an article, a website, a certain page or chapter in a book, or a book I might like to read in the future, etc.
> 
> ...




I use OneNote for all of that sort of stuff. Absolutely freaking brilliant bit of gear and can't recommend it enough


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## nomore4s (18 June 2010)

professor_frink said:


> I use OneNote for all of that sort of stuff. Absolutely freaking brilliant bit of gear and can't recommend it enough




I also use OneNote. It is awesome.


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## ThingyMajiggy (18 June 2010)

I'm using EfficientDiary. I just have it open during each trading session record everything as I go, its basically the same as Word as far as looks and typing features, can add attachments or whatever you want. It does the job anyway, I start a new one each day, like an actual diary. I like it 

Oh, and its frrreeeeeeeeeeee


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## Trembling Hand (18 June 2010)

Vote 1 for old school......... pen & paper..


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## gav (18 June 2010)

TH, I didn't know you had upgraded from stone and chisel : 

I just downloaded OneNote.  I've only had a quick play around, but this looks to be exactly what I'm after.  Thanks guys.


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## awg (18 June 2010)

Trembling Hand said:


> Vote 1 for old school......... pen & paper..




Something about the process of writing it down seems to clarify & crystallise the thought process..does in me anyway

got accurately-labelled folders of stuff on various topics on my laptop


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## lakemac (28 June 2010)

You might also like to try Freemind which is a mindmapper package.

It has a free form heirachical tree structure.
I use it to store past trades including chart snapshots.

One thing I wish I had was a system that I could cross reference (or cross thread for a better analogy of what I want) based on different (user selectable) criteria.

In other words some days I might want to look at my trades in a time ordered way, but then I might want to look at them by stock code.

Or others it might just be a group I have selected by just clicking on a sequence of charts and/or notes.

I am intrigued by this OneNote product. Thanks for the info guys on that. Will have to download a trial to check it out.


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## ThingyMajiggy (28 June 2010)

Anyone know of anything that includes the time automatically on each entry you make? I usually do a running commentary style thing while I trade and I want it to add the time of each entry during the day, so I can easily see how long it was between key moments. 

Thought maybe there might be some excel code for it at least?


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## lakemac (28 June 2010)

Hi Sam,

Freemind has an option to display creation and modification times as a popup when you hover over each node.


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## professor_frink (28 June 2010)

ThingyMajiggy said:


> Anyone know of anything that includes the time automatically on each entry you make? I usually do a running commentary style thing while I trade and I want it to add the time of each entry during the day, so I can easily see how long it was between key moments.
> 
> Thought maybe there might be some excel code for it at least?




OneNote can't do that automatically(that I know of anyway), but if you hit ALT-SHIFT-F before each time you type, it'll throw a timestamp in there, which will basically do what you are looking for


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## ThingyMajiggy (28 June 2010)

lakemac said:


> Hi Sam,
> 
> Freemind has an option to display creation and modification times as a popup when you hover over each node.






professor_frink said:


> OneNote can't do that automatically(that I know of anyway), but if you hit ALT-SHIFT-F before each time you type, it'll throw a timestamp in there, which will basically do what you are looking for




Thanks guys, will check them both out


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## nomore4s (28 June 2010)

ThingyMajiggy said:


> Anyone know of anything that includes the time automatically on each entry you make? I usually do a running commentary style thing while I trade and I want it to add the time of each entry during the day, so I can easily see how long it was between key moments.
> 
> Thought maybe there might be some excel code for it at least?




One Note does this, for each new page/sub page you start.


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## ThingyMajiggy (28 June 2010)

nomore4s said:


> One Note does this, for each new page/sub page you start.




Yeah, I'm looking for something that does it each time I type something new, otherwise I'll have 553 thousand pages all with 1 sentence on each just to get the time to print  

The professors idea seems to be the go for now, until I find something that does it automatically.


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## lakemac (5 July 2010)

I know where you are coming from Sam. Had exactly this kind of auto timestamp need myself.

So far Freemind is the only thing I have found that supports a node by node auto timestamp (created and last modified).

That being said I did manage to download a trial version of office 10 and load it into a virtual PC (so I didn't damage my existing setup) and try out OneNote. Interesting product.

To summarise it, it is as others have described like a three ring binder.
The analogy is quite close which also means it does have serious limitations for the way I store information imho (in my humble opinion).

