Office OneNote
Posted on October 7, 2004
Filed Under Software |
Taking notes on a computer is often done using Microsoft Word for lack of a better option. There simply hasn’t been a mainstream program that lends itself well to note taking, and organizing thoughts for a project or a brainstorming session hasn’t been particularly easy.
With regular pen and paper there’s no difficulty adding diagrams or pictures to a note or placing bits of text or pictures anywhere you like on the sheet. Paper tends to get lost, ripped, or otherwise rendered useless however, and if you’re anything like me, filing paper notes is more a handicap than a talent.
The release of Office 2003 saw two new products added to the usual lineup. Along with the old standards Word, Excel, and Outlook, users now have the option of adding OneNote to their portfolio.
OneNote is a handy program meant to make note taking easier and more efficient. Pictures and sound can be added to notes and text can be placed anywhere on the virtual notepad you like. Being a member of the Microsoft Office family, OneNote also integrates well with the other Office products.
The program can take a little getting used to though. Rather than save notes as you would a Word or Excel document, the program saves notes with no interaction from you. Take some notes, close the program, and next time you open OneNote, they will be there even though you never actually saved them. OneNote files and folders are automatically stored in a folder named “My Notebook” in “My Documents”.
With OneNote and a microphone, notes can be taken while a lecture or meeting is recorded as embedded audio. With a webcam, you can take that a step further and record audio and video while taking notes. OneNote allows you to import pictures or other documents and then annotate them with notes, sketches, or whatever you like. You can even import meeting details from Outlook to save having to retype them while taking notes.
Unlike paper notebooks, it’s easy to search your entire OneNote notebook. No more leafing through pages upon pages trying to find that one shred of information.
OneNote is particularly useful when used on a tablet PC. Using the built-in pens, tablet PC users can take notes in their own handwriting as well as draw, sketch, or even doodle. You can even search your notebook for handwritten text!
It should be noted that OneNote is an add-on to Microsoft Office 2003 and is sold separately from the Office suite. It’s also important to point out that the original OneNote lacks many of the features that OneNote service pack 1 provides. Fortunately service pack 1 is a free download from Microsoft.
This is a great program for anyone who regularly takes notes or simply needs a unified place to store snippets of information. This column was written in part using notes taken in OneNote from the Microsoft web site.
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