Greetings from family-land! I am still vacationing – hence my spotty bloging. But, I did manage to get it together long enough to try out the new version of the Capturx pen from Adaptx. The big highlight if you are already a Capturx convert is that you can now print out paper from OneNote that can be used with the pen rather than having to use the special notebooks they provided in the past.

I’ll be writing a review of my experiences (I am a Capturx newbie) but in the meantime, I got this from Marc Pierre, Capturx’s product manager:

____________________________________

Capturx enables individuals and teams to take notes and sketch on paper with digital pens, which automatically record and integrate the handwriting into Microsoft Office OneNote. Anyone can simply write in Capturx notebooks or on ordinary printed pages with digital pens. All the information is backed up, searchable, and sharable in email or other Microsoft Office applications.

One customer of Adapx is an engineering firm whose staff record field observations and make sketches that result in volumes of data that is difficult to sort through and time consuming to key into PC’s. Their paper based data is now uploaded into OneNote where they can take advantage of sharing the information with others or even search the handwritten text.

Caputrx is also offered to office staff for use in meetings to help boost productivity which has been so successful we often get thanked for a tool that enables collaboration without being a distraction. At any time staff can reference and share notes directly from Microsoft OneNote. Office staff or field teams are now able work in a variety of locations, simply write with an easy to use pen and paper and stay focused on their jobs instead of burdensome tools.

Capturx instantly digitizes the handwriting on paper, helping to bridge paper based tools to powerful digital features in OneNote. Many of our customers found the original 5X7 notebook with waterproof pages to be helpful in field scenarios, but we also got a lot of requests for letter sized notebooks. Today we offer both letter sized 8.5X11 notebooks and unlimited print on demand of notebook pages directly from OneNote, using ordinary paper!

We are looking forward to lot’s more feedback from our customers to help with future releases.

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Using OneNote for effective document management

Christain Cawley from the BrightHub blog has written an interesting piece in which he discusses how you can use OneNote as an alternative to Adopbe Acrobat.

He says: “Microsoft OneNote allows the creation of encoded document images in a fraction of the time of Adobe Acrobat. These files are portable and can be opened on any compatible device. Why pay extra when Microsoft Office already has the tools you need?”

Read the rest here:

Microsoft Office 2007 contains the extremely useful OneNote, a document image making program similar to Adobe Acrobat. Documents, images, and web pages can all be printed to OneNote (which appears as an option in your printers list) and then stored away. These documents can be retreived for printing later if required or named and indexed using OneNote’s useful tabs.

The OneNote application comes with all versions of Microsoft Office and comes with various useful features such as the ability to copy text using OCR, indexing of notes, voice and video clips added to a OneNote document, and support for tables and arithmetic expressions.

OneNote Images

Print Receipts to OneNote

One particularly good use for Microsoft OneNote is as a printer substitute. Many people are currently spending considerable amounts of time conducting business and domestic transactions online, and it’s always a very good idea to keep records of any changes to your online banking or shopping accounts.

While printing these changes to paper is useful and offers a tangible end product, it isn’t always possible. For example, your printer might be out of action, low on ink toner or empty, or even short of paper. Therefore, printing to OneNote offers a great alternative, resulting in a document that is searchable, portable, with easily copied content, and compiled with other similar documents into a tabbed notebook.

How to Print to OneNote

Once installed, printing to OneNote couldn’t be easier.

For instance, if you’re completing an online banking transaction and want to make a copy of the receipt that is currently being displayed, in your browser go to File > Print… and in the Printer Name drop down menu select Send to OneNote 2007.

OneNote will then generate an image of the page you’re viewing and present a new version of the document to you in a OneNote window, complete with a field to name the document and various options to add notes and highlights to the document.

You can also save a Microsoft OneNote document in .doc format for opening in Word while the application is also compatible with Windows Desktop Search 3.0. Once this is installed, your desktop searches will take in the content of OneNote image documents and display these among your search results.

