microsoft-onenote-list-notebooks

List Microsoft OneNote notebooks via Playwright — extracted from MSOneNote Exporter.

This is a standalone CLI tool for listing OneNote notebooks using Playwright with authentication state loaded from a JSON file.

Why this project ?

While this let you authenticate this is a part of a bigger purpose, primary aim is to offer people a simple way to get out of Microsoft OneNote, because you regardless of what ms documentation states => https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/2276682/onenote-api-fails-with-large-sharepoint-document-l

in essence you want to search for microsoft-onenote-list-notebook, microsoft-onenote-exporter

Installation

npm install -g @msout/microsoft-onenote-list-notebooks

Or locally:

npm install @msout/microsoft-onenote-list-notebooks

Usage

List Notebooks

microsoft-onenote-list-notebooks list --auth-file /path/to/auth.json [--notheadless] [--dodump]

Options

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | --auth-file <path> | Path to authentication JSON file (required) | | --notheadless | Run in visible browser mode (disable headless) | | --dodump | Dump HTML content to files for debugging |

Output

The command outputs a list of notebooks, each with a direct link:

Available Notebooks:
1. My Notebook 1 (https://onedrive.live.com/personal/xxxx/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc={af4c31dd-e6b3-2073-80b1-6c0000000000}&action=edit&wdorigin=NavigationUrl)
2. My Notebook 2 (https://contoso-my.sharepoint.com/personal/john_contoso_eu/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc={28b95c90-8a57-4422-ba14-e51b21b43bde}&action=edit&wdorigin=NavigationUrl)

The link is the same canonical form OneNote puts in the address bar, so it can be passed straight to the export tool:

microsoft-onenote-export-notebook export --auth-file /path/to/auth.json \
  --notebook-link 'https://contoso-my.sharepoint.com/personal/john_contoso_eu/_layouts/15/Doc.aspx?sourcedoc={28b95c90-8a57-4422-ba14-e51b21b43bde}&action=edit&wdorigin=NavigationUrl'

Note the single quotes: the URL contains {, } and &, which a shell would otherwise interpret.

Where the links come from

OneNote does not put notebook links in the page. A notebook row is a <tr tabindex="0"> with no href and no data-* attribute — the app wires it up as a click target and the URL lives in the MRU feed the page fetches from substrate.office.com while it loads. This tool reads that feed and matches it back to the scraped rows by title, then rebuilds each link in canonical form from the site path and the sourcedoc GUID.

A notebook that is in the list but not in the feed is printed by name alone and counted in a warning above the list.

Each notebook object contains:

• name: The display name of the notebook
• url: The canonical notebook URL, or 'click-to-open' when no link could be resolved. The sentinel is never printed.
• id: The data-automationid attribute for potential precise targeting

Authentication

Authentication state must be obtained separately using the microsoft-webauth module:

# First, authenticate (https://github.com/Ms-OneNote-Exporter/microsoft-webauth or https://www.npmjs.com/package/@msout/microsoft-webauth)
microsoft-webauth login --email [email protected] --password yourpassword

# Then list notebooks
microsoft-onenote-list-notebooks list --auth-file /path/to/auth.json

Project Structure

microsoft-onenote-list-notebooks/
├── src/
│   ├── index.js           # CLI entry point
│   ├── auth-context.js    # Auth context loader (no Electron code)
│   ├── list-notebooks.js  # Main listing logic
│   ├── config.js          # Configuration (paths, URLs)
│   ├── diagnose-new-page.js # Interactive page-diagnosis helper
│   └── utils/
│       ├── logger.js      # Logging utilities
│       ├── logPaths.js    # Log/dump directory resolution
│       └── notebooks.js   # Listing presentation (URL resolution, rendering)
├── test/                  # Jest tests (not published)
├── package.json
├── .npmignore
├── .gitignore
└── README.md

License

MIT — see LICENSE, and read NOTICE.md.