Crabby Office Lady

When we introduced OneNote, we knew you'd love it. But once you started really using it, you realized that there were certain features that you really needed.

Applies to
OneNote 2003 with Service Pack 1

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Well, you've done it. You went and asked for what you wanted in OneNote and now you've got it. And as I was gathering the below list of some of the OneNote enhancements and improvements that we've amassed for OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1), I suddenly saw that some of the features you need and the things we humans learn the first day of kindergarten in order to get along in the world are one in the same:

• We all must learn to share.
• Creating connections to others makes us better people.
• Being part of a clique has its rewards.
• Feeling safe and secure puts everyone at ease.
• When we have the toys/tools we want, we can express our creativity and boost our productivity at the same time.

For today's Sharing Circle time, my show-and-tell is is all about some of the most requested features for OneNote.

 Note   Oh, and one other item you might like: One Note SP1 is free. That's right: free (assuming you have OneNote to begin with).

It just feels good: Shared Sessions

Imagine this: You finally find a conference room for a brainstorming meeting with 10 of your most creative, energetic, and idea-driven colleagues. While one of you is frantically scribbling the ideas as they come in fast and furious, the rest of you are fighting to be heard. And even if all the comments and drawings end up in one jumbled conglomeration on the whiteboard, how will you capture it? Take a photo and pass it around to everyone? I don't think so.

Hey, I know! How about being able to work on your notes and ideas all together, where everyone can type, write, draw, doodle, and format — all in real-time? With the Shared Session feature, you can all take part in a peer-to-peer note-taking session, interacting and working with your ideas on shared OneNote pages. As long as everyone is on the same network, you can all work on the same notes whether you're in one room together, holed up in your individual cubicles, or even working from home.

• Invite participants to a shared note-taking session
• Start or end a shared note-taking session

Now everyone can be an active participant and get his or her ideas across to the others and recorded for posterity. And, at the end of the session, everybody has the same notes and everyone's on the same page — literally. (Oh, and you don't have to draw straws or find the prettiest handwriting anymore to decide who ends up being the notetaker. Anyone can jump on in there at any time.)

Making connections: importing Office documents

When I say the word "link" what immediately comes to mind?

While you're quite creative (and maybe a little hungry), I'm actually referring to creating links from OneNote to other Office files so that you can work with them in your notes and therefore feel more gestalt about your life in general. Apparently, it's something that was really needed:

"Hi Crabby Lady — Loved the OneNote column. A question, though, and I haven't been able to find it anywhere. Is it possible to create a link in OneNote to Word and Excel files?"

Why yes, it certainly is. You can now add other Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to your notes, and there are a couple of ways to do this. You can:

• Create a link to the file   There are two ways to do this:
  1. You can link to the file in its original location. This is handy if the document is still in development; clicking the link will always open the latest version of the document.
  2. You can create a copy of the file in your OneNote section folder and link to that. This option works best if the original document is stored on a location you might not be able to access in the future.

   Note   You can link to files of any version of Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft PowerPoint®.

• Insert the Office file as a picture   This effectively "prints" the document into your notes. Then you can write on or next to it, but you can't change the actual text.

   Note   While you can insert any version of any Office file as an image, you must have Microsoft Office 2003 — which includes Microsoft Office Document Imaging — installed on your computer to use this feature.

And how do you do this? Why, just drag a file from your desktop (or other location) into your OneNote page or copy and paste it. OneNote will ask you how you want to insert the document, and there you have it.

Everyone needs powerful friends: Join The Outlook/Word clique

Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 and Microsoft Office Word 2003 are two of the smartest, cutest, and most popular kids at school. Good thing OneNote is savvy enough to recognize that and make the most of it.

