OneNote Basics

OneNote is simple to use, but you have to get used to its idiosyncrasies. Because of all OneNote does, it sometimes outthinks you, and assumes too much. For example, sometimes when you write, as you move your pen, it may decide you're starting a new thought and therefore start a new section, even if you're just continuing the sentence. Being consistent in where you begin sentences and your character spacing will help resolve most of this second-guessing.

Tip

If you do a lot of research, you'll find that OneNote offers a flexible tool for information gathering and deduction.

In this section, I will introduce you to OneNote, and help you understand how to use the main features of the program. Before I begin, however, I recommend that you use the OneNote Tour. To use it, tap Help, Get Going with OneNote, and then tap the Start tour button to begin. When you do, you will see the first screen of the Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 Tour, as shown in Figure 16.2. Just tap the arrow at the top of the dialog box to move forward. Throughout the demo, you also can see demos of the various actions that OneNote can perform by tapping on the Show Me button when it appears.

Figure 16.2. The OneNote Tour helps you gain a basic understanding of OneNote and get started.

Caution

OneNote takes a bit of getting used to. Once you're familiar with the interface, though, you can really be productive.

Introduction to the Interface

The OneNote interface looks similar to the interfaces found in other Office applications. OneNote's interface does, however, have some special features, which I cover here.

Tip

Use the OneNote Tour to get up to speed quickly, and then come back here for the meat.

Figure 16.3 shows the main areas of the OneNote interface.

Figure 16.3. The main functional areas of OneNote 2003.

These main areas are as follows:

• Toolbars The toolbars are similar to those in other Office applications, although new tools are added to OneNote's. Especially notice the tools to the right, which deal with ink and audio recording. These toolbars are dockable. Standard, Formatting, and Audio Recording are the main toolbars I use.

• Section tabs The section tabs are actually different .one files that have been loaded. Each .one file is a notebook by itself, but added together they make a multi-subject binder. Tap on a tab to switch sections.

  Tip

  

  Use sections to organize your main types of note-taking.

  
  

• Title block The title block has an area for the note title, and automatically inserts the date when you create a note. The date does not change when you edit the note.

• Page tabs The page tabs help you keep track of different notes within each section. When you create a new note, a new tab is created. Sub-pages (covered later) show up as smaller tabs under the main page.

  Note

  

  The page tab on the right gets its name from the title block.

  
  

• Note area The note area is where you write, type, draw, and manipulate objects. This is where the content goes.

• Make Page Grow button The Make Page Grow button adds more space at the end of the page, letting you enlarge the document without adding additional pages.

  Tip

  

  You can grow your pages of notes by clicking the Page Grow button. This is similar to clicking the New Page button in Journal.

  
  

• Hide Page Titles button The Hide Page Titles button squashes the page titles to make more space for notes. When hidden, page titles become numbers.

The Standard Toolbar

The Standard toolbar, shown in Figure 16.4, is where most of the tools in OneNote reside.

Figure 16.4. This is the Standard toolbar, the main toolbar in OneNote.

From left to right, here are the buttons found on OneNote's Standard toolbar:

• Back and Forward These buttons enable you to go back and forth between pages and sections. They are similar to the back and forward buttons found in Internet browsers.

• New Page Tapping this button creates a new page in the current section.

• New Section Tapping this button creates a new section tab (and a corresponding .one file).

  Note

  

  Many buttons on OneNote's Standard toolbar may look familiar to you. Pay attention to those that don't and learn what they do.

  
  

• Email Tapping this button sends the current note as an email message.

• Move Page To Tapping this button moves a page to another section.

• Show/Hide Rule Lines Tapping this button either shows or hides the red and blue lines in the note area.

• Insert Extra Writing Space This button functions just like the one in Journal, allowing you to insert space between objects.

• Keep Window on Top Tapping this button keeps OneNote on top of other windows and applications.

• Print and Print Preview These buttons act just like those found in other Office applications.

• Research Tapping this button enables you to look up information in an electronic dictionary, thesaurus, and online tools.

• Cut, Copy, Paste, Undo, and Redo These buttons are just like those found in other Office applications.

• Note Flag Tapping this button enables you to add various types of flags to your notes. This is a drop-down button with five types of flags.

  Tip

  

  Use note flags to mark important locations in your notes and to search for them later.

  
  

• Note Flags Summary Tapping this button enables you to search for flags in your notes.

• Create Outlook Task Tapping this button creates a task in Outlook, including the contents of your selection automatically.

• Pen, Eraser, Selection, and Delete These buttons function just like those found in other Office applications.

• Start/Stop Recording Tapping this button starts or stops OneNote's audio-recording function.

