You may not realize it, but several of the Office 2000 programs are great tools for taking notes during meetings or while you work. Microsoft Word 2000, PowerPoint® 2000, Excel 2000, and Outlook® 2000 all make it easy to jot down quick notes while you work, or while you sit in a meeting or a class with your portable computer.

With the automatic features in Word, Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint, you can take notes and format your notes as you type. For example, you can number the notes or apply bullets as you type. You can also apply other formatting as needed.

Taking notes with Word

Numbered lists   In Word, you can number your notes as you type. On the Formatting toolbar, click the Numbering button to begin numbering a list. Type your note, and when you press ENTER, the next line is automatically numbered for you.

You can also create a numbered list if you type 1. followed by a tab or space and then type the text for the note. When you press ENTER, the next line is automatically numbered for you. If you need to add an additional note following a note you just typed, press the TAB key once to indent the line following your note. Word automatically formats the new note for you.

Bulleted lists   On the Formatting toolbar, click the Bullets button to begin a bulleted list. Type your note, and when you press ENTER, the next line is automatically bulleted for you.

Just as with numbering, you can type an asterisk (*) followed by a space or a tab, type your text, and when you press ENTER the asterisk is automatically changed to a bullet. Then, when you press ENTER at the end of each additional note, each new line is bulleted for you.

Switch between numbered lists and bulleted lists   If you number a list with automatic numbering, and then decide that you want a bulleted list instead, you can change the numbers to bullets by using the Bullets and Numbering command on the Format menu.

Taking notes with PowerPoint

Numbering notes   You can use the Outline pane in PowerPoint — usually used to create a slide presentation in Outline view — to take notes. When you type a line of text in the Outline pane, the text is automatically numbered and it becomes the title of a slide. Using the Outline pane for taking notes is a simple way of writing down information and having it numbered for you.

Remember that when you use this process to take notes you are actually creating a slide presentation at the same time. This may not be the fastest way to create notes, but you do end up with a presentation in case you should need one. You also have the option of printing the Outline view if you need to print your notes.

Taking notes with Excel

Numbering notes   While Excel does not have the Numbering and Bullets toolbar buttons, you can simulate numbering by using row numbers in Excel. You can type notes directly into cells in an Excel worksheet. Each row in Excel is numbered, starting with 1. To refer to a note, you can refer to its row number. These row numbers appear on screen, and they can be printed.

When you enter text into a cell on an Excel worksheet, the text flows from left to right. If there is too much text to be displayed in the cell, the text continues to flow to the right, across the next cell. As long as the cell to the right is empty, the text appears over the cell. If the adjacent cell is not empty, or if you don't want to see your notes flowing into the next column, you have two options:

• Widen the column you are using (point to Column on the Format menu and then click Width).
• Wrap the text within the cell (click Cells on the Format menu and then click the Alignment tab).

Taking notes with Outlook

Use the Notes feature in Outlook   The Notes feature in Outlook is a great tool for jotting down information much as you would on a paper sticky note. To create a note, click New on the File menu and then click Note. Type whatever you need to jot down, and it is saved along with the date and time the note was created.

However, if you spend most of your time in Outlook reading and replying to e-mail, you can use an e-mail message as a place to store notes to yourself.

Numbered lists   If you use Word as your e-mail editor, you can use the Numbering button to number your notes. Click the Numbering button, type your note, and when you press ENTER, the next line of text is automatically numbered for you.

Bulleted lists   If you are familiar with Outlook, you probably know that you can add bulleted lists to your Outlook e-mail messages. If you use HTML or Rich Text format for your e-mail messages, or you use Word as your e-mail editor, you can click the Bullets button on the Formatting toolbar to add bullets to the paragraph you are writing. You can also use the Increase Indent and Decrease Indent buttons to add or remove bullet indentations.

Save a copy of your notes   If you accidentally send the message that contains your notes, a copy of the message is saved in the Sent Items folder by default. If the option to save a copy in the Sent Items folder is not selected (Tools menu, Options command, Preferences tab, E-mail options button), it's a good idea to add your e-mail name to the To or CC lines — so that you have a copy of the notes even if you accidentally send the message to someone else.

Sharing your notes

After you have written your notes, you might need to share them with other people.

For notes you write in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

• Send a copy via e-mail   In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you can send the document via e-mail to each person. Click the E-mail button or use the Send To command (File menu) to send your document or presentation.
• Publish the notes as a Web page   Does your company have an intranet? If so, publish the notes to a public site on the intranet. If you have not created a Web page before, read Create a Web page in your favorite Office program to learn more about using your favorite Office 2000 program to create Web pages.
• Save the document to a server   If your organization has network servers, save the document to a folder available for anyone to use, or save it to an Exchange public folder.

For notes you write in Outlook

• Send notes you write in an Outlook message   If you write notes in an Outlook message, you can send the message to each person who needs a copy of the notes.

 Note   Notepad, which is provided as part of the Microsoft Windows® operating system, is a simple text editor you can use to take unformatted notes.

Feature comparison

* by using row numbering in Excel
** when using Word as an e-mail editor

More information

To learn more about numbering and bullets, search Help for each program. In the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in the Help window, type numbering, numbered lists, bullets, or bulleted lists. To learn more about sending documents via e-mail, type send email in the Office Assistant or on the Answer Wizard tab in the Help window, and then click Search.