It allows you to have multiple folders (binders) which are indexed down the left side of the screen. Within each binder you can have sections (much like the tabs you find in a normal 3 ring binder) - they are tabbed across the top. Then you have have multiple pages in each tabbed section. Page tabs are down the right hand side. From what I found, you can have another two levels of sub-pages below the page level, giving a total of binder - section - page - subpage level 1 - subpage level 2 = 5 levels of information depth.

Why consider information depth? It comes down to how you organise your information. Lets say you have a trading diary for each year - that is your binder level eg. "trading diary 2010". Then we might decide to have a section for each stock we trade eg. "RIO" "ANZ" "STO" and so on. Individual pages might be one per day so we have page 1 as "0705 Mon" depending upon your sorting techniques. But this is where I find all existing tools fall down (including Freemind which I am an avid fan of btw).

I traded both RIO and ANZ on Monday 5th July. How do I collate them into a time ordered sequence for that day. Can you see the problem? It is an issue of wanting different ways of collating the information. Individual notes about a trade can be collated by stock code, by date/time sequence, by direction (short/long), by news item (eg. RBA interest rate decision). The list goes on.

So far I haven't found a solution to this (short of writing my own system which I have done some very very preliminary test code for).

Freemind has the same problem. You can't collate individual pieces of information via different paths. Both OneNote and Freemind allow for cross referencing links between pages but they both only get you to a page - not an individual item.

Also had a look at several wiki's as well (http://www.wikimatrix.org/) but still not happy Jan.


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## ThingyMajiggy (5 July 2010)

lakemac said:


> I know where you are coming from Sam. Had exactly this kind of auto timestamp need myself.
> 
> So far Freemind is the only thing I have found that supports a node by node auto timestamp (created and last modified).
> 
> ...




Yeah, I have found that what professor_frink said to do is the best option at this stage, for me anyway, I have done it like so, just pushing Alt+shift+F before I type something new, easiest option and closest to what I want so far anyway  *I have whited out what I have written, I don't just put time stamps everywhere


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## artist (6 July 2010)

Is a product like Microsoft's Access or Open Office's Base relevant here? I thought they were created for just this situation where cross-referencing, linking and manipulation of fields (slicing and dicing), and database interrogation is needed. Perhaps, as lakemap said "It comes down to how you organise your information".

I Googled 'how can you timestamp an entry in microsoft office access' which lead me to the Microsoft page - "Add a date or time stamp to new records" - where it states that "You can use the Now or Date functions to have Access automatically fill in the date or time when a new record is added. Use the Now function to fill in the date and time, or the Date function to fill in just the date." This is followed by the list of necessary steps (1 through to 9) to enable this function, and then the article ends with "Each time you add a new record to the table, Access automatically inserts the date or the date and time in the Date Added field."

Then I Googled 'how can you timestamp an entry in open office base' and got links to forum pages where people offered solutions they had worked out.

Finally I tried 'how can you timestamp an entry in microsoft onenote' and read several suggestions in addition to the Alt+Shift+F option.


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## lakemac (7 July 2010)

Hi artist,

Yes I had thought that a database was the obvious answer but the problem with most databases available is they are based on a relational model (ah the joys of CJ Date's book on database normalisation - but I digress into a past life). By that I mean relational databases such as Access, store things in tables which at first blush appears to make sense.

However, most information I find I store does not fit into "rows and columns" of a database table. I need to store "blobs" to use the Oracle parlance. Basically I am storing bits of data (screen shots, text, tablular data in some instances (think watch lists), timestamps and attributes associated with eacho of those) and most importantly the links and cross links between those bits of data. Most of those don't neatly fit the relational model.

Which then begs the question what alternatives are available. Wiki is one thought - they can be a bit too rigid, but do have the ability to support underlying timestamping, page revision, links etc (been looking at FosWiki the spinoff from TWiki). Wiki's normally hide the database details underneath the web interface which helps but you still need to be a pseudo programmer to be able to configure the Wiki to handle the information you want to store.

I also had a look at Cache which is a commercial (free for single user) object database. It can store pretty much anything in its b-tree like structure and has a nice language on top of it. However once again I don't want to build an entire GUI and programming interface to do this (although at the rate things are going I might just have to).

Having now thrown OneNote out as being unable to handle deep chunking (ie. folding information down past 3 or 4 levels) and its lack of good cross referencing, I am evaluating FosWiki as the next alternative (if I can get past its oppressive security features - good for some but I don't need that right now).


