Emailing Notes

One of the simplest ways to share information between users is through email. There are several ways you can share notes via email in OneNote 2003. If you have Outlook 2003 installed, you can share notes within an email message. If you don't have Outlook 2003, you can still email OneNote files much like you can email Word documents or Excel spreadsheets.

Sending a Note by Using Outlook 2003

You can send a note page by using Outlook 2003 in several simple steps.

1. Choose the note page by selecting its page tab.

2. Select File, E-mail to display a screen like the one shown in Figure 23.1.

   Figure 23.1. You can send a OneNote page embedded within an email.

   

3. Click the To button to display the email address book, as shown in Figure 23.2.

   Figure 23.2. Choose a recipient from your Contacts folder or Global Address List.

   

4. Double-click to choose a recipient for your email message. Alternatively, select the recipient and click either the To, CC, or BCC buttons to add the recipient to the specified address field.

5. Click OK when you're done adding recipients to your email message.

6. When you return to the email message, the cursor is placed in the Introduction field. You can type a short introduction to your email for your recipients.

7. When you're done composing your introduction, click Send a Copy.

You don't have to select an address from your address book. You can simply type the email address in the To, Cc or Bcc fields.

When your recipient receives your emailed page, it will look similar to Figure 23.3.

Figure 23.3. Your recipient will receive the OneNote file attached and embedded in the email.

As you can see from the figure, the OneNote file is included in two ways. First, the text of the note is included in the body of the email message. Second, the .one file is attached to the email.

After you choose E-mail from the File menu, you can still edit the page within the email. Any changes you make within the email message are replicated within your original OneNote page.

Viewing Emailed Notes in OneNote

If you receive an emailed OneNote file, as in the previous figure, you can open the attached .one file by double-clicking it. Outlook asks you if you want to open or save the file. If you choose to open the file, it is displayed in a separate folder within OneNote as shown in Figure 23.4.

Figure 23.4. Notes you receive through email are displayed in a separate folder within OneNote.

Any notes you receive via email are stored in a separate folder, Notes E-mailed to Me. You can view and edit those files just like any other files in OneNote. Even if you already have a copy of the same .one file stored somewhere else in OneNote, the emailed .one file is stored in a separate folder.

If you don't have OneNote installed on your computer, you'll still be able to view the OneNote content displayed within the message, but you won't be able to double-click and open the .one file.

When you receive and open a .one file contained within an email, the emailed page is displayed in its own section, called Software Development. Each emailed note page is stored in its own section within the Notes E-mailed to Me folder.

Customizing the OneNote Email Signature

If you scroll to the bottom of an emailed note, as shown in Figure 23.5, there's a signature included by default with all emailed notes.

Figure 23.5. All emailed notes have an included signature.

You can change that signature from OneNote's Options dialog. To hide or change the signature, use the following steps.

1. Select Tools, Options to display the Options window.

2. Choose E-mail from the Category list to display Figure 23.6.

   Figure 23.6. You can change the signature included with OneNote emails.

   

3. If you want to change the signature, you can edit the signature in the box provided.

4. To remove the signature entirely, uncheck the box marked Add the following signature to e-mail messages and Web pages created in OneNote.

5. When you're done editing or removing the signature, click OK to save your changes.

Changing the Way OneNote Handles Emailed Notes

There are two other options you can control through OneNote's E-mail Options dialog. You can prevent a copy of the .one file from being included in your email. From within the E-mail Options dialog, uncheck the box marked Attach a copy of the original notes as a OneNote file. If you do this, recipients will not receive the .one file with the email.

If you remove the .one file from the email message, you're preventing the recipient from actually opening the page within OneNote. The page won't appear in your recipient's Notes E-mailed to Me folder, and they won't be able to edit the note page. For example, in Figure 23.7, the note page has several check boxes included as part of a To Do list.

Figure 23.7. Your recipient can still view the OneNote content if the .one file isn't included.

Even if the recipient chooses Edit Message from the message's Edit menu, they can't mark the check boxes as complete. They can edit the text of the message, but short of copying and pasting the entire content, there's no intuitive way to bring the note text back into OneNote.

The last option you can control when emailing notes is the inclusion of linked audio files. As discussed in Chapter 17, "It's Too Quiet in Here Let's Add Some Sound," you can record audio notes in OneNote if your computer has a microphone. By default, when you email a OneNote page that contains a linked audio file, that file isn't included with the page. You'll still see a reference to the audio recording in the page, as shown in Figure 23.8, however hovering the mouse over the reference won't display the clickable speaker icon you can use to play the audio recording.

Figure 23.8. By default, linked audio files aren't included in your emailed notes.

tip

You should only remove the .one file from an email if your recipient doesn't have OneNote.

If you want OneNote to include linked audio files when you email notes, check the box marked Attach a copy of linked audio files in the E-mail Options dialog box. Now when you email a note to another user, two attachments are included with the note, as shown in Figure 23.9.

Figure 23.9. When you include linked audio files, both the .one file and the audio file are attached to the email.

Sending Notes via Email Without Outlook 2003

If you don't have Outlook 2003, you can still share OneNote notes with others. However, you won't be able to use the E-mail command from OneNote's File menu. You'll need to attach the .one file to your email message much like any other type of file.

The recipient will have to double-click the attached .WMA file to play the audio recording. Unlike within OneNote, they can't just click on the link to the audio recording.

If you email the .one file, you're actually emailing an entire section to another user. Individual pages aren't stored as files within Windows. If you need to email just one page to another user, there are several ways you can accomplish this.

• Publish the note page to HTML

• Copy all of the text on the page and paste it into Word or another word processing program

• Move the page to its own new section, and then email the one-page section to another user

If you want to move the note page (or a copy of the page) to a new section, use the following steps.

1. Right-click the note page's tab on the right side of the OneNote screen.

2. Choose Move Page To from the context menu.

3. Select Another Section to display the Move or Copy Pages dialog box (see Figure 23.10).

   Figure 23.10. You can move a copy of a page to a new section.

   

4. Choose Create New Section, enter a section name, and then click OK.

5. You can choose either the Move or Copy button to move your page.

We covered exporting OneNote note containers into Word in Chapter 20, "Office 2003 Integration." We'll cover publishing the note page to a single Web page later in this chapter.

Once you have a new section, you can attach the new section's .one file to an email message.

Emailing OneNote Files to Non-OneNote Users

If the recipient of your email message has OneNote 2003, they'll be able to open the attached .one file directly in OneNote. If they don't have OneNote 2003, however, they won't be able to open the .one file.

When your recipient views the email, if you haven't attached the .one file, they'll see something similar to Figure 23.11.

Figure 23.11. Even a non-OneNote user can view notes.