Tag Archives: OneNote

Strategy

Using OneNote to teach OneNote

Sounds redundant doesn’t it?  How can you possibly use a tool to teach someone how to use the same tool? Well in this case it’s possible because we’re going to leverage the collaborative syncing capability of OneNote as a content delivery mechanism. The principle is surprisingly simple.

Step 1 – Create a notebook

Create a OneNote notebook in a shared location. A SharePoint document library or OneDrive folder would be best, but you can use a file share if needed. Once you’ve created the notebook you’ll share the location of that notebook with everyone who will need access.

Step 2 – Have readers open the notebook in OneNote

Once you’ve shared the location of the notebook, have your users open the notebook in their local copies of OneNote. Once they’ve been able to open the notebook, they will begin to receive the synchronized updates as changes are made.

Step 3 – Start publishing content through the OneNote notebook

All that needs to happen now is the addition of strong, valuable content to the notebook so it can be automatically pushed out to everyone who has opened the notebook. Keep in mind any user can make changes as well so this isn’t truly a content delivery mechanism.

By getting users to take the first step in engaging with OneNote at the level of an information consumer, you help them gain comfort and confidence in the ecosystem until they’re ready to go out on their own.

Featured



Deletion and better ways of managing OneNote notebooks


Deletion and better ways of managing OneNote notebooks


Notebooks in OneNote are powerful organizational tools. But with great power comes great responsibility…especially when it comes to getting rid of notebooks you don’t need any longer.


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How should I organize my notebooks in OneNote?


How should I organize my notebooks in OneNote?


One of the most frequent issues with OneNote is how to organize your notebooks. Here’s some suggestions.


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OneNote Use Case - Successful Meeting Management


OneNote Use Case – Successful Meeting Management



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Creating Tasks in Todoist using OneNote | Productive Professionals


Creating Tasks in Todoist using OneNote | Productive Professionals



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Taking Notes in OneNote for the Easily Distracted


Taking Notes in OneNote for the Easily Distracted



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Three ways to organize your OneNote


Three ways to organize your OneNote



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New Ways to Use OneNote in your Personal Life


New Ways to Use OneNote in your Personal Life



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OneNote is dead. Long live OneNote.


OneNote is dead. Long live OneNote.



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Some interesting updates made on OneNote for Windows 10


Some interesting updates made on OneNote for Windows 10



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Using Todoist to manage reminders for OneNote


Using Todoist to manage reminders for OneNote


Here’s the process I use to generate multiple tasks in Todoist from OneNote so I can ensure everything gets done on schedule


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Strategy, Techniques

Using OneNote to organize a college student

1 Comment

It’s that time of year when we’re in the final stages of getting our new college students ready to head to their school of choice (hopefully) in the fall. Forms, emails, schedules, and reminders all come flooding in with many of them not due for weeks.  How do you keep the firehose of information organized so both your student and you are confident nothing is falling through the cracks? My recommendation…turn to OneNote. As the father of one graduated college student and one starting in the fall, I’d like to share some insights and ideas around how you can put OneNote to use in keeping everything organized and removing one stress point from the life of a new college student.

Create a college notebook

To begin, create a OneNote notebook dedicated to just college information.  I don’t recommend integrating into another notebook due to the sheer volume of information you’re going to be managing combined with the fact you will be sharing this notebook between two or more people. Once you have the notebook created, share it to everyone who will need access (usually the student and parents/guardians/adult roles of choice). This structure will also work if you are managing only your own information, as you just eliminate the sharing step.

Create sections in the notebook

You will need sections for each major area of college life in the notebook. I recommend at a minimum:

  • Housing
  • Financial
  • Transportation
  • Schedule
  • Enrollment
  • Scholarships
  • Forms
  • Action Items
  • Quick Reference

You may be wondering how you handle the overlap between sections such as Forms and Financial.  That’s one of the strengths of OneNote. If it is easiest for you to have a section of all the Forms you have submitted to the school, you can use the linking capability of OneNote to create links in the other sections back to those original forms.  If it is easier for you to keep the forms in the sections where they apply, such as Scholarships, you can create a page in the Forms section with links to the forms spread out in the other sections.  The objective is to make sure information is at your fingertips when you need it.