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## lakemac (7 July 2010)

Tell you guys what my ideal notetaker looks like (this is what I would one day like to finish building).

Firstly some ground rules:
1. The amount of screen space taken up by menus, and screen candy should be at an absolute minimum. I want max space for my notes.
2. It should be intuitive to use with full reprogrammability of what keys and mouse gestures are associated with user selected functionality. If you are like me my fingers think in "vi" the Unix editor. I reprogrammed Freemind keystrokes so I can move around the tree by using "vi" movement commands .
3. Funamental data should be stored in a form that is basically human readable or viewable in standard formats. All too many times data gets lost in databases that crash. I am a firm beleiver in having images, text and such like stored in a standard filesystem with only the linkages in the actual database core. If the database is lost, I don't want to have to start an archeological dig to extract my information from a pile of disorganised bits (and don't get me started on ASCII dumps of a database...)
4. We live in the fourth dimension - that means everything should be timestamped as it happens. Similarly massive disk storage is so rediculously cheap that the concept of overwriting (ie. updating an existing record in a database) should be permanently banned. My aim is to be able to walk forwards or backwards in time and observe what I was doing at that time (my current trading platform Spark Trader www.iguana2.com/spark supports this kind of feature with market replays - awesome for doing what if training). Thus everything I do, changes, additions, deletions are able to be reversed as nothing ever gets deleted, just new links are formed and new data is being stored.

So next is my ideal interface.


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## lakemac (7 July 2010)

Part 2 - the ideal interface for note taking.

Having studied human interface engineering I have come to the conclusion that the humble white (or black) board is an exceptional tool for communicating ideas.

If you watch someone on a whiteboard they are able to draw 4 basic items:
1. a square or rectangle
2. a cirlce
3. a line (curved or reasonably straight)
4. simple text

Sometimes people use magnets to stick pictures up on the whiteboard.

Whiteboards suffer one big drawback - you can't zoom them in or out.

Chunking or folding or zoom out or the ability to group related pieces of information together into an enclosing concept is paramount to most human activities. So much so it probably should be one of the ground rules. We use the concept all the time - single pages on RIO into the RIO folder; RIO folder into the share holding draw (sorted in alphabetical order maybe); top draw for shares, bottom draw for derivatives. Or using the car as an example - you don't have to know how the details of how an engine works in order to press the accelerator in order to go faster. The concept of the engine is chunked down to engine, fuel, accelerator, drive shaft.

If we go back to the whiteboard - it doesn't easily support chunking. Computers make that easy. Mind maps are the master of folding (another term for chunking) large amounts of information into a small number of managable bite sized chunks. Human typically can only deal with about 7 chunks at a time before we overload. Watch a person on a whiteboard and typically they will only have about 7 - 10 concepts on any particular drawing (Powerpoint reduces this to about 5 useful concepts).

So lets have the interface look like a zoomable whiteboard. As we zoom in the information unfolds or unchunks if you like to reveal more detail. Zoom out and the information chunks up again simplifying what we can see.

Personally I think the rotating wheel on most mice is highly under utilised as a zoom in/out control.

On my ideal interface placing the mouse over an area and rotating the mouse wheel (or whatever other control you might choose) zooms in (or out) that particular area. Effectively acting like a localised magnifying glass, folding or unfolding more or less detail.

So how do I group things?
Lets go back to the whiteboard. Rectangles or circles.
On my ideal interface a rectangle or circle is drawn by a simple mouse (or other user defined action) gesture. Click and drag diagonal gives you a rectangle. Click and drag around gives you a circle. Click and drag a straight line gives you exactly that (diagonal lines are a special case).

Text can be entered anywhere on the note taking surface as it automatically groups itself.

Images are copy and paste. I have been playing around with using transparency control to allow the pull thru of screen shots from underlying (or overlaying) programs onto the note taking surface.

Of course as each item is added it gets timestamped.

Want to link two or more bits of info together - either draw a rectangle around them or draw a "string" thru them. So for example I might have a list of trades I am about to execute. They are nothing more than a list of text items on the note taking space. Draw a box around them and they are all grouped into a trading idea. Snapshot some charts, drag them onto the note taking space, arrange them to your liking then link each one to their respective trade. More than one chart influenced your trade (eg, oil price chart, XMJ and WPL moved) just add a bit of "string" between each image and link it back to the trade.