More to OneNote

If you opt to print your OneNote document at some point, simply go to File > Print… and select your printer to output the document to paper.

Saving OneNote image documents involves a slightly unusual process: OneNote adds all “printed” documents to a virtual notebook, which means whenever you print to OneNote these documents will be added to your last used notebook. You don’t have to save this as OneNote retains the contents; additional notebooks can be saved, however, allowing you to use different notebooks for different types of documents. Notebooks can also be split into sections and organised by tabs should you wish to keep all documents in easily accessible and well-organized files.

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Another Top 10 Reasons for using OneNote

Ok, so you all know how much I love a top 10 list – and the team over at Microsoft has produced a Top 10 Reasons for using OneNote list which I am providing here (looks like at least one person has dedicated 10 minutes to do some marketing for this product!)

So, here’s there top 10 – what have they missed?

Reason 1 Gather your notes and information in one place. Gather, store, and manage your notes and information — including text, pictures, digital handwriting, audio and video recordings, and more — in a single location. Having all your important information at your fingertips can help you make more informed decisions and be better prepared.

Reason 2 Back up your valuable information. Office OneNote 2007 automatically saves and backs up your notebooks, whether stored locally or on a network file share, so you’re less vulnerable to data loss.

Reason 3 Find information more quickly. Powerful search technology with optical character recognition helps you find what you’re looking for more quickly — whether you’re searching handwritten notes, text in pictures, or spoken words in audio and video recordings. You can configure Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 to index Office OneNote 2007 files automatically to incorporate the data into your company’s knowledge base.

Reason 4 Work together more effectively. Shared notebooks give everyone access to the same information at the same time, online or offline. Office OneNote 2007 manages changes for you so that multiple users can work simultaneously in the same notebook—there’s no need to keep track of versions and changes. With Live Sharing Sessions, geographically dispersed teams can view and edit the same page of notes at the same time.

Reason 5 Avoid duplicate work. Office OneNote 2007 makes it easy to collect, store, and search information about projects in a central location. Capitalize on ideas, notes, and best practices when briefing new project teams or team members. Take advantage of OneNote archives to avoid duplicate work.

Reason 6 Organize your way. Organize information in the way that works best for you. See all your open notebooks in a single view, and easily arrange and rearrange your notes with drag-and-drop functionality. You can add hyperlinks to other pages in your notebook so you can quickly find content relevant to the task at hand.

Reason 7 Prioritize and manage tasks and your to-do list more efficiently. Use note tags to mark and easily track actions and important items. Note tags can be customized according to your needs and quickly viewed in a summary pane. Tasks created in Office OneNote 2007 synchronize with Microsoft Office Outlook tasks so you can manage your projects more efficiently.

Reason 8 Make meetings more productive. Office OneNote 2007 gives you the flexibility to capture all of the information presented in meetings, including status updates, presentations, documents, typed and handwritten notes, and more. With all meeting notes stored in one location, everyone has access to the same information, helping ensure that all team members are on the same page and that everyone walks away with a consistent set of action items.

Reason 9 Get up to speed quickly. The familiar look and feel of other Microsoft Office system programs and an intuitive user interface make it easy to get started using Office OneNote 2007 right away. Integration with the 2007 Microsoft Office system means you can share information between Office OneNote 2007 and other Microsoft Office system programs easily.

Reason 10 Improve productivity away from the office. Synchronize your Microsoft Windows Mobile–powered devices with Office OneNote 2007 so you can take contents of your notebook with you and view them on your mobile device. In addition, information you capture on your Smartphone or Windows Mobile–based Pocket PC, including photos and text, can be transferred to Office OneNote 2007 and made text-searchable.

Remember to share this with any non-believers in your life!

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Take your OneNote on the Road with your IPHONE!

Iheart member katnchains broke the news about the new OneNote iPhone app being called MobileNoter:

That’s right!  Somebody finally made an app for syncing your beloved OneNote with your just as beloved IPhone.  If you’re not an IPhoner please forgive me and move right along to the next blog.

