I use MS EXCEL for a variety of purposes, even outlining, so I was pleased to hear that recently the XLNotes MS EXCEL add-in has been upgraded (to 8.0). The website is: http://xlnotes.com/ The add-in works quite well (the notes open in MS Word), and it's free for personal use. I would be interested in hearing from anyone else on this forum who has downloaded and tested this program.

I am skeptical of this.
The downloaded ZIP file contains an .msi file of version 8.0 XLnotes (an Excel add-in). It does not install. It abends with the consistently repeatable error:
________________________
XLnotes 8.0
Error 1001. The type initializer for
Microsolt.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Runtime.Security.UserlnclusionList? threw an exception. --> Could not load file or assembly
?Microsoft.VisualStudio.ToolsApplications.Hosting.v9.0, Version=9.0.0.0, Culture=neutral...
________________________

Given the ambiguosity in that:
* If XLnotes was as good as the website claims, it could have the potential to transform the PIM market, yet nowhere can I find a pukka review of XLnotes, though it has apparently been going since 2009, at least.
* the .msi install fails (necessitating that you contact the authors by email if you want to get it "fixed"). Installs do not normally fail by chance, as they would have been tested as being stable under most common OS configurations, prior to release.
* Earlier versions of this "free" add-on were apparently a trial version and only allowed a max of 15 notes to be created/inserted in Excel.
* The website at http://xlnotes.com/ is in Russia.
* The website at http://xlnotes.com/ says:
** If you use XLnotes at home, you can use the free and unrestricted unregistered version.
** If you use XLnotes in an organization, you should purchase user licenses within the evaluation period of 30 days.
** To register your copy of XLnotes, please purchase a license key. XLnotes user licenses are $44.95 or less depending on volume discounts - and offers credit card purchase.

- then I would recommend caution - e.g., hold onto your credit card details (risk of potential ID scam).

(Apologies for the spelling errors in my earlier post.)
FOR YOUR INFORMATION:
I have also posted about XLnotes and CRIMP here (and asked if any of the forum members have any ideas on XLnotes):
"PIMs and CRIMP (Compulsive Reactive Information Manager Purchasing)"
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=30646.msg285190#msg285190

I have used XLnotes 7 quite extensively but will not be upgrading to the latest version.

[The positives]
- The concept seems very strong. So many people use Excel for non-numerical use that I am surpirised that there are not more add-ons like this around.
- The UI and feature set is appealing (at least to me). A glance at the website shows lots of beautiful looking potential uses for the software.

[The negative}
- It is not stable (at least the version I used). I was using XLnotes in a very large spreadsheet database (8000 rows). I found to my horror that earlier notes I had created based on particular templates were randomly disappearing or were being replaced by later notes. It doesn't matter to me whether this was caused by database corruption issues, programming glitches or user error. I lost a lot of work and dropped XLnotes like a hot potato.

For apps like this to be useful they must be 100% reliable.

Jack Crawford wrote:

For apps like this to be useful they must be 100%
reliable.

Couldn't agree more.

Hi, Slartibartfarst, thanks for your interest. Seems like the 1001 error appears in some rare cases, several users have reported about it recently. We've updated the installer, so this error is gone. Please, download the updated installer on our site.
True, XLnotes was available for some time in the past, however, we were not satisfied with performance of text controls we used, since we wanted them to handle pictures seamlessly, without loss of quality and with good compression. Having used a lot of notetaking apps, you know that picture handling is often a major downside for most of them, often lacking even basic tools for picture editing and often reducing their quality unacceptably. Being not confident in the software ourselves, we couldn't offer it to the market, hence lack of reviews and coverage. In the latest version we use MS Word, which is by far superior to any text controls in terms of image and formatting handling. Seems like the search for ideal text component is over.
Indeed, for that short period of time, when XLnotes was available, it offered a different pricing model.
If you wish to purchase XLnotes, then your payment will be processed by one of the largest software distributors - Avangate, which serves thousands of software vendors, including some of the most well-known. This information is clearly provided on our site. You don't share any personal or payment details with us, so the payment procedure is made as secure as possible. Concerning our server location - it's a matter of cost/performance ratio and as said earlier, we don't access users personal data in any way.
Concerning the possibe "just another notetaking app" reaction, you are right that notetaking segment is overcrowded, however, the majority are simple list notes apps, which are good for capturing thoughts and appointments from time to time. However, if you want a place, for example, to catalog merchandise items and supply each of them with picture, text description and attachment, then you will need a free-form structure like Excel and notetaking add-in like XLnotes, because you can't do it other way.

Hi, Jack, I'm strongly sorry for the loss, however, sometimes Excel even without any add-ins installed drops comments - look for "Excel disappearing comments". It happens in Shared workbooks, which is a very buggy feature of Excel, and if you have used it, then data loss is likely. Since the last public release, notes security has been further improved. For the moment, XLnotes has been used in production environment, handling hundreds of notes per workbook and not a single error appeared. Also, since notes are stored inside their workbooks, backuping your data is very easy - just copy the entire saved workbook to a safe location. You can also export just notes to a specified folder using the corresponding function. If you are still interested, give the new version a try.