Finished with that zoom it out to chunk or "fold" it.
Want to look at trades you did that involved WPL, either type the text WPL somewhere or click on an item that contains WPL and start auto reference to others. Hey presto another linkage diagram automatically is available as a chunked item below where your mouse is. Want to see it, just zoom in.

This is just a small part of the interface (I already have the preliminary design notes for the rest of it).

Next step is providing underlying programmable behaviours.


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## lakemac (7 July 2010)

Part 3 - underlying behaviours

Imagine you have this wonderful trade idea but it needs a formula to work out the profit/loss.

By allowing grouped areas of the note taking space to have a behaviour assigned to them it turns it into a mini spreadsheet or even a formatted area. I know one of the annoying things about Excel is I can't see the formula AND the result at the same time. A bit of chunking and zoom functionality solves this. Not only that but the cross references between calculation areas (ie. cells) is visible as lines between rectangles.

Need to pretty print today's trading activity, draw a "string" thru those items you want, zoom in on them arrange them into a roughly coherent order, group them and attach a document formatting behaviour to the group.

I mentioned originally that I wanted all behaviours including keystroke and mouse controls to be programmable - well by zooming down far enough the behaviours are nothing more than a series of linked boxes that control the flow of keystrokes and mouse movements attached to various behavioural modules.

This kind of functionality comes from some very seminal work I did on object based design and development which also extends up to project management.

The final key is storing and indexing all this.


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## lakemac (7 July 2010)

Part 4 - storage

The funny thing is once you throw away the idea of deletion (is that self referential or is my mind a bit bent?) databases become very simple. By keeping everything your database it just gets bigger. Does it get slower - not really. Why? The key is aged data. As you move into the newer parts of the database the older parts are (normally) less often accessed. By being able to access your link database (remember fundamental data is stored as files in the underlying native filesystem) at the most recent points you are more likely to maintain speed of access no matter how much information it stores.

One thing you do have to watch is manually moving files that the database points to. In an ideal world the filesystem should work in tandem with the links database but short of writing my own filesystem it is not going to happen.

One of the clever things that this system needs to do is a form of auto indexing. Take Google for example - it indexes things all the time but it does not string them together. Google's indexes are there to bring up search results quickly. Trouble is the page ranking changes and you can't "keep" the results of a search as a list (well maybe you can - there might be a tool out there for that kind of thing). What I am after is the note taking space effectively strings together searches that it does. These can take the form of either "inferred" groupings or strings if you like (say grouped by each day or a stock code then sorted by timestamp) or manually directed groupings (think I don't want that result from google but I want this, this, this and that one). Each search - string/grouping - gets remembered (nothing gets deleted remember - there goes my mind loop again  ).

Effectively these searches/indexes/groupings become new chunks that I can zoom in or out from, link to and cross reference multiple times.

So now you know - the idea is out there.
Pity the product doesn't fully exist.
I have bits of it operational but time has not been available to push it along.

I would be interested to hear what others think of the idea.
I have some static diagrams that show what it could look like which I might post up when I get the time.

For now Freemind has to suffice


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## ggkfc (12 July 2010)

lakemac said:


> Part 4 - storage
> 
> The funny thing is once you throw away the idea of deletion (is that self referential or is my mind a bit bent?) databases become very simple. By keeping everything your database it just gets bigger. Does it get slower - not really. Why? The key is aged data. As you move into the newer parts of the database the older parts are (normally) less often accessed. By being able to access your link database (remember fundamental data is stored as files in the underlying native filesystem) at the most recent points you are more likely to maintain speed of access no matter how much information it stores.
> 
> ...





im using somethign free called Keynote NF (original keynote stopped development)
its freeware and small


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## gav (20 July 2010)

I've been using OneNote for a little while now.  I love the application, but I'm having difficulty saving and accessing my work. Do you have to save each tab as an individual file as "OneNote Sections"?  Or are you able to save the whole thing as one file using the "OneNote Single File Package"?

I just want to be able to save it as one file, but at the moment I have several "OneNote Sections" files saved (some duplicates where some have less information than others, I have no idea why), then I have a "OneNote Single File Package" file saved - yet when I click it there is nothing there, but then other times when I click it, my work appears.  It's really confusing.  I have saved hours worth of work, yet I'm having a friggen heart attack each time I try to open my work because it seems to be sheer luck whether its there or not when I open a file. 