But for those of you that have an IPhone and really wanted your OneNote to go everywhere with you, then MobileNoter is for you.  MobileNoter, created by The MS Team, is now available in the appstore with a windows client to download for $1.25 per month from their website.

But don’t take my word for it.  Check it out https://www.mobilenoter.com/

I sync’d about half of my notebooks and there are a couple of things that I’m hoping they’ll fix in upcoming versions but overall I think it’s a fantastic companion program.  It was fast and easy to set both of the programs up and it was pretty fast to sync my notebooks from my pc to the iphone.  The two bugs I’ve got are, it doesn’t seem to handle images in pages yet and it doesn’t sync sections that are password protected.  I’m not sure the second is really a bug, for security purposes it probably makes sense not to touch those.  But the images thing is a pretty big problem for me as I have many pages with screen clips or things I’ve printed into onenote.

Here’s what their website says:

MobileNoter is an iPhone note-taking application that is able to sync with Microsoft OneNote notebooks. Do you use OneNote on daily basis on your laptop or PC and dream to be able to sync it with your iPhone? Then MobileNoter is just what you are looking for.

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Using OneNote for AutoFocus (vs GTD)

Steve, one of our iheart members contributed this blog:

In the interest of truth in advertising I should probably point out that I’m not doing true GTD (Get Things Done) using the format that David Allen uses.  I’m inspired by the approach, but also found that while I hold myself accountable to the work flow practices, the distribution of items and lists he uses don’t naturally work for me.

I like the Autofocus approach ( http://www.markforster.net/autofocus-system/ ) approach, mixed with the hipster       ( http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-pda ) index cards.

Autofocus fits my intuitive temperament by allowing me to keep a simplified number of running lists of things I need to do.  Forster suggests keeping a notebook.  I find OneNote works great for this.  I’ve created an ‘Autofocus’ notebook that has a primary section entitled “Critical Tasks” where immediate things go,”Tasks” where longer term or less pressing actions go, and one for personal stuff entitled “HOME”.  Another section entitled “Futuring” gets a variety of ideas for longer range things to develop.  A section group holds various resources I use on an ongoing basis, like printouts (Send to OneNote) of my Outlook 2007 calendar for the next 3 months, and hyperlinked items that show up on my “Critical Task” list.

I’ve set-up the pages in both “Critical Tasks” and “HOME” to a 4″ x 6″ index card format.  This is where the ‘hipster’ piece comes in.  I like to print off the current critical and home to do lists on index cards and carry them with me in an index card wallet so I can add notes, cross things off, and generally not have to be attached to the TabletPC all the time.  I also carry a printed out Outlook 2007 weekly calendar with this week on one side, next week on the other.  This way I can quickly add or change appointments, note kid pick-up times etc. all on my index cards.

There are two other pieces of software I use to brainstorm and organize that are helpful to me.  The first is Inspiration (http://www.inspiration.com/ ) for quick mind-mapping and brainstorming.  I love to do cluster diagrams to help me think of key steps, projects, things that need doing in the big picture.  Part of my system that works so well right now is that I:

• Do cluster maps of various projects, responsibilities, and stuff in Inspiration.
• Hyperlink to particular OneNote sections where the outlines or details live.  This means I can ‘see’ the concept maps in Inspiration in a way that helps keep them alive in my head and then go work on the detailed lists in OneNote.
• I also print the maps to OneNote so I have a current refreshed view without opening Inspiration when I’m actively working the details / action steps.

The other piece of software that helps me go from idea to action is Project KickStart ( http://www.projectkickstart.com/ ).  This is a quick project management organizer that walks you through step by step developing a new project, assigning phases, tasks, responsibilities, and even lets you print and maintain GANT charts.  I also love the fact that it integrates tasks and calendars with Outlook 2007.

This means that I can do the step by step thing, print out a professional looking project plan to share with board and colleagues, and connect it to reminders / actions / events in Outlook.  AND I can:

• Print to OneNote a project overview including task lists and actions to take or follow-up on.
• Make notes on the project in OneNote, including using the assignments / task lists in shared notebooks so the whole team can see, work with where we’re at and who is doing what.