The Quick Reference section is typically only one page in the section.  On that page put everything you might need frequently and quickly. Student ID, office numbers, professor email addresses, emergency contact numbers, pizza delivery numbers, whatever you find yourself looking up more than twice is worth putting in the Quick Reference section.

Install the mobile OneNote client

Make sure you have OneNote installed on your smartphone so you have access to your information at all times. Once you have installed the mobile client (iOS or Android) open your new notebook to make sure you have access and everything is syncing. Here’s a pro tip…press and hold on the name of the notebook and then add the notebook to your home screen for quick access. Now that you have the mobile client set up you can use it to capture information whenever you need to and best yet take pictures of important things for later recall.  Any text in pictures you take becomes searchable so finding that course syllabus again after two weeks is a simple matter.

Capture everything

Make it a habit to capture everything into your OneNote notebook.  It is far easier to delete something later when you don’t need it than to go searching for it when you do. Notes, photos, illustrations, whatever you need to keep on hand is best stored in OneNote rather than taking up that valuable brain space you need for your classes.

 

If this article has been helpful, why not come over to Productive Professionals to find more, talk about the productivity topics that interest you, and take your productivity up a notch?

You can join the OneNote group at Productive Professionals to learn more about how to get the most out of one of the most powerful organizational tools out there.

Tools

Using OneNote instead of Evernote for Project Management

Dann Albright over at the MakeUseOf.com blog wrote a great article about how to use Evernote for project management.  In the interest of equal time, I’m taking his points one by one and translating them to how to accomplish the same things in OneNote.

Clean out your notebooks

OneNote allows you to create multiple notebooks as individual files and then store them either locally or in the cloud. When it comes to managing projects, I recommend creating one notebook for each project being managed.  Doing this gives you granular control of the notebook for your project team as well as preventing accidental changes between projects.  If you have a large number of projects you are managing, you can create a notebook and use it as a “program notebook” providing connections to each of the other projects for easier management.

Create Project Notebooks and Stacks

Within OneNote’s notebooks, you can leverage sections and section groups to organize your content.  I suggest starting with defining a standard naming convention for your notebook and a basic structure for where you are storing them.  If you’re keeping your notebooks in a shared drive, OneDrive, or SharePoint is less important than being consistent and organized.

Create a Master List

The first page in your notebook’s main section should be a table of contents for all the related key information about your project.  Adding links (Ctrl-K) to sections and pages on that main page turns OneNote into a mini project website and keeps your team from having to search to find content.  I recommend including links to pages such as:

  • Team directory
  • Project Requirements
  • Schedule
  • Document Libraries
  • Reference Links

The key with the main page is it becomes the dashboard for your project. Team members can easily check the status of the project as well as connect to information they need in short order.

Organize Project Notes

Using the sections in OneNote makes it easy to group your content around common areas such as requirements gathering.  You can also use tricks such as the [[Page Name]] approach to generate new notes pages on the fly while you are working. The most important features are the searchability of all the notes from within OneNote as well as the addition of file printouts directly into OneNote for easy reference.  Keeping your notes in a common space and allowing the team to update and access the information as needed.

Add Shortcuts

Using the link keyboard shortcut (Ctrl-K) on the desktop application gives you an easy access dialog to all the content in your notebook. These links are great shortcuts to your content, making it easy to consolidate rapid access around different topics without having to duplicate content.

Create pages in your notebooks focused around specific topics or requirements and use the shortcuts to connect in relevant content. You can use this strategy to keep meetings on task and on target. The less people have to search and wander around in your notebooks the better off your project will be.

Set up reminders and due dates

Unfortunately reminders and due dates are one of the weaknesses of the OneNote solution. There is no built-in functionality for this so you’ll have to look outside the product to have this capability. The one saving grace is the ability to copy links for pages or notebooks and then paste those links into other tools for easy access.  For example, I copy links from OneNote and paste them into Todoist to manage my task list.  The same thing can be done for tools such as Trello or Toodledo, with the only requirement being the reminder tool being able to accept links to outside systems.

