Question about embedded files and audio/video

I received the following question via the feedback link on this blog and I thought I would share the answer with everyone; write once, publish everywhere : )

I've read the OneNote, What's New for Developers Pts 1 and 2 and looked at the XML schema stuff. Can't find any information about what types of files (extensions, file types) that can be inserted, and what types of audio/video file types are compatible and insertable. Can you point me to the appropriate documentation or answer this directly?

Great question. You can insert any file type into OneNote! By default we don't restrict why files you can put onto a OneNote page, you can put anything that you may want and it will appear on the page. Of course system administrator can turn this off and the API will respect this settings. We have enabled admins to disable the "Insert Files" feature as well as disable the ability for users to open inserted files (I sometimes call them embedded files, sorry for the doublespeak). We also have policies to turn off certain types of file, like it is okay to open Word .docx but you can't open a .exe file.

Next part about what audio/video files are compatible with OneNote. Well it really depends on what you are trying to do; if you just want the file to be on the page you can do that by just insert it. However if you want to insert an audio/video file and have linked notes (like when you choose to insert an audio recording) then you would need to use: WMA, WMV, WAV, MP3, etc. I believe anything that has a DirectShow filter installed. I just tried with the following formats and it worked without any problem. Hope this helps!