Hello, this is just an improvement request for #1773 which was recently implemented, and is a cool feature btw!
Unfortunately , almost all my notebooks are on OneDrive now so it's not working for me =(
I see that this was out of scope of the original request:
I understand that this will not be able to work for notebooks that are stored on OneDrive. (Because Microsoft is hiding the file structure from us when notebooks are on OneDrive.)
I just wanted to let you know that it is possible to open to the folder for notebooks in OneDrive, including OneDrive Personal (although it's easier in OneDrive for Business/O365). Though it's a little bit of a pain.
In OneDrive for Business/O365 - basically you just need to copy a link to a "section group" within the notebook as opposed to the notebook itself. If you try to open a URL to the root of the notebook itself then it will open in the OneNote web app when you paste in a browser. But if you use a link like this, it will work (obviously adjust the username/domain, and path to the notebook accordingly):
https://domain-my.sharepoint.com/personal/username_domain_com/Documents/Notebooks/NotebookName/SectionGroupName/
Then it will open to a screen like this, and at that point you're "in the notebook's folder structure" - you can see the ToC file , subfolders for sub-section groups if they exist and so on. You can easily navigate up/down in the folder structure from there, including browsing to the root of the notebook:
For OneDrive Personal - the only way I've found to do it is you need to get the URL from MS Graph. I tested this from the Graph Explorer tool. If you do the Graph call to "search OneDrive" , search for a folder (i.e. section group) name - in this case I searched "servers":
...then you'll get a URL from the result:
...and you paste that into a browser, and boom there you are - in the folder structure, even on Personal OneDrive:
Notice how with the personal OneDrive you only get an ID, which apparently uniquely identifies your account, notebook and whatever notebook object you searched for. As opposed to the business one where you have a unique URL for your tenant, which helps make it a lot easier to deduce what the "folder URL" for a particular notebook location would be.
It is also possible to do the same for "shared" notebooks on SharePoint locations - it would essentially be the same process as for OneDrive for Business above except the URL would be to the SharePoint location instead.
I know this may not be easy to add to the app (not sure how difficult it would be to obtain the necessary URLs programmatically) - if it could be done without a huge lift that would be awesome! If it would be a lot of work, then maybe not worth it , or maybe it could be done at some point in the future and/or if enough people would find it useful 🙂
And in the meantime , maybe at least this provides info for a workaround for some people if they are trying to access the folder structure of a notebook stored on OneDrive. For me, it's not super often I do it, but since it is a pain, having a shortcut to do this would be really really nice 🙂
*EDIT: Sorry - with all this said, I know the original request was specific to "file explorer" - for OneDrive for Business notebooks, once you go through the above process and have the proper URL , it is actually possible to open them in file explorer - with some more sorcery 😁 (gotta have the "open in file explorer" feature enabled in your SPO tenant and have a GPO setting configured on your clients as well):
With OD Personal, I haven't yet found a way to get it to open in File Explorer.
But - given that these live on OneDrive, when people are wanting to access the underlying folder structure of the notebook, being able to access it through the browser should be sufficient for the most part I would think? If anyone wants/needs to take it a step further and would like the details on the file explorer piece please let me know, I can add those details.
For now though, I think if we could make the location just open in a browser that would be good enough in most cases. It's certainly much better than not having the ability at all, which the browser/UI alone does not let you do unless you know the specific URL to browse to.
As always thank you in advance for the consideration.
Best regards,
Hello, this is just an improvement request for #1773 which was recently implemented, and is a cool feature btw!
Unfortunately , almost all my notebooks are on OneDrive now so it's not working for me =(
I see that this was out of scope of the original request:
I just wanted to let you know that it is possible to open to the folder for notebooks in OneDrive, including OneDrive Personal (although it's easier in OneDrive for Business/O365). Though it's a little bit of a pain.
In OneDrive for Business/O365 - basically you just need to copy a link to a "section group" within the notebook as opposed to the notebook itself. If you try to open a URL to the root of the notebook itself then it will open in the OneNote web app when you paste in a browser. But if you use a link like this, it will work (obviously adjust the username/domain, and path to the notebook accordingly):
https://domain-my.sharepoint.com/personal/username_domain_com/Documents/Notebooks/NotebookName/SectionGroupName/
Then it will open to a screen like this, and at that point you're "in the notebook's folder structure" - you can see the ToC file , subfolders for sub-section groups if they exist and so on. You can easily navigate up/down in the folder structure from there, including browsing to the root of the notebook:
For OneDrive Personal - the only way I've found to do it is you need to get the URL from MS Graph. I tested this from the Graph Explorer tool. If you do the Graph call to "search OneDrive" , search for a folder (i.e. section group) name - in this case I searched "servers":
...then you'll get a URL from the result:
...and you paste that into a browser, and boom there you are - in the folder structure, even on Personal OneDrive:
Notice how with the personal OneDrive you only get an ID, which apparently uniquely identifies your account, notebook and whatever notebook object you searched for. As opposed to the business one where you have a unique URL for your tenant, which helps make it a lot easier to deduce what the "folder URL" for a particular notebook location would be.
It is also possible to do the same for "shared" notebooks on SharePoint locations - it would essentially be the same process as for OneDrive for Business above except the URL would be to the SharePoint location instead.
I know this may not be easy to add to the app (not sure how difficult it would be to obtain the necessary URLs programmatically) - if it could be done without a huge lift that would be awesome! If it would be a lot of work, then maybe not worth it , or maybe it could be done at some point in the future and/or if enough people would find it useful 🙂
And in the meantime , maybe at least this provides info for a workaround for some people if they are trying to access the folder structure of a notebook stored on OneDrive. For me, it's not super often I do it, but since it is a pain, having a shortcut to do this would be really really nice 🙂
*EDIT: Sorry - with all this said, I know the original request was specific to "file explorer" - for OneDrive for Business notebooks, once you go through the above process and have the proper URL , it is actually possible to open them in file explorer - with some more sorcery 😁 (gotta have the "open in file explorer" feature enabled in your SPO tenant and have a GPO setting configured on your clients as well):
With OD Personal, I haven't yet found a way to get it to open in File Explorer.
But - given that these live on OneDrive, when people are wanting to access the underlying folder structure of the notebook, being able to access it through the browser should be sufficient for the most part I would think? If anyone wants/needs to take it a step further and would like the details on the file explorer piece please let me know, I can add those details.
For now though, I think if we could make the location just open in a browser that would be good enough in most cases. It's certainly much better than not having the ability at all, which the browser/UI alone does not let you do unless you know the specific URL to browse to.
As always thank you in advance for the consideration.
Best regards,