I agree with Jack Crawford, the concept is very strong.

However, I think OneNote would be the better choice for the comments container. I also don't feel comfortable with the comments file being saved inside the Excel notebook. An externally stored file would ease my fears over data loss or corruption, and if the links were relative and all to files further down the folder tree there wouldn't be any issues in moving or backing up the files.

Perhaps technical issues prevent it, but I think an Excel and OneNote combination would be more appealing to the market. It would certainly get my attention.

I cannot figure out how to create a hierarchical structure in Excel. Something to do with the grouping function. Is there a straightfoward explanation on how to create a tree?

Cheers

@XLnotes - thanks for your reply.
I shall download the updated installer and see how it goes.
I am actually quite keen to trial XLnotes as it sounds like a really good concept AND I suffer from CRIMT (Compulsive Reactive Information Manager Trialling), a variation of CRIMP (Compulsive Reactive Information Manager Purchasing). ;-)

Here's a simple example in Excel 2007/10:

- Select rows 2 to 4
- On the ribbon, click Data / Group / Group: this should create a first collapsible level
- Select rows 1 to 5
- Again, click Data / Group / Group: you should now have an additional, outer level

That's the logic; always remember that the limits of higher levels should be outside those of lower ones, e.g. you can't create the second level for rows 1 to 4.

It also works with columns in the same way. You can have both at the same time, i.e. a 2-dimensional collapsible outline.


Mitchell Kastner wrote:

I cannot figure out how to create a hierarchical structure in Excel. Something to do
with the grouping function. Is there a straightfoward explanation on how to create a
tree?

Cheers

XLnotes, I for one appreciate your reaching out to the forum with more info. The product has been briefly mentioned here in the past, and I remember that I had once tried to trial it and it was not available, with an announcement that it was being further developed I think.

I think that it provides an interesting solution for people with a lot of freeform data who do not think in outlines.

@XLNotes

Thanks for the personal response.

I'll take a peek at the new version. No promises though ...

;-)

TonyJ wrote:

Perhaps technical issues prevent it, but I think an Excel and
OneNote combination would be more appealing to the market. It would certainly get my
attention.

You probably already know this, but you can manually create links between Excel and OneNote by placing OneNote hyperlinks in Excel cells. Just right-click on a ON tab and 'Copy hyperlink to this page'. Paste the link into Excel. Clunky but it seems to work.

Any word on whether XL Notes 8.0 is still available? The website xlnotes.com is no longer active. I would really like to use the full version because I have already hit my 15 comment limit on the free version.
If they are out of business is there a way to get a license key to unlock the full version?

Can anyone confirm that XLNotes is out of business? They're still for sale at BJD but the website address brings up "Server not found". I was unable to find any other information on what happened.

Wayne

Wouldn't surprise me. V 8 is completely unreliable and loses notes all the time. Their tech support was totally unhelpful. V 2 is still working fine though, even in Excel 2013 (as long as I install Excel 2010 first).

XLNotes is a really great idea, it just needs better programmers.

"XLNotes is a really great idea, it just needs better programmers."

I had been tempted to use XLNotes for prof. work, but refrained from that, by fear of possible unreliability, and again, it seems I was right.

But then, please, let's bear in mind that Excel is not programmed in a way that assures add-ins might work flawlessly, and so many core info is withheld by MS, so it's not necessarily the developers to be blamed.

You see, so often I strain your nerves here by blatantly criticising bad programmers, but I know, from experience, that sometimes, programmers are NOT to blame: When I programmed "Manuscript", back in the Nineties, I did it with "ToolBook" (Asymetrix, then Click2Learn, and now SumTotal, but in fact, it's another MS-derived piece of sh**, by Paul Allen, who owns one of the largest yachts in this world, but was, at least at the time, not able to make that piece of sh** someway stable), and I simply did not have any chance to succeed with it commercially, since TB's memory M was so buggy (confirmed by numerous other developers in those times) that the programming language in itself caused the crashes of my product, whatever I might have tried.

A similar phenomenon could work here, Excel's memory M or other idiosyncrasies that simply make it impossible to develop a really stable "notes in cells" add-in for it.

So don't blame the developers too early here; let's blame ourselves: Anybody (me included) who wants such functionality in Excel is just too "lazy" to create the appropriate "Access" applic (which then could even access Excel data)...

MS is simply evil, and I just feel compassion for developers who tried, for years, in vain, to make some MS add-in work - you think they would have got the slightest "help" / assistance (e.g. with info about withheld details) from MS? - think again: MS is evil, it's as simple as that. (And that's why, if Excel, as SS, is more or less inevitable today, Access should be avoided, since in that field at least, there's plenty of better alternatives.)