onenote-cli

A command-line interface for Microsoft OneNote on Windows. Exports notebooks, sections, and pages to Markdown or MS-ONE XML by communicating with the desktop OneNote application via COM interop.

Requirements

• Windows with Microsoft OneNote desktop application installed
• .NET 10 SDK

Usage

onenote notebook list
onenote section list <notebook>
onenote page list <notebook/section>
onenote page export <ref> [--output-dir <path>] [--raw] ...

The <ref> argument accepts a notebook name, a /-separated path (e.g. MyNotebook/Section/Page), or a OneNote object ID. The export command has additional options, onenote page export --help for more details. Embedded images are written to an attachments folder next to each exported Markdown file.

Examples

# List all notebooks
onenote notebook list

# List sections in a notebook
onenote section list "My Notebook"

# Export a single page to Markdown
onenote page export "My Notebook/Notes/Meeting Notes" --output-dir ./export

# Export an entire notebook
onenote page export "My Notebook" -o ./export

# Export raw OneNote XML instead of Markdown
onenote page export "My Notebook/Notes/Meeting Notes" --raw

Building

dotnet build

To run directly from source:

dotnet run --project src/BlueMarsh.OneNote.CommandLine -- <command>

Testing

# Run all tests
dotnet test

# Run a specific test
dotnet test --filter "PlainText"

Tests use TUnit with Verify for snapshot testing. Expected outputs are stored as *.verified.txt files alongside the test class.

Related projects

• onenote-cli - Node.js CLI based on Microsoft Graph API for OneNote Online which similarly provides export of OneNote content to markdown. The Graph endpoints work with "OneNote-flavored HTML" rather than the MS-ONE XML format exposed by the Windows COM interface. My primary motivation for building a new project based on the COM interface is that I cannot access my enterprise notebooks via Microsoft Graph due to corporate IT restrictions.
• OneNote to Markdown Exporter - discovered this as I was adding tags to my repo. It takes the same core approach (OneNote COM interop) with the same high-level goal as my project. I am continuing with this project rather than contributing to that one because:
  • There are significant gaps in content conversion (e.g. broken tables, poor handling of adjacent spans with the same formatting, missing strikethrough/superscript/subscript handling, missing tag handling) that I've already addressed here. There are other gaps that I haven't addressed yet (as of writing) but intend to (e.g. missing attachments like PDFs). Unlike the author of the other project, I was a heavy user of OneNote and loved it for 20+ years. As a result, I have a significant amount of varied and valued content in OneNote so high fidelity conversion is a high priority for me.
  • It is also built as GUI-first and while it supports CLI commands, it doesn't function as a native CLI - the GUI temporarily appears during export and the CLI output doesn't work well in PowerShell (known PowerShell behavior when invoking GUI applications that write output to the console).
  • Finally, I have some different preferences for folder and file structure. I'm happy to add more control over this if others end up using my CLI but I'll initially focus on a layout that matches my new structure in Obsidian.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.