Whenever I manage to open a file that contains any of my work, a little pop-up box comes up saying "Unpack Section".  WTF does this mean?  It opens a folder where all my OneNote files are saved, and it wants me to save something? (I think?)

I tried saving every one of my files onto a flash disk to form some sort of back-up.  Yet when I open these files on my partners computer, there is nothing in them! 

I've tried going through the help section in OneNote, but haven't found anything useful.  Why can't it be as simple as saving an Excel spreadsheet or Word document?  

Any help would be greatly appreciated


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## professor_frink (20 July 2010)

gav said:


> I've been using OneNote for a little while now.  I love the application, but I'm having difficulty saving and accessing my work. Do you have to save each tab as an individual file as "OneNote Sections"?  Or are you able to save the whole thing as one file using the "OneNote Single File Package"?
> 
> I just want to be able to save it as one file, but at the moment I have several "OneNote Sections" files saved (some duplicates where some have less information than others, I have no idea why), then I have a "OneNote Single File Package" file saved - yet when I click it there is nothing there, but then other times when I click it, my work appears.  It's really confusing.  I have saved hours worth of work, yet I'm having a friggen heart attack each time I try to open my work because it seems to be sheer luck whether its there or not when I open a file.
> 
> ...




Sorry gav but none of that makes any sense to me! That probably says more about me than what you've just typed though

I don't actually hit save for anything in onenote. When I fire the computer up in the morning, I double click on the onenote icon on my desktop, it comes up just as I left it the night before. I add to it during the day as required, then just close it down before I turn the computer off. I don't actually hit save for anything:dunno:


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## ThingyMajiggy (20 July 2010)

gav said:


> I've been using OneNote for a little while now.  I love the application, but I'm having difficulty saving and accessing my work. Do you have to save each tab as an individual file as "OneNote Sections"?  Or are you able to save the whole thing as one file using the "OneNote Single File Package"?
> 
> I just want to be able to save it as one file, but at the moment I have several "OneNote Sections" files saved (some duplicates where some have less information than others, I have no idea why), then I have a "OneNote Single File Package" file saved - yet when I click it there is nothing there, but then other times when I click it, my work appears.  It's really confusing.  I have saved hours worth of work, yet I'm having a friggen heart attack each time I try to open my work because it seems to be sheer luck whether its there or not when I open a file.
> 
> ...




There is an option when you choose "Save As" to select the whole notebook, not just the section, 3 options to choose from just under where you type the name of what you want to call it, can't miss it. 

But I'm in the same boat as the professor, I never have and never do save anything in OneNote, it does it all for you, everything is always there exactly as I left it. Not sure why you're having problems, it all seemed pretty straight forward to me. Create notebook, start typing away, create sections, or sub-sections, and thats pretty much it. Its always there from then on.


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## gav (21 July 2010)

Thanks Frink and Sam for your input.

I've had a look on google and found that OneNote automatically saves as you go along.  I've been opening seperate OneNote files in the folder they are saved in, instead of just opening the OneNote program like you have both suggested.  I've also been clicking "Save As" at the end of each session before closing my work.  It runs quite differently to other Office programs in that respect eg. Whenever I want to open a particular Excel spreadsheet, I'll go to where that particular spreadsheet is located on my computer and then open it, save it in the folder I want to, email it/back up on flash disk.  

I'm still not sure how to save onto a flash disk or email my OneNote though.  When opened on another computer, the OneNote files I saved on the flash disk are blank.  I am sure there is a simple explanation, but I just don't get it.


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## ThingyMajiggy (21 July 2010)

gav said:


> Thanks Frink and Sam for your input.
> 
> I've had a look on google and found that OneNote automatically saves as you go along.  I've been opening seperate OneNote files in the folder they are saved in, instead of just opening the OneNote program like you have both suggested.  I've also been clicking "Save As" at the end of each session before closing my work.  It runs quite differently to other Office programs in that respect eg. Whenever I want to open a particular Excel spreadsheet, I'll go to where that particular spreadsheet is located on my computer and then open it, save it in the folder I want to, email it/back up on flash disk.
> 
> I'm still not sure how to save onto a flash disk or email my OneNote though.  When opened on another computer, the OneNote files I saved on the flash disk are blank.  I am sure there is a simple explanation, but I just don't get it.