Develop a tag system

OneNote does not have a “natural” tagging system as per say, but you can leverage the search capability in place of dedicated tags. Add text tags to your page and then search for them to get the main listing of pages that contain that unique phrase.  Be aware though that the OneNote search ignores special characters so adding a hashtag to the beginning of a text phrase does not uniquely identify it as a tag.

You can also use the Tags capability within OneNote for easy markup of your documents, but there are several concerns with using the embedded tags you need to consider.  I reviewed some of these concerns in my article about Tags and OneNote.

Integrate your other apps

OneNote strongly integrates with other members of the Office suite including Outlook, Excel, and Visio. If you work within the Microsoft ecosystem you can leverage features such as shared meeting notes, embedded spreadsheets, and direct capture of emails into OneNote Notebooks. Unfortunately if you’re not living 100% in the Microsoft universe many of these features are not available for you.

You can also use tools such as IFTTT to tie OneNote in with other external systems for managing your information.  For example using IFTTT you can have any emails that come into your Google Mail account including a specific set of text in the subject line routed to a OneNote notebook for record keeping.

Collaborate

One of the biggest strengths of OneNote is collaboration WHEN the notebook is placed in a shared area such as a network file share or, even better, OneDrive / SharePoint. You can see what has been edited by whom, review previous versions, and receive visual notifications when changes are made.

One Note for Project Management

OneNote is an exceptionally powerful tool for project managers, as is Evernote. Where the success or failures of the tools come down to is the strategy, implementation, and follow through on their use. Make sure no matter what tool you choose, you have a plan and put it to work.  If you have questions about using OneNote for Project Management, feel free to let me know and I’ll be happy to chat with you about your needs. If you’re a Facebook user, you can also join the OneNote for Professionals group to find other ways to get more out of OneNote.

Techniques

Create a bullet journal index in OneNote

When you’re using the Bullet Journal approach in OneNote, one of the things you’ll want to build as you go is a table of contents for your notes.  I don’t recommend relying on the page and section listing as your table of contents because they don’t facilitate referencing your content if it is in other notebooks. Rather I recommend creating a page in your main notebook as the index for your Bullet Journal and then using links to create the connections.

Creating links in OneNote

The easiest way to create links in OneNote 2013 or OneNote 2016 is to use Ctrl-K. This will pop up a window of your open notebooks, sections, and pages and allow you to create the link by just clicking on the destination.  If you have  content you want to link to outside of OneNote, you can enter a URL directly in the same dialog box.

Moving things around

One of the struggles of Bullet Journaling is if you’re using a notebook that allows you to move pages around (such as a Discbound Journal) keeping the index relevant and accurate becomes almost impossible.  That’s not the case here.  By creating an index page with links, it doesn’t matter where you move your destination pages to because OneNote will update the links accordingly.

Pro tip

You can create index lists at the notebook and section level quickly and easily, but I’ve got a twist I use all the time.  If I need an index page around a specific topic such as a project, I just create a link page with all the relevant links I need and save that to my notebook. From then on when I need related content on the topic, I just have one page to go to rather than trying to track my information down across all my notebooks.

Other helpful articles:

Tools

Three problems with tags in OneNote Online

If you’re a user of OneNote Online and OneNote desktop you’ll have noticed the inconsistency with which tags have been implemented between the two platforms. Let’s take a look at some of the differences between the two you need to keep in mind.

Custom tags

The desktop version of OneNote supports custom tags (creating your own). This is a powerful feature giving you control over how your information is marked and accessed quickly. Problem is custom tags do not carry over to OneNote Online at this time. If you even change around the order of tags on the desktop, these changes won’t be reflected online.  Personally I find this a huge limitation to the functionality between the two platforms (since I use both equally as often.)  At this time the only option is, if you are using both platforms, to limit yourself to the tags and order available online. This way you can be sure you’ll have the same tag experience on both platforms.

Finding tags

On the desktop application you can search across pages, sections, and notebooks for specific tags and generate lists and pages for easy reference. Unfortunately this functionality is not available online. I think this is something they should be able to implement in the near future, but then again when I look at the limitations of searching online notebooks I have to wonder. Online, tags are useful at the page level, but aggregation beyond that is just out of reach.

