By Thomas Wenzl

As an IT consultant and lover of software and Web technology in general, I work on many different application-based and Web-based projects. The note flag customization feature in OneNote is one reason why I use this new program to organize my work. Using custom note flags allows me to access specific information in my notes later in a variety of quick and easy ways.

Tailoring flags to fit your needs

OneNote comes with a set of note flags, several of which are predefined. You can customize any of these; meaning, you can modify the type of icon, name, and text highlight and font colors to associate with any particular flag to fit your needs. Adding flags to my notes gives me the ability to quickly scan for important items. Creating my own note flags gives me greater flexibility and control over my project's tasks and issues. With OneNote I can customize note flags for a particular project, use flags that pertain to all projects, or use a combination of the two. For many of my own projects, I use several of the same note flags. These include a light bulb icon to mark a note as a "brainstorm"; a red exclamation point to indicate a high level of importance for a task, issue, or concern; a red flag to mark a bug; and a five-pointed star with a box to mark a suggestion.

Recently I tested the functionality of a Web-based product. Because I knew certain bugs should be communicated to and fixed by a specific group on the development team, I made a note flag specifically for that group. When I found an issue with the project that I wanted that particular group (in this case, the Shop Module Team) to investigate, I marked that note with their note flag. In the illustration, you can see the various note flags I've created for my projects.

Using the note flags summary feature

When I want to see a complete list of all the notes I flagged on a particular project, I use the Note Flags Summary task pane. Since I have note flags scattered throughout different pages and subpages in my notes, the note flags summary feature is useful for quickly consolidating them in one location. I can search for note flags in a variety of locations, including my entire notebook, on a given page, or in a particular section. Since I organize my projects by section, I often run a note flag summary to search for note flags in a particular section. The following illustration shows the results of a summary for one of my projects. I can see important notes at a glance, including bugs, questions, time-sensitive issues, issues for which other teams are responsible, suggestions I've noted, and so on. You'll notice that the summary feature groups my note flags according to type, so I can easily expand and collapse them to view specific groups.

Creating a summary page

The note flags summary feature is great for being able to quickly see all of my note flags in one place. What's even better is being able to export this list to a new page in my notebook by creating a summary page. The ability to create a summary page of flagged items is a tremendous boon to productivity, because it allows me to refer to a specific page in my notebook where I can keep tabs on flagged items, and it also allows me to easily share that list with others. For example, because I used a specific type of note flag for all issues pertaining to the Shop Module Team, I can create a summary page of just those note flags by collapsing all of the groupings of note flags in the task pane except the Shop Module Team group, and then creating a summary page. Then I send that page to the team as a To Do list in an e-mail message. Because I work on lots of different projects simultaneously, I also find it helpful to create separate summary pages for each project (if you organize your projects within sections, this is easy to do by running a note-flag summary of a particular section, and then creating a summary page from the results). This allows me to track action items for each project separately.

Conclusion

Organizing my notes by using custom note flags helps me to quickly review important issues and action items in my notes at a glance. The quality of my finished projects benefits greatly from my ability to flag my notes as I work, and mark them with a variety of meanings so that I can come back later and deal with them appropriately.

Thomas Wenzl is a Microsoft Office Outlook® MVP. He lives in Germany where he is a consultant and trainer for Microsoft products. You can contact him at thomas.wenzl@mvps.org.