Not sure about the saving it and trying to view it on another computer, I assume OneNote is actually on the other computer you're trying to view it on. No reason why it wouldn't work if you saved the whole notebook then opened it again in OneNote on the machine you want to view it on. Did you want to send the whole notebook as an email? You can send each page as an email by just clicking on the email link across the top of the toolbar, or going to file> email. Not sure about the whole notebook though


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## gav (21 July 2010)

ThingyMajiggy said:


> Not sure about the saving it and trying to view it on another computer, I assume OneNote is actually on the other computer you're trying to view it on. No reason why it wouldn't work if you saved the whole notebook then opened it again in OneNote on the machine you want to view it on. Did you want to send the whole notebook as an email? You can send each page as an email by just clicking on the email link across the top of the toolbar, or going to file> email. Not sure about the whole notebook though




Thanks Sam.  Yes, the other computer I tried to open it on has OneNote.  Ideally I would just like to be able to save it on a flash disk as a back-up, in case something happens to my computer.


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## ThingyMajiggy (21 July 2010)

gav said:


> Thanks Sam.  Yes, the other computer I tried to open it on has OneNote.  Ideally I would just like to be able to save it on a flash disk as a back-up, in case something happens to my computer.




Hmm, not sure then. Would've thought the File, Save As, then selecting the whole notebook would work, weird. Sorry I couldn't be of much help!  Hope you figure it out.


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## lakemac (21 July 2010)

gav said:


> Thanks Sam.  Yes, the other computer I tried to open it on has OneNote.  Ideally I would just like to be able to save it on a flash disk as a back-up, in case something happens to my computer.



Hi Gav.
Couple of pointers that may help you.

1. by default OneNote saves each "tab" across the top (ie. a section in OneNote parlance) as a file with a .one or .onetoc2 file extension. The location of those files is set in the File -> Options -> Save & Backup settings -> Default Notebook Location.

2. Each "Folder" containing one or more sections or "tabs" across the top) is a directory with the name of your "Folder". For example if your OneNote installation is setup so it will save under "My Documents/OneNote Notebooks" and you have a folder called "Trading Diary", then you should see a directory:
My Documents/OneNote Notebooks/Trading Diary

If you then had several tabs say "BHP" "RIO" "ANZ" you should then see three files under the "Trading Diary" directory called BHP.one RIne and ANZ.one.

You can use Windows Explorer to confirm these files exist and non-zero in size (set the view type in Windows Explorer to "Details" to show you file sizes).

3. Each section can have multiple pages (and two levels of sub page) in each section (shown by tabs down the right hand side of OneNote's main screen). Those pages and sub-pages are stored within the file for each section ie. the .one file.

4. Onenote also allows you to "archive" if you like a complete notebook as a single file (with the .onepkg extension on the filename) - that is what you have seen in the File -> Save As -> Notebook -> OneNote Package option.

If you perform this action it will bundle up all the individual files for each section tab and store it as a single file with the name of your notebook. Using the above example you would end up with a single file called "Trading Diary.onepkg" placed in your "My Documents" folder (or other location depending upon the settings in your options menu).

Again you can prove that this file exists and has a non-zero size by using Windows Explorer as detailed above.

5. Now there are two options for you re your flash drive backup.
5.1 You can automagically get OneNote to store a backup on your flash drive. Go into the File -> Options -> Save & Backup menu and click on "Backup Folder" in the top Save section. Click on Modify and you can then select the location of your flash drive for backups. Note these are automatic backups - not manual ones. How often OneNote performs an automatic backup is controlled by the options in the Backup section just below the Save section in the options.
5.2 Manual backups. Personally I would leave autobackups in their existing (default) location and do manual backups to your flash drive. To do that I would use the OneNote Package saveas option detailed above (See #4). You should be able to just copy the single file to your flash drive and then open it on another PC with OneNote installed.

One thing though - OneNote 2010 file format is NOT compatible with OneNote 2007. If you create notes using OneNote 2010 and want a PC with OneNote 2007 to open them you have to tell 2010 to save the file as a 2007 version.

If you need more help let me know.


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## gav (21 July 2010)

Hi Lakemac,

Thanks for your detailed response.  Everything you have said make sense, although I am still having trouble opening my "Trading.onepkg" on another computer.  I went File -> Save As -> Notebook -> OneNote Package, and saved it on the flash disk as "Trading.onepkg". All sweet.