Tag Hotkeys

On the desktop you can access tags while writing by using hotkey combinations of Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-9. You can do the same online (though the application doesn’t tell you that fact in any obvious way). You are also limited to the default order of the tags and their hotkeys. This can cause a significant issue if you customize your tags at the desktop level as I mentioned in the first section.

What can you do?

If you’re using OneNote Online and OneNote desktop, just remember to stick to the functionality available online for now. If you’re going to be using both, remember many of the powerful aspects of tags just aren’t there yet online and you could be setting yourself and your team up for a disappointment.  Hopefully soon Microsoft will unify the tag functionality between both platforms.  Only time will tell.

Are you having a challenge with OneNote? Stop by at The Idea Pump and let me know!

Tools

Turning OneNote tables into Excel worksheets

OneNote on Windows Desktop offers the ability to convert tables you have created into Excel workbooks.  If you’re using OneNote to capture basic information for calculation or data analysis, this is a great way to make the leap from the quick capture structure of OneNote tables to something more functional with Excel.

How do I convert from a table to an Excel spreadsheet?

Luckily enough, this process is a very simple one. Just right click on your table and select Convert to Excel Spreadsheet from the quick menu. That’s all it takes. You can now edit the worksheet from within OneNote by clicking on the new Edit tab at the top of the sheet.  Updates and changes are saved in the copy of the worksheet stored in OneNote.

So what’s the catch?

This is a one way trip for your table. Once you’ve converted a OneNote table into a worksheet you can’t go back.  Based on that I make a copy of the table I’m going to convert first, convert the copy, make any changes and updates, and decide if I’m going to keep the Excel version.  It’s a little clunky, but it’s the fastest way to make sure you aren’t going to have to rebuild your table from scratch.

Uncategorized

OneNote Question and Answer from #prodchat

Every Wednesday at 8:00pm EDT, a great guy by the name of Ray Sidney-Smith hosts a chat on Twitter under the hash tag #prodchat.  The topics vary from week to week and this week the topic was one suggested by us…OneNote Tips and Tricks.  You’d think that suggesting a topic would mean you’d be participating in the discussion, right?  Yea…didn’t happen.  So with that in mind I culled the questions from the chat and I’m responding to them here to contribute in some small way  I highly encourage you go over to Twitter and search for #prodchat to see not only the rest of this discussion but other interesting ones as well.  Let’s begin (for reference @msonenote refers to Microsoft OneNote in its various flavors):

“Q1: What is @msonenote? Is it just a note-taking software?”

Avoiding the marketing fluff, OneNote is an open structure tool allowing for information capture and manipulation in a free form environment.  That information can be text, media, images, and much more.  Supporting multiple platforms, OneNote provides a powerful tool for capturing, processing, and reporting information for yourself and others.

“Q2: What are some unique ways that people are using @msonenote for note-taking or otherwise?”

I do use OneNote extensively for both personal and professional note taking.  In addition, just within the past week I’ve used it for:
  • Blog writing (this article as a perfect example)
  • Metrics tracking
  • Documentation management for an access control procedure for a client
  • Strategic planning around enterprise services
  • Design and documentation of a dashboard system for data analysis
  • Capture of receipts for tax and expense tracking
  • Research on the concept of “Survivorship Bias” in project management

“Q3: What is the best feature that sets @msonenote from other note-taking software?”

This is a tough one because the best feature depends on the task at hand.  The features I use most commonly are the embedded links to create connections between documents and the To Do Tag (Ctrl-1) to keep track of actionable items. Outside of OneNote I use the Send to OneNote feature all the time to capture screenshots, emails, and meeting information from Outlook.

“Q4: What’s the best way to organize @msonenote notes? Notebooks, sections, pages, and/or tags?”

See, again it’s really up to what works for the user.  The important things to remember are:
  • Notebooks don’t have to be open until you need them
  • Sections can be used for workflow as easily as for organization
  • Tags are searchable on the desktop
  • Pages can be automatically created from within the body of another page by using [[ ]] around a piece of text

“Q5: @msonenote allows for recording audio and video. How do you use these features?”

I’ve used the audio recording far more than the video recording.  By capturing audio notes on my phone, I can then easily play them back later on to recap my notes.

“Q6: Taking offline to digital is easy with @msonenote with handwriting and OCR! How do/would you use it?”