Outlook

Suppose you have to take the minutes for today's big meeting. You want to focus on what's being said, not take up valuable time dealing with all the little details (such as the attendee list, meeting title, location, agenda, etc.). On the Insert menu, click Outlook Meeting Details. Voilà. There's your meeting information, front and center. Here it is in more detail:

• Insert meeting details from Outlook

Here's something even more spectacular: You don't have to leave the comfort of your OneNote notebook (and risk losing your train of thought) just to create an Outlook item. OneNote and Outlook can do it together as seamlessly as, um, something without seams.

• Create an Outlook appointment, an Outlook contact, or a an Outlook task...all from within OneNote.

Word

For many of you folks, Word is the blood and guts of your output at work. And while OneNote is the best way to take, outline, and organize your notes, Word is what you need to use for full featured document creation. Now you can copy your notes directly from OneNote into Word 2003 with three strokes.

 Note   Yep, you have to have Word 2003 installed. This doesn't work with previous versions of Word.

Repeat after me:

1. File menu
2. Send To
3. Microsoft Office Word

Outlook, Word 2003, and now OneNote: Friends for life (or until one steals the other's boyfriend...).

Feeling safe and sound: password protection

Now you can add a password to protect "sensitive" sections of your notebook. No password, no access. However, once you've accessed that section by typing the password, you won't have keep doing this while you're working in OneNote (wouldn't that be irritating?).

 Note   If you close OneNote or stop working in it for more than 10 minutes (you can change this time setting), OneNote relocks the protected section, and you'll have to re-renter your password to open it. I feel safer and cozier just thinking about it.

• Add password protection to your notes

I want my toys: giving you the features you asked for

You really let us know what you wanted, and boy, did we deliver. Here is a partial list of some more OneNote enhancements that were developed directly because of customer feedback.

• Stationery improvements  Take advantage of more stationery, mark pictures as "background" for use in stationery, and associate different default stationery with each section. In other words: get comfortable and customize.
  Set the default stationery for a section
• Time stamp   Many of you wrote to say that you'd like to be able to insert the current date and time right into your notes so that you could keep more notes on a single page and be able to distinguish them by date. While we found it rather humorous that you were interested in "saving paper" even in the world of limitless electronic pages, who are we to question your desires?
  Insert the date and time
• Screen clipping   "Capture" a portion of your screen using the Insert menu or a keyboard shortcut (WIN + S)and insert it into your notes as a graphic. (Like a little camera right in your computer.)
  Capture and insert a screen image
• More Note Flags  We increased the number of Note Flags to 25 and added a bunch more Note Flag symbols.
  Customize a note flag

  

• A bigger, fancier box of crayons  Sure, we gave you more pens and more pen colors. But now you can also change the color, thickness, and even name of your new pen.
  Customize a pen
• A bigger, fancier box of erasers  And since we're all human (meaning we all — well, most of us — make mistakes), we improved our erasers too. Now you can erase by pixel instead of only by whole stroke, and there are also erasers of different sizes if you want to erase just part of strokes. As well, for you Tablet PC users, we've added a "scratch-out" gesture: If you stroke horizontally back and forth over some ink, it will erase that ink.
  Erase ink
• Creates subpage title  Because you told us that you use subpages as an additional level of organization (you're so clever), now you can label those page tags.
  Rename a page or subpage
• Add notes from your mobile devices   Now you can import notes (.pwi files) and voice recordings from a Windows-compatible mobile device to OneNote on your computer.
  Import notes and voice recordings from a Pocket PC or Smartphone

   Note   Check your mobile device to see which features it supports.

Of course, this is just a partial list — the OneNote elves have been busy in the workshop processing your requests and turning them into gold. Download OneNote 2003 SP1 today and see what's going on in the world of OneNote. Again, it's free.

"The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes — ah, that is where the art resides!" — Arthur Schnabel

About the author

Annik Stahl, the Crabby Office Lady columnist, takes all of your complaints, compliments, and knee-jerk reactions to heart. Therefore, she graciously asks that you let her know whether this column was useful to you — or not — by entering your feedback using the Was this information helpful? tool below. And remember: If you don't vote, you can't complain.

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