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Get More From Your Notes Everyday Everywhere
15 November 2008

Get More From The Notes You Take Everyday And Everywhere

By Stephanie Krieger, Document Production Expert

When do you take notes? If you're like me, the answer is probably all the time—in meetings, on the phone, doing research, when you plan your weekend errands, or plan what to pack for that upcoming trip.

No matter how often you do it, we all take notes to help simplify tasks—either to remember things, save time, or stay organized. And yet, there's nothing particularly simple about combing through a mountain of legal pads for meeting notes or a scouring a blanket of sticky notes to find your shopping list.

This article will provide you with organizing, simplifying, and timesaving tips for getting the most from the many types of notes you take every day.

Note The tips in this article are for use with Microsoft Office OneNote 2003. Learn more about OneNote 2007.

Get More from Your Notes with Less Work

Advances in technology should help us spend less time on the things we use technology to do, and give us better results. Right? So, when it comes to something as basic and essential as taking notes, technology should offer a real, practical way to improve on the paper age. Well, it does.

A page from my notebook in OneNote, with typed notes, a recorded audio note, and a screen clipping from Microsoft Office Excel—all saved together automatically.

Here are some of my favorite 21st century ways to save time and take more effective notes.

Never lose any note again.When you take a note using OneNote—whether it's typed, handwritten, an audio or video recording, or even screen clipping from another program—it's saved automatically. And, every type of note you need to take can be saved together by project, date, or however you prefer to organize. Learn about how the OneNote notebook is organized.

Tip: Screen clippings are images of any part of any other application window you have open when you're working in OneNote. You can use a simple mouse click to add an image into OneNote from a Web page, an Excel worksheet, a Microsoft Office Word document, or other sources. Find out how to add screen clippings to your notes.

Find any note in no time at all. When you need to search for a note—such as references to a client project or to recall a meeting date—the Find feature in OneNote will search all of your typed and handwritten notes at once. It will give you a list of found items that you can scroll through, or view in a task pane and sort instantly by notebook section name, page title, or date. Learn how to find notes in OneNote and get tips for customizing your search.

Create Microsoft Office Outlook items or start a Word document directly from your notes. You can select notes in OneNote and use them to create Outlook appointments, tasks and contacts—or send a page of notes to Word in just two clicks. You can even import notes or voice recordings from your Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC or SmartPhone.

•	Get quick and easy steps for using OneNote, Word, and Outlook together.
•	Learn how to get your SmartPhone notes and recordings into OneNote.
•	Read my article Timesaving Tips for Getting Your Work Donefor other ways to use the Office programs together and avoid the need to ever type the same thing twice.

Organize Your Notes with Ease

I want to see everything I need to do at a glance, organized by project, by type of action, or by date—including to-do list items, reminders, or any type of task that suits my fancy. I want to create a summary list of all action items in a single click, that I can edit, print, copy into another program, or e-mail to a colleague.

I want my computer to worry about keeping me organized, so I can focus on everything I need to get done. If that sounds good to you, you're in the right place.

The Note Flags Summary task pane makes all to-do items throughout your notebook available at a glance.

Check out these fast and friendly ways to keep your notes organized, so that they can do the same for you.

Create customized reminders to suit any task list.Using the Note Flags feature in OneNote, you can simply click to flag a note for whatever type of follow-up it requires. Use the pre-created note flag types as they are, customize them, or even create your own. Then, when you need to see all of your to-do items at a glance, on the View menu select Note Flags Summary. That's all there is to it. The Note Flags Summary task pane will open, showing you all flagged notes from your entire notebook at once, or any section you choose. Learn about using, customizing, and reviewing note flags.

Share your notes in just three clicks.To share OneNote notes with colleagues, you can simply e-mail a page from your notebook using Microsoft Outlook 2003. To do this from OneNote, on the File menu click Send To, and then click Mail Recipient. Outlook puts the text of the page right into the body of the email, for access by recipients who do not use OneNote. And, the page will also be sent as an attachment for access by recipients who do use OneNote.

You can also save an individual page from your OneNote notebook as a Web page, a OneNote section, or a Word document. To do this, on the File menu click Publish Pages. In the Publish dialog box, select your desired file type from the Save as type dropdown list and then click Publish.

The Publish dialog box in OneNote

Rearrange your notes at will.You can move or copy pages of your notebook from one section to another, create new sections, or even create folders to make your own virtual filing cabinet. To accomplish these tasks, just open the Move Or Copy Pages dialog box. To do this, on the Edit menu click Move Pages To, and then click Another Section. You can also insert new pages, sections, or folders with a single click from the Insert menu.

•	Get more tips for copying and moving your notes in OneNote.
•	Learn more about sections and folders.

Customize or Collaborate to Get Exactly the Notes You Need

Wouldn't it be nice to replay that staff meeting so that you could hear the assignment your boss gave while you were thinking about what to have for lunch? How about brainstorming on an electronic whiteboard with colleagues while you're working at your own desks or your own offices? What if you could design your own notebook that looks, feels, and functions as if it was created just for you? You can.

When you have exactly the right tools for the job, everything you need to accomplish becomes easier.

As shown in the Shared Session task pane above, it takes almost no effort to start a Shared Session that lets you edit the same OneNote page with others at the same time. If you have Outlook 2003 installed on your computer, OneNote can automatically generate an invitation e-mail for the shared session, that gives your colleagues all of the information they need.

Take a look at a few cool and creative ways to simplify your note-taking tasks and bring them to a whole new level, at the same time.

1.	Save audio and video notes right in your notebook. If your computer has sound, you can record audio notes with just two clicks and they're automatically saved on your active OneNote page. Or, connect a video camera to your computer and record video to save with your notes just as easily. Learn about using audio and video with OneNote.
2.	Make your notebook whatever you want it to be. Just as you can create templates for your Word documents, you can create stationary for your OneNote notebook. OneNote comes with dozens of stationary options for many types of notes, in a variety of paper sizes. You can use pre-created stationary for meeting planning, project organization, or even just to add your own personal style—or customize and create your own stationary for any project. You can also download your choice from a wide variety of free stationary available on Office Online. Get more information about OneNote stationary.
3.	Share notes and brainstorm with colleagues, and leave the whiteboard in the closet. The Shared Session feature in OneNote is one of my favorite technology tools. With little more effort than sending an e-mail, you can create a shared session that enables you and whoever you choose to edit the very same OneNote page at the same time—each from your own computer. Watch what your colleague writes, as they write it, on your own screen—and add your own notations right along with them. Learn more about shared sessions.