I’ve used the OCR component for two purposes.  First it makes the text in photos searchable which is great for printed materials that I capture using OfficeLens.  Snail mail, school notices, company flyers, all are referenceable without worrying about the original paper. Second, my notebooks (I’m still a huge paper and pen guy) are scanned and captured.  I print notations on pages to make them easier to reference through OCR since my handwriting is a little too fancy and gives OCR fits at times.

“Q7: Templates are a fantastic feature in @msonenote. What kinds of templates have you created in OneNote?”

Templates are one of my favorite features.  Aside from creating dozens of them, one of the most common templates I use is the one I have for my Writing Workflow.  Remember though that templates are limited to the desktop applications currently.  If you want to use them on mobile or Chromebook, for example, you need to create a page based on the template and then copy and paste that page to make a blank copy.  Make a note of this for question 9.

“Q8: What’re the differences between working on @msonenote on mobile versus desktop?”

Much of the desktop functionality and user experience doesn’t translate from the desktop to mobile / web.  I recommend to every using OneNote, figure out what platform you will be using it on the most and stick to that feature set. Don’t expect all the cool desktop features to follow you around.
Layout is also an issue specifically when going to mobile.  OneNote allows for a great deal of vertical as well as horizontal space on a page.  This is great for the web or desktop, not so much for the limited screen of a phone.  Again, decide what platform you are likely to use the most and stick with that feature set.

“Q9: What’s the biggest feature request for @msonenote?”

Two main requests – Uniformity of features between the platforms (as much as is possible) and addition of templates to the web / mobile interfaces.

“Q10: How will you improve your note-taking with @msonenote (or your preferred software) after #ProdChat?”

Every day I find new ways to use OneNote.  As the platform grows the opportunities improve.  If you want to see some really innovative ways OneNote is being used, check out @OneNoteEdu on Twitter to see how it’s being used in the classroom.
I’ll be writing many more articles and releasing more materials around OneNote in the coming months so keep checking back to get more out of OneNote.  Thanks again to Ray and the participants of #prodchat for helping share the knowledge!
Uncategorized

OneNote Writing Template

As part of moving my writing workflow to OneNote I needed to ideate a solution around creation of new draft articles in a consistent and efficient manner.  In plain English…I needed a template.  Templatizing work in OneNote using the desktop application is an easy enough process with some powerful functionality built in just for this reason. Unfortunately said functionality doesn’t carry over to the universal and mobile versions.  With this limitation in place, I defined a template to leverage the copy function in OneNote for creating new pages.

How does a OneNote template help with writing?

Part of having the template is to not only provide a uniform structure for my writing, but in this case, to make sure steps in the writing process are not missed as it moves through the workflow.  Following this requirement I added sections in the template to track items such as :
  • Photos for the article
  • Publishing steps
  • Social media distribution steps

I create the title for the article and the body in their corresponding sections then track down an appropriate image to use with the post. I add the link to the image in Google Drive (that’s where I keep my images) under Photos and fill in the checkbox when it is done.

Tools, Uncategorized

Writing proposals using OneNote

In most information based businesses there is a need to write proposals when securing opportunities for your organization. Without proposals there is no easy way to get your client and yourself on the same page when it comes to what you are able to do for them for the ultimate success of your project. There are dozens of tools in the world designed to help you write and manage proposals, some small, some massive, but all with grand promises. I’m going to cut through the promises and focus on using a tool that doesn’t make any claims in this space and yet can be highly effective…OneNote.

When crafting proposals there are six steps most proposals go through: formulation, research, costing, editing, packaging, and delivery. OneNote has the capability to help with all these steps to varying degrees with some planning and forethought. As we walk through this, you’ll hear me referring to notebooks, sections, and pages; three standard features in OneNote that if you’re not familiar with you will want to look into some of the other articles I have posted to help lay the groundwork for putting OneNote in action.

Formulation

When crafting a proposal, and yes I do mean crafting because anyone who has been in business for a while can easily tell the difference between a proposal written for them and one that has been pulled from a template and re-purposed, it is critical to gather and organize your thinking in the early stages before beginning the writing. In my proposal solution, I create a OneNote notebook for each proposal I am crafting.  At the beginning of the notebook I create a section for each of the six areas (well, I did this once and then use that master notebook as a template for future notebooks to be more productive) and begin capturing the requirements for the proposal in the Formulation section.