I also like to print the Inspiration mindmaps and the Project Kickstart GANT charts out in poster size (taping pages together) so I have a quick visual reminder on my office wall.

All of these things help me keep more or less on top of the 1,001 things I’m responsible for / working with.  I’m not naturally anal or detail-oriented.  What this system does is helps me:

• Get more done
• Not forget things
• Dump details out of my head so that I’m not thinking about them when I’m doing something else
• Do better by taking more timely action
• Actually make space for attention to the more creative aspects of what I want to do

So tell me please, does this help anyone or give you ideas…?  Did you even read this far…?

HERE ARE THE COMMENTS POSTED BY OTHER MEMBERS:

he other thing that OneNote does that Autofocus on paper doesn’t is let’s me hyperlink to action resources or appointments and such.

_______________________________

More from Steve:

A key thing I realize is keeping my “To Do” list do-able.  I deal with some complex projects and often get tripped up by creating to do’s that are too general and not actionable as in one defined step.

I do impossible one’s like “Update website.”  What that can mean is get a full blown redesign.  I then of course don’t start it, but simply stare at it.

INSTEAD, if I start with “Spend 20 minutes in ProjectKickStart doing a general project plan for updating the website” I get more concrete and think more clearly about what tasks are needed.  So I get a task like ‘do quick outline of what we want to the site to do’ or ‘talk to designer’.  Those things I can do and cross them off.  They move the project forward.

_____________________________

From McDaniel:

Someone, maybe you?, posted up an Autofocus notebook a while back and I loved the entire concept. I went to the site, read up on it, designed a notebook and started my list.

Then nothing.

I know what I want to do, but I’m still coming up with ways to not get it done. Sucks. But, I wholeheartedly agree that OneNote is absolutely perfect for Autofocus and in many ways, improves upon the initial concept with the different ways that you can catalog and move your lists, etc.

________________________

From CafeKing

Hi,

Found your comments really useful. I am integrating OneNote with my wrirting and speaking commitments.

Have you read “Take Back Your Life!” by Sally McGhee and John Wittery?

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TAKS Testing — Or a really GOOD way to survive with One Note

This from our member Kath Weaver:

I lose paper.  One problem, is that the school’s desks were constructor decades before anyone thought of a computer.  Once I get two monitors on it, I have no room to put anything else on the computer must less paper.  It falls off and often ends up in the trash can.

Well this week was TAKS testing — Texas’s version of the tests needed to assess student achievement for No Child Left Behind.  Very stressful as we give the math tests on seperate days since each child much have a graphing calculator.  I can never remember which test is given when, where I am supposed to be, etc.  They gives us copious sets of paper, all of which I never have when I need it.

IheartOneNote member, Kath Weaver

Well this year I got smart and scanned every piece of paper i need to keep up with and put it in a OneNote Notebook.  It was assume, as I saved the Notebook on Live Mesh and I could get to it whereever I was at.  I looked VERY smart and very together and anyone who did see my notes were very impressed.

Plus I was where I was supposed to be and ON time!

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Another great source of OneNote “How-to’s”

This blog post is from one of our members, Georgeogoodman:

EHow.com (http://www.ehow.com/) appears to have quite a few how-to entries for our favorite tool.

How to Record Audio in OneNote 2007

How to Record Audio in OneNote 2007. OneNote 2007 offers several ways to record information in addition to the keyboard, including “ink” on Tablet PCs and …

http://www.ehow.com/how_2054487_record-audio-onenote.html

How to Use Microsoft Office OneNote As An Organizational Tool …

I just discovered the power of Microsoft Office OneNote as an organizational tool. … For me, the best use for the Microsoft Office OneNote.

http://www.ehow.com/how_4875827_microsoft-office-onenote-organizational-tool.html

