A DOZEN REASONS TO ABSOLUTELY NEVER USE ONENOTE Or a dozen reasons why you absolutely should (This is a classic contrarian lecture where I argue with myself and try to convince myself.) This is a high level view of where OneNote has come from 2003 and what it means to be a later generation application. For example, OneNote has the usual drag and drop, pin, etc., but also has more integrated features not found in older applications. The first observation is that OneNote handles an awful lot of file formats and media in a single application, so for a task that uses multiple applications OneNote might be the best way to capture them all in a useful way. Side note, OneNote has the standard options to undo and delete. OneNote has one interesting exception to the usual menu, there s no save function OneNote saves continually in background. In fact, each Notebook has it s own Recycle bin under the History menu and all deleted items are kept for 60 days. 1
It s part of Microsoft Office I DON T HAVE ONENOTE! Easiest way to locate OneNote is to just use Windows search. In some cases, you might see both a Desktop app (the full version) and a Web app from Windows operating system. 2
Do you have for Windows, Mac, Windows RT, Windows Phone, ios, Android, or Symbian? I DON T HAVE OFFICE! If you re not using a PC with Microsoft Office installed (or you are running an out of date Office), there s a free, but slightly less featured, web app version that is perfect for cloud collaboration. The same OneNote file can be accessible on a personal phone as well as on a personal desktop. The phone is better for viewing than working, but it operates the same as any other phone app. 3
THERE S NO THERE THERE, I WANT MY TREES! Nothing against trees, but there s a lot of clicking and searching if a file isn t where you thought. And in a case like this, a long file name might hit the 512 character path limit. 4
ONENOTE HAS A TREE, TABS, & PAGES Think of the OneNote interface as a dashboard where multiple OneNote Notebooks, Section Groups, Sections, and Page are available for navigation. Note that Section Groups, Sections, and Notebooks collapse and expand. Pages may be made into subpages. This is just one Notebook. Just create whatever Notebooks make sense at the moment since everything is so easy to change and doesn t break anything. Renaming and moving is simple. FYI, in OneNote, closing a Notebook just hides it, it can be can be opened and then hidden again if not needed at the moment. 5
BUT I M NOT GIVING UP MY SEARCH! Windows search is awesome when it works as expected, but your mileage may vary. 6
SEARCH? IMAGE SEARCH TOO! OneNote search is more intuitive and the results have a useful amount of context. It can even search text in graphics, including OneNote screen captures. Of course, Windows search includes OneNote, but without the advanced results OneNote search provides. 7
BUT OFFICE APPLICATIONS ARE ALL I NEED We all have our favorite applications which we use often even though a potentially more appropriate application is available. A new application just seems like too much trouble to get comfortable with. 8
SPREADSHEETS, DRAWINGS, CHECK Just about anything can be dragged into OneNote as the expected embedded file (or even a printout), but Excel and Visio actually display some content and can be opened directly from OneNote after insertion from OneNote menu. Personally, dragging and dropping an email is a very convenient way to leverage OneNote s Outlook integration. 9
LEARN ANOTHER RIBBON INTERFACE? Most of Microsoft Office has very standard features, particularly formatting. This makes Office an easy tool to master. 10
IT INTEGRATES WITH OUTLOOK TOO Same for OneNote. Have a love and hate relationship with Outlook? There s a lot in Outlook that only seems to be there because it doesn t belong anywhere else. Still, OneNote integrates with Outlook to an extreme degree. To Do Tags are very handy when working multiple projects. 11
ONENOTE SUPPORTS FAMILIAR FUNCTIONS, AND MORE The Insert menu is particularly powerful. Particularly the ability to insert Equations (now that Word no longer supports this without another application). Screen Clipping is available whenever OneNote is installed and clipping application is loaded. No intermediate application needs to be open or even selected. OneNote just needs a right click to capture text with optical character recognition (OCR). Your mileage will vary with the font, etc. Note the History tab--this is very useful for a shared OneNote on the cloud, a SharePoint, or a server with different authors. The ability to link to other Notebooks, pages, etc. enables an ad hoc Table of Contents to easily open grouped kinds of items (everything can have their own page, no crowding, and remains easily accessible). The variable zoom under View is particularly helpful if a page (and the canvas can be very large) gets too crowded and needs to be sorted out/split up. In left to right writing systems, the upper left is the natural focus of a page. Recommend keeping the most important or recent information in this location. Note 12
that all text in OneNote is in a text box and can be moved by dragging and dropping. Text boxes can be moved to overlap if desired. 12
BUT HOW DO YOU EMAIL, PRINT, ETC.? Again the usual features, even though OneNote is mainly text boxes on a screen that does not have the limitations of hard copies with standard page sizes based on paper. Note that each of the three divisions of a Notebook can be separately exported. 13
ONLY PASTE OR DRAG FRAGMENTS INTO ONENOTE? And the other way, of course, just send an entire open file from the usual applications to OneNote through the standard Print menu. 14
BRAIN FULL, WHAT S A GOOD REFERENCE? OneNote actually comes with a Notebook that has pages full of examples, including embedded videos. As usual in Office, just key F1 for common help topics, including video training, and the usual search option. A web search for OneNote will bring up even more ideas on how various individuals have made OneNote theirs. 15