OneNote problem with copy and paste

Question

How can I do a copy and paste of a YouTube video URL and paste the link on to a OneNote page without OneNote expanding the URL to its thumbnail image and video title and making the video available to view.  I just want the text of the url copied onto the page?  Is there a OneNote settings / option page where I can uncheck a paste option?  Thanks.

The online chat guys have no experience with OneNote .... only Word, Excel, Power point, Outlook.

Answer 1

It's really weird that One Note automatically changes the link to the title of the link and inserts a thumbnail underneath. There is a quick fix though. Just hit 'Command + Z' on Mac or 'Ctrl + Z' on Windows. This will take you back to your previous state.

Answer 2

HI, it has been six months since I posted the problem with OneNote. A day or so after my post I discovered a work around to keep my project moving forward. I did a copy/paste operation on the URL of a YouTube link. I guessed that OneNote uses a function like a regular expression (Regex) to process URL strings so before the Copy (Ctrl-C) I added and = (equal) to the end of the URL text string. I then pasted (Ctrl-v) that into my text document . Regex or similar function did not resolve the string as it looked to be an incomplete URL with the trailing = sign. After the paste, I simply did a backspace at the end of the URL string to remove the = sign.

Yes, that did turn a five step process (Highlight, Copy, Click OneNote, Click insert position, Paste.) process into a 9 step process. Not a problem except the project has 1,026 YouTube URL text strings to process.

Today, for the 2021 version of the document with 1,700 links, I use the OneNote | Insert | Link | address | paste | End option. The Insert | Link is a fine option with more features than I know how to use.

www.AlmostRvPerfect.net 

Dallas Thomason

Answer 3

Hi DallasThomason,

As I know, this experience has been now and when you copy/paste YouTube video link, it switches link to the thumbnail view.

If you’re looking to paste video link within a paragraph of text then please use insert link option.

If you’ve any improvement suggestion to Microsoft OneNote product group on this then I invite you to submit your suggestion/feedback to Microsoft UserVoice here:

https://onenote.uservoice.com/

Regards

Nik

Answer 4

I am not trying to embed a URL to an object on a OneNote page.  The Insert | link option is to embed a hyper link to a line of text on the page.  What I want to do is copy and paste the URL as text into a paragraph of text.  You go to OneNote and open any page.  With a browser, open a YouTube video and copy (ctrl-c) the link, in the address bar, to the clipboard.

Shift to the OneNote page and paste (ctrl-v).  Wait for 2 seconds and the link will launch the video, thumbnail image, video title.  That is no help to my paragraph of text. 

Some time ago OneNote did not launch the attributes of the link.  It just left it as a URL hypertext of straight text.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2xKge5d0hM     <---- copy / paste this to a OneNote page.

Answer 5

Hi DallasThomason,

I'm Nik, an independent advisor here to assist you with this.

Please try adding YouTube video as "Link" by these steps:

1. Open YouTube video in the browser, get video full URL from the address bar
2. Open OneNote, go to the page where you want to embed the video
3. Clik on "Insert" > Link
4. Enter Video link in both "Text to display" and "Address" filed and click OK

Please refer the screenshot to locate the option.

Regards

Nik