How to Use OneNote 2007 as a Research Tool

How to Use OneNote 2007 as a Research Tool. Research often requires compiling various types of information into a central location, …

http://www.ehow.com/how_2064175_use-onenote-2007-as-research.html

How to Take Notes in OneNote 2007

How to Take Notes in OneNote 2007. “OneNote 2007″ is a robust note taking tool. You can take notes with the keyboard and via “ink” on Tablet PCs and, …

http://www.ehow.com/how_2059900_take-notes-onenote-2007.html

How to Use Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 on your Smartphone

How to Use Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 on your Smartphone. Now you can use your Smartphone to capture the ease and versatility of Microsoft Office OneNote …

http://www.ehow.com/how_4554759_use-microsoft-office-onenote-smartphone.html

How to Share a OneNote Notebook on Multiple Computers

How to Share a OneNote Notebook on Multiple Computers. Microsoft OneNote is a very useful program that allows you to keep notes in the freeform way that you …

http://www.ehow.com/how_4500758_share-onenote-notebook-multiple-computers.html

How to Create a Microsoft Office OneNote Notebook

The Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 notebook is a convenient, easy-to-use application with all the benefits of a notebook and the added convenience of being …

http://www.ehow.com/how_2262456_microsoft-office-onenote-notebook.html

How to Share a Private OneNote Notebook

How to Share a Private OneNote Notebook. OneNote is a wonderful tool for keeping notes on your computer about anything you wish, from your grocery list to …

http://www.ehow.com/how_4500714_share-private-onenote-notebook.html

How to Use Microsoft One Note to Organize Classes

How to Use Microsoft One Note to Organize Classes. Many schools have everything in an electronic form. The class syllabus, notes, lectures and other …

http://www.ehow.com/how_4545838_use-microsoft-one-note-organize.html

How to Use MicroSoft Office OneNote to Speed Writing of eHow …

MicroSoft Office OneNote is not only a premium organizational software, but, … I’ve found a way to use MicroSoft Office OneNote to…

http://www.ehow.com/how_4875963_speed-writing-of-ehow-articles.html

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Assorted OneNote Tips and Tricks

Just found this great post on Digg:

It’s a pretty good overview of OneNote functionality for the uninitiated – here’s the section about Sharing Notes – there’s lots more on the original post

•    Selecting All – Edit/ Select: All, Page, or Page Group to select various pages for copying, printing, emailing or saving to web page.  Also Ctrl+Shift+A to select a page, then Ctrl+A to select all subpages and Ctrl+A again to select all in a section. Also double click on page tab to select whole page, and click again to select subpages.  Ctrl+Click to select individual pages.
•    Publishing Web Pages – Save OneNote pages so users without OneNote can still read them. File/ Publish Pages to save as HTML document viewable in browser.
•    Send to Email – Share notes by emailing in Outlook 2003.  File/ E-mail will send notes as HTML content to any recipient and include OneNote file as attachment for OneNote users.
•    Send to Word – Selected note pages can be sent to Word as a word document with File/Send to/ Microsoft Office Word.  You can also save directly to Word format with File/ Save As/ Save As Type: Word Document with .DOC. Also copy selected notes or pages and paste into any Office program. Edit/ Copy, then paste to target application.
•    Real Time Sharing – Share your notes with others for viewing or editing in real time.  File/ Share with Others, Start A Session, assign a Password and Select Pages to share.  Option to send email invitation or connect with a shared address.  All participants retain a copy of the shared notes.
•    Data from Excel – Copy & paste spreadsheet range into OneNote.  Paste options include; pasting with formatting (editable), pasting as text (editable), and pasting picture (non editable).  Formulas are not retained; numbers are displayed in tabular format.
•    Data from Word – Copy & paste text into OneNote.  Paste options include paste with formatting and paste as picture.  Continuous numbered lists pick up list formatting in OneNote.  Best fidelity is paste as picture though it is non editable.
•    Data from PowerPoint – Individual slides can be copied and pasted into OneNote as images
•    Document as Picture – To annotate Word, Excel & PowerPoint documents choose Insert/ Document as Picture to create Images of pages in OneNote.  Resulting Images are not editable but can be annotated.
•    Web Content – Copy & paste or drag & drop content from web page into OneNote.  Web content appears with hyperlink to source page.
•    Pocket PC and SmartPhone Notes – OneNote will read notes (.pwi) files of handwritten text, typed text, and drawings from a Pocket PC and import them into a “Copied from Pocket PC Notes” section.
•    Audio & Video Recording – Tools/ Audio and Video Recording to record audio only or audio & video with your notes.  Playback is linked to text.  Recorded file is stored separate from notes file.  Right click OneNote icon in taskbar for quick recording when OneNote is not open.

