Office Pioneer : OneNote

A picture is worth a thousand words - especially in OneNote

GillLeFevre — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 20:48:34 GMT

As I've probably said before, I'm a big fan of OneNote and rely on it to keep all my meeting notes, project ideas and random jottings in one place. As a result I've got a vast array of notes made up of all sorts of types of content: my handwriting, typed comments, copied PowerPoint slides, and "print outs" of other documents such as Word files or PDFs.

All of which could make retrieving information a bit tricky, were it not for the amazing scope of the OneNote search facility in the 2007 release. (And if I'm waxing lyrical a bit too much for your taste, then, yes, I should confess that this particular feature got me out of a sticky situation only this afternoon.)

With the new Optical Character Recognition, there's nothing left that OneNote can't search. So now it doesn't matter whether the great insight you recorded was an idea you scribbled in a meeting, or written on the slide that you copied, or even on a picture that you took and stuck into OneNote - the search capability will find it all.

The joys of a known issue

GillLeFevre — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 14:22:00 GMT

Beta software inevitably has bugs. That's part of the "deal" and a part that I'm usually pretty happy with. More often than not there's a workaround or the bug isn't such a big deal and you can cope.

But not since the very early days of Beta 1 (long before the beta went public) have I come across a bug as infuriating as this one. OneNote (which next to Outlook is indispensable in my life) couldn't keep up with my typing.

Now I'm a pretty fast typist (if I say so myself), but even when I slowed down to a lazy pace, it didn't improve. I might have typed "Beta software inevitably has bugs" but what I got was more like "Ba soware inevitably s bugs". Not only was this extremely annoying, it was massively inefficient and I was taking three times as long to type anything. And by the time I got to the end of a paragraph some of the sentences were so mauled as to be unrecognisable.

In despair, I mentioned this to a colleague. "Ah yes," he replied sagely. "That's a known issue."

Oh great, I sulked. Like that's meant to make it any better. You're still stuck with the problem, but it magically becomes more bearable because other people know about it. I don't think so...

Well in this case, I was happily proved wrong. The fact that "other people", namely the product team, knew about it did make a difference, because in this instance they've come up with a work-around.

The "slow typing" issue has been addressed (I won't say fixed just yet) - you can avoid the problem by closing the "drawing tools" and "my pens" toolbars. Simple as that.

Screen Clipping From OneNote

Jo Carpenter — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 14:04:00 GMT

I’m aware that we have mentioned screen clippings once very briefly already in this blog but I just wanted to highlight again how easy it is when you have Office OneNote to save any image from anywhere on your monitor into your notes.

All you have to do is press “Windows Logo and S” and then your monitor automatically appears dimmed to allow you to highlight the image you want to select,

then once selected it copies that image into OneNote for you.

Aside from copying the image to OneNote it also copies it to your clipboard in case you want to paste it directly into an email or a document. This is a great way to save time. The way in which I did this previously was either by clicking ‘save as’ on an image or using ‘Print Screen’ on the keyboard. I no longer need to waste time cropping the image using either of these techniques, instead it is all automatically done for me.

Sending my Efficiency Rating through the Roof AND Saving the Rainforest ;-)

Charlene — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 22:16:00 GMT

As an infrequent user of OneNote 2003, I continue to be amazed at the difference OneNote 2007 is making to my day to day working. Sure the 2003 program was pretty cool with some really practical features and benefits that no other program can provide, but 2007 is actually changing the way that I work. This brings me to the second aspect of Microsoft Office that I have previous flirted with but never really discovered the true benefits in the 2003 release. Outlook tasks.

I do have to confess I am (or should I say, have been...) a pen and paper girl. I have notepads for all my different projects and I have plastic wallets that hold all those notes once I have finished actioning them. With OneNote 2003, I really did find the note taking and sharing capability greatly useful, but I still found myself looking at those pages and making myself a To Do list that I could keep on my desk, forever in my line of sight until I could strike the actions out.

Now in OneNote 2007, all I have to do is flag the task on my OneNote page and that task automatically appears in my Outlook task list... amazing.... for a To Do list oriented person like me.

What's more if the OneNote page is notes that I am taking in a meeting, I can open the OneNote page from my Outlook appointment, create my notes in OneNote, and those notes will be forever linked to that Outlook appointment in my calendar.... no matter where I might re-file the page in the future.

So, all that time that I spend analysing my notes and picking out me key actions has now been taken away, I no longer have to struggle searching trying to find my notes about a particular meeting, and my paper consumption has dramatically reduced. I feel relaxed and on top of my workload, and quite good about my reduction of wasted paper ;-)

The little things in life

GillLeFevre — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 19:52:00 GMT

I am a big fan of the mantra (and the book) "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff", so a post about the importance of small things might appear somewhat contradictory. But some times the smallest things can make a huge difference to how quickly you can get something done and therefore how happy you feel about an activity.

Here are my (current) favourite 3 "small" things I've discovered in OneNote 2007 that get me home faster! (Why OneNote? Because I've been in a training course today, taking all my notes in OneNote, so it's at the front of my mind. Another day, I'll feature another product!)

1. Ctrl+hyphen in OneNote applies (or removes) strike-through to the selected text.

I am a huge list maker, and when I discovered OneNote, it was a natural home for all my plans and to-dos (and my desk is now a whole lot tidier as a result). But it was a laborious process to strike out each of my tasks as I completed them. Not any more - now I can get the satisfaction of (electronically) striking an item off my list with one key stroke.

2. Joining "paragraph windows" in OneNote with the Alt key.

I use OneNote a lot for mapping out ideas and assembling my thoughts, sometimes before I write an email or a Word document. (Somehow it feels less intimidating than the big white page of a blank Word document, so I find that I can write more easily.) This week I've been working a lot on an assignment for a training course. Along the way, I ended up with lots of different text windows, each with individual ideas and paragraphs. Previously this would have been a big cut-and-paste job. Now it's a simple drag and drop - I just hold down the Alt key as I'm dragging the window and it automatically merges with any other window that I drop it onto.

3. Saving images directly from OneNote.

I use the OneNote screen clipping loads (particularly for copying the electronic receipts you get when you order online: I screen-clip the relevant details and hang on to them in OneNote until my delivery arrives) and every now and then I need to turn my clipping into a "proper" image file.

Previously, I would paste the screen clipping into Paint and save the image from there. Not a huge hassle, but a "process" nonetheless. Now, it's just one simple step: right-click on the image and choose "save as". My only gripe is that at the moment the only available file format is PNG - but I guess that's the sort of small stuff that I shouldn't sweat...

Enjoy it while it lasts….. No more Save PDF - Out of the Box

Charlene — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 18:48:00 GMT

Unfortunately one of the coolest features of Beta 2 has now been removed from the final product.

The ability to Save as PDF or our own XPS format, the crowd pleaser at product demos, will no longer be included in the final release due to pressure from Adobe.

But worry not, you will still be able to reap all the benefits of this feature by downloading free software that we be releasing to give you this capability…