Then when I try to open this file on my partners computer (we both have OneNote 2007), I open OneNote, click File -> Open -> Section.  I then make sure "OneNote Single File Package" is selected, then I click "Trading.onepkg" which is saved on the flash disk.  It opens the first tab of my Trading.onepkg, then a pop-up msg says "Unpack Section", with the "File Name" being the name of my first tab and it wants me to click either Save or Cancel.  

Clicking cancel closes my Trading.onepkg file (OneNote remains open).  If I click "save", it saves a OneNote Section file as the name of my first tab on my flash disk.  The first tab in my Trading.onepkg is called "System Design & Analysis", so it saves "System Design & Analysis.one" on my flash .  It shows this tab on my partners computer, but the other tabs from my Trading.onepkg are not there.

At first I thought I must have accidentally saved my Trading OneNote file as as  "Trading.one" instead of "Trading.onepkg".  But it's definitely a OneNote Package file type.

I tried opening the flash disk folder in My Computer, then double clicked Trading.onepkg.  This simply does what I mentioned above (opens OneNote with the first tab of my Trading.onepkg, then the "Unpack selection" pop-up appears again)

I hope that makes sense..


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## lakemac (22 July 2010)

Hi again gav,

Your description makes sense but what it is doing doesn't make sense.

I am testing OneNote 2010 so it may have fixed/changed how it operates with pkgs relative to 2007.

Suggestions:
1. have a look at the options settings. It may be that when you open an archive from another source on your other PC the directories in the option settings revert to the settings for the archive - not the current PC. Not sure if this is the case as I can't replicate what is happening your end. If OneNote on the second PC is saving things on your flash drive when it opens your trading diary this could be the case. Try changing the directories to the "My Documents" path of the user on the second PC.

2. Don't use Microstuffed products LOL. The only one I trust is Excel. Word I use under torture (my preference is an old Unix formatter called troff - but that is another story).

3. I notice there is a service pack (SP1) for OneNote 2007 which talks about opening issues but they primarily relate to systems with SharePoint installed. Even so I would still make sure your OneNote 2007 is patched with SP1.

4. Upgrade to OneNote 2010... Yeah I know $$$.

5. Doing some other looking on google there were a couple of articles about sync issues between PC's. It may be that your second PC thinks it has a copy of the first PC's notebooks and thus gets itself in a knot. Try doing this:
on the second PC rename the directory that contains the OneNote files. Try loading your first PC's OneNote package. If that doesn't work then you may need to also rename or change the directory OneNote uses for its cache (see the option settings for this).

6. You don't mention what operating system each PC is running. I am testing on Win XP SP3. With Vista your mileage may vary as they say.

7. 

8.


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## gav (22 July 2010)

Thanks again Lakemac.  I'll try what you have suggested when I get home tonight.

On my PC I am running Windows 7, the other computer has Vista.


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## Timmy (9 August 2012)

gav said:


> I was wondering how people store useful trading ideas and information.




Evernote is great.
Mainly on the PC, but if I'm out and have to access it I can on both iOS (phone) and Android (tablet).

http://evernote.com/


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## dgcruzing (26 August 2012)

Timmy said:


> Evernote is great.
> Mainly on the PC, but if I'm out and have to access it I can on both iOS (phone) and Android (tablet).
> 
> http://evernote.com/




+1 on evernote..
I are just getting back into a list of highrisk smallcaps and doing it via android mobile and android tablet.
by going evernote pro..i have hardcopy of all my notes on every device..and syncs back to my desktop..

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk 2


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## gav (26 August 2012)

Well, since this thread started over 2 years ago I've been using OneNote and I'm very happy with it


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## dgcruzing (27 August 2012)

Gav,
i have been a onenote user for many years too and found it to be unique in its time..
also that's not to say that as windows 8 mobile becomes more available it wont progress.
but the problem is many of us are mobile now adays..
we might be out on a business trip, dinner,or even visiting the doctors with the wife and kids..
while we have that down time..alot of us have smart phones and or pads (android/ipads).. thus we need 
to utilize a snatch and grab techniques while we power read through stock information..
And onenote at this stage is still a bit limited to desktop only..
but with saying that..i do have a version on my pad.. but don't use it..as i have found evernote far easier to build a database of dated
comments on stocks i am following. also another good tip while using mobile is readitlator..
where while you are surfing on the go and can come back to the link..evernote also allows saving the link to a file as well..
also, while reading a newspaper on a plane or magazine, it used to be a case of ripping out the page, where now its a quick snap with the 
phone/pad and you have it on the cloud for access later.. http://getpocket.com/


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