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How OneNote’s GodFather uses OneNote

Some of you may know who Chris Pratley is, for those of you who don’t, he’s kind of the Godfather of OneNote over at Microsoft.

Here’s how he uses OneNote:

As a starter, I’ll go first. I use OneNote for the following activities:

1. Internet research – drag/drop or copy paste web page content into OneNote. I do this for personal reasons e.g. shopping, to compare prices or specs or models of something I want to buy – DVD player, car, lighting systems, window blinds, etc. Other things are just stuff I don’t want to forget – passwords, how to make my TiVo skip 30sec, how long does breast milk keep, etc. I also use it for work, where I collect snippets of things I read from email or the web to keep little scrapbooks about different topics (each scrapbook is a section). This is about 40-50% of what I use OneNote for, and mostly this is on a desktop PC (at home or work)
2. Blogging – I keep my blog entries (past, present, future) in a blog section of OneNote (one entry per page), where I work on them over time. I am not the type of blogger who puts two sentences up every few hours – I am more like a columnist, keeping many different story ideas percolating until one is ready, or more usually I get excited about one and finish it, as I am doing with this one right now. (about 10% of usage). This is on my desktop PC at home.
3. Idea scrapbook. This is a little different from web research, although I often include a snippet with the idea or thought I want to keep. I just put the idea into OneNote. This sort of thing goes into an “Inbox” section (described in a moment) since I don’t have a category/section for them when I write them. (about 10%). I do this on all machines (I have a tablet as well)
4. Meeting notes: my dirty secret is that I am a terribly lazy note taker – so I only write down the occasional fact or action item from meetings. For a long period last year I would do a lot of demos of pre-release OneNote (internally or externally), and if I saw a bug, I’d quickly jot the bug down (typed or written), and flag it with the note flag “bug”. Later I would pull up the note flag summary for “bug”, and enter these bugs into our tracking database, then check off the “bug” flag as “done” (i.e. moved to database). I also occasionally video record some meetings (e.g. focus groups) that I go to so others on my team can see what they were like and listen to the audio if they want. This is all on my tablet, although I usually use that as a laptop since I don’t like my handwriting, and typing is faster. About 10-20%, changes with project “season”.
5. Review notes other send me. I receive notes via email attachment, and also in our group we have many OneNote sections stored on file shares, in shared folders, and SharePoint doc libraries. Other people on the team are periodically adding research, thoughts, etc to these sections, which include OneNote usage scenarios, feature design thoughts, usage data, etc. (about 20%). This is on my desktop.

So overall, I use OneNote on my desktop about 80-90% of the time, and on my tablet 10-20%. Because I am lazy, I also rely heavily on others who use OneNote and send me notes from meetings/brainstorming sessions I attend (or did not attend)

My notebook looks basically like this:

Inbox (section where most stuff goes when I first write it, to be categorized within a week or too when I get around to it)

Side notes (section where my side notes go – to be categorized within a week or too when I get around to it)

Work (folder)

Word (folder)

Status meeting (section for recurring meeting notes)

Analysts (section for notes on what industry analysts have said about Word)

Word archive (folder with old sections from Word2003 project)

Publisher (folder holding sections related to the Publisher team)

etc

OneNote (folder holding sections related to the OneNote team)

Scenarios (shared folder on a server holding many sections authored by team members collaborating on defining user scenarios)

SQM data (shared folder holding sections that contain research from the service quality monitor/customer experience improvement program, etc

RAP (shared folder holding many sections relating to the customers in our rapid adoption program, and what issues they are facing)

OneNote ideas (section with random ideas for OneNote features that I’ve had)

Analysts (section for notes on what industry analysts have said about OneNote)

Etc.