By using one page in the section and capturing the requirements and core thinking as individual paragraphs I am able to leverage OneNote’s outlining functionality to not only organize the thoughts structurally but also sequentially. You see, OneNote’s outlining allows you to easily drag and drop paragraphs up and down through the outline structure without having to copy and paste.  I find this makes dynamic re-sequencing of the proposal in the formulation stage extremely simple since I can quickly find the most logical path and relationships between the ideas.

An additional part of the formulation stage is the use of boilerplate content. Now I know I mentioned people can sniff out re-purposed proposals, but the use of boilerplate within a proposal for consistent information and structure can be a huge boon to the efficiency of the process. In my proposal notebooks I have a section called just that, Boilerplate, in which I keep all the paragraphs and sections of reusable content as pages in the section.  When crafting the proposal if there is something I need to reuse, such as a service description, I can make a copy of the page from the Boilerplate section to the Formulation section with just a couple of clicks. By the time I finish the formulation stage I not only have my new content, but my evergreen information, and a logical order all in one place.

Research

Part of the formulation process includes researching supporting information for my proposals. I’ve found this to be invaluable when it comes to backing up recommendations made in the proposals with industry standards, best practices, and cognitive explanations of processes. Rather than copying and pasting all this information into the Formulation pages, I leverage OneNote’s internal linking capability to create links to supporting information at the point of relevance in the proposal. In this way if I need to look up the reference when writing the draft copy the information is only a click away.

Costing

Cost planning and projection is one of the linchpins of any proposal because honestly if money weren’t going to change hands the majority of this effort wouldn’t be necessary.  As part of my process I have embedded into the Costing section of the notebook a page with my Excel planning workbook for generating my proposal cost estimates.  The benefit of doing this rather than leaving it out on a share is that the workbook is immediately available and saved in the notebook for reference after the proposal is completed.  If there is any question about the figures and pricing, this can be quickly referenced with a couple of clicks.

Editing

Formal proposal writing can be a tedious task at times, with some organizations requiring use of corporately approved proposal templates and others being very loose and free with their structure. I keep several default templates in my Editing section ranging from basic, turnkey service offerings to completely custom and in-depth proposals.

I keep the working copy of the proposal on a page in the Editing section for easy access but also to leverage some of OneNote’s other features. On that same page I place a checklist of tasks needing to be accomplished in the proposal.  Since the proposal is a file that isn’t always open, leveraging the task list on the same page makes quick work of knowing where any proposal stands. I also use the surrounding OneNote page as a scratch pad for the writing process, copying and pasting in screen clippings, working through additional ideas, and making notations on the proposal and the process as a whole.

Packaging

Proposals usually don’t stand on their own.  I prefer to have the opportunity to not only deliver a written proposal but also a presentation around the proposal content to make sure the concepts contained within are explained clearly and everyone can operate from common ground.  I also found a well crafted presentation can provide compelling anecdotal evidence of capabilities and skills to a potential client. The Packaging section includes the links to presentations, cross references to facts from the Research section relevant to the presentation, and notes for use during the delivery.  Once the proposal is complete, I also place a copy of the finished document in this section as a backup.  A second copy is placed here as a PDF for easy access and as an archival record of the proposal as submitted.

Delivery

OneNote switches gears when it comes to delivery from a tool used to craft the proposal to one tracking the final stages of the proposal process. In the Delivery section I place copies of email exchanges with the client, notes on discussions and clarifications, and revision updates as needed. Additionally here is a checklist of the remaining steps to reaching what is hopefully a successful proposal.

Putting OneNote to use

OneNote is not the perfect tool for this process (there isn’t one contrary to what the sales people out there will tell you of their representative products) but when it comes to out of the box flexibility I’ve found OneNote to offer a set of adaptable functionality well suited to being a strong proposal solution.

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If you or your organization is interested in learning more about how you can put OneNote to work in enhancing your proposal process, drop me a line at art@theideapump.com and lets see what we can do in making your proposal process more productive.