OneNote Archive (folder that holds old sections from the first release or others sections that I don’t need to see these days)

Text Services (folder)

etc

People (section with pages that hold things I need to raise with my direct reports or others when I meet with them)

Etc.

Personal (folder)

Blog (section for past and future blog entries)

House (section to hold shopping research, punch list for remodel, etc.)

Seiko (shared section via my personal web site with my wife’s two machines, work and home, and my three machines – two work, one home)

Etc.

Notes emailed to Me (folder that OneNote creates to hold random stuff I get emailed)

Other notes I’ve Seen (folder OneNote creates to hold random stuff I open off of file shares, etc)

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Interesting uses of OneNote

Happy Friday-before-Memorial-day-weekend!  You are not going to believe this, but we are on day 3 of Sunshine with more expected for the weekend. I don’t think there are any people in the country who are more deserving of some sunshine than us up here in the Pacific NorthWest. With a bit of luck, we’ll be able to dry out and absorb some Vitamin D! I smell a BBQ in my future!

Anyway, to lead us into the weekend, here’s another installment in our continuing series “101 Uses for OneNote.” Hopefully, you’ll learn something new and if you do, be sure to tell the rest of us all about it.

Using OneNote for Design

For those of you in the business of design, think about all the software you use. My personal list includes all of Adobe Creative Suite 3, EditPlus 2, and Microsoft Office OneNote.

Wait a sec…  did I just say OneNote?! Yes, I did!

If you’ve ever been in the situation where you needed to eye-drop a colour from somewhere, or make a measurement, or simply grab a snippet of something on your screen, you’ll understand the importance of your computer’s Print Screen function. But Print Screen is a hassle. After all, it prints the whole screen, leaving you to crop out the unecessary parts. That’s where OneNote comes in!

Among all the cool note-taking functionality OneNote offers, it also comes equipped with a nifty screen clipping function that allows you to take a screenshot of any part of your screen simply by clicking and dragging your cursor over the desired area (similar to how you would select an area in Photoshop). And voila – no cropping required! OneNote gives you the option to save the screenshot to your clipboard (ready to be pasted somewhere) or to place it into a new note within OneNote. It even comes handy with a keyboard shortcut (windows key + s… sorry Mac users)!

I personally love the convenience of being able to take custom-sized screenshots whether I’m using it within design, word processing, or even instant messaging (MSN lets you simply “paste” the image into the message box and then sends it as a file to your buddy).

Use OneNote for Genealogy Research

Gone are the days when all genealogy pedigrees were kept on paper charts, when all correspondence was done by snail mail, and when all your research was copied neatly onto lined paper and piled on top of the foot-tall stack of genealogy papers. Now that there is genealogy software for pedigrees, such as PAF, Legacy and RootsMagic, family historians no longer need to keep everything on hard copy. But finding a good genealogy notes software program is difficult. Try out Microsoft Onenote for keeping your research organized, and you’ll never go back to paper.

Microsoft OneNote is basically a digital notebook; you can have different notebooks, different sections within each notebook, and different pages within each section. The only limit to how much you can keep in your notebooks depends on the size of your hard drive. The real beauty of using Microsoft Onenote for your genealogy research lies in the fact that you’ll be able to pinpoint pieces of information literally in seconds. The notebooks organize the research so easily that there is no longer any shuffling through masses of paper to find one line of notes

Use OneNote for Karoake

Ok – if you think you are going to have a slow weekend, then you should definitely check out this post from John Guin over at Microsoft.

I’m including his screenshot as a teaser!

Here’s what it looks like when I play it back:

Tell us the interesting ways you use OneNote!

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