The Audio Recording Toolbar

The Audio Recording toolbar, pictured in Figure 16.5, is where you control OneNote's sound-recording and playback features.

Figure 16.5. The Audio Recording toolbar controls audio recording and playback.

Tap the red circle to begin recording. When you start recording, the slider in the middle of the toolbar moves to the right as time increases. (During playback, you can also use the slider in the center to move the time bar to the point you want it for a particular section of the audio.)

Tip

Try out OneNote's audio-recording feature while you take notes. Then play with the playback and see how it works. It's a powerful feature for people in meetings.

When you record audio, the audio files are stored in the My Documents\My Notebook folder by default. The files created will be Windows Media files and will have the .wma extension. As you enter other information, such as text, drawings, or handwriting, the audio will be linked to those objects based on time. As you insert other objects, the audio will link to the object that is active at the time of the recording.

If you have highlighted an object that has audio attached, you can tap the See Playback button to begin audio playback. When you play back the audio, you will see the highlighted objects change over time, reflecting the links the audio recording made as you were making notes.

When you play back audio, you also can tap the triangular Play button, the square Stop button, and the double-lined Pause button. These work like normal tape or CD controls.

Section Tabs

To move between sections, you can use the Section tabs that appear across the top of OneNote, along with the My Notebook drop-down list, as shown in Figure 16.6.

Figure 16.6. The Section Navigation area lets you quickly switch between sections of your notebook.

You can you tap on the tabs to navigate between sections of your notebook, and you can also use the My Notebook drop-down list to find your notes, including deleted pages. The Deleted Pages folder stores the pages that have most recently been deleted.

Tip

Get a good quality external microphone that can pick up the type of audio environment you're usually in. This will help you get the most out of the audio recorder. With an external microphone, you can also reduce or eliminate pen tapping and typing sounds you might otherwise capture.

Page Navigation and Control

To switch between pages within a section of your notebook, go to the right of the screen and use the page tabs you find there (see Figure 16.7). The top set of tabs will be your notes. The bottom two tabs are for creating new pages and sub-pages. Pages are basically new notes, whereas sub-pages are used to differentiate subordinate content levels within a page.

Figure 16.7. The page tabs in OneNote let you switch between notes easily instead of having to open files.

In Figure 16.7, notice the tab under Note 2, which denotes a sub-page. The tab names come from the title block of the note.

Taking Notes

To take notes, you need to decide how you want to capture your ideas. If you want to type or enter text through the Input Panel, you can tap where you want the text to appear in the body of the note, and a light gray box will appear, waiting for your input. You can then tap anywhere to enter text.

Tip

Practice taking textual notes, doodling, and mixing the two to get a feel for how OneNote deals with each.

If you want to draw, just start drawing with your pen. You do need to make sure you are in Pen mode rather than Selection or some other mode. To get into Pen mode, tap the Pen button on the Standard toolbar.

If you want to write notes by hand, get in Pen mode and start writing. As you get toward the end of a line of text, the gray box surrounding your text will expand downward, allowing you to include more notes in the same object (see Figure 16.8).

Figure 16.8. The gray box that appears when OneNote recognizes your ink strokes as handwriting helps you keep your text together instead of in multiple objects.

Caution

If you have a convertible tablet, be careful about resting your hand on the keyboard when using the pen. Pressing any keys even Ctrl may cause OneNote to shift modes (for example, from pen to selection tool).

You can define a new paragraph by leaving vertical space between your previous notes and your new handwriting. Figure 16.9 shows how I have created three paragraphs, each of which is considered a separate object.

Figure 16.9. Separating paragraphs by a line helps OneNote tell them apart.

The Importance of Object Segregation

It is important to know where your pen marks are getting grouped. You want all related ideas to be in a single group, rather than chunked into multiple groups. One way to do this is to write within the gray boxes. In addition, using the Ruler Lines option is helpful for keeping your text together. Write on the lines, and OneNote will recognize your strokes as text.

If you notice that your ink strokes start appearing in different object blocks (gray boxes with control handles), you may want to change the way OneNote treats ink. If you are only going to be writing text, you can force OneNote to recognize ink as text by tapping Tools, Pen Mode, and then selecting Create Handwriting Only, as shown in Figure 16.10.

Figure 16.10. Select Create Handwriting Only to force OneNote to recognize your ink strokes as handwriting.

When you set OneNote to recognize only handwriting, the handwriting box appears, letting you expand the box and keep handwritten paragraphs together.

Tip

To keep handwriting together in a single object, set the Pen mode to Create Handwriting Only.

Rearranging Notes

Rearranging notes is easy in OneNote. Simply hover your pen or mouse over the text or object you want to move (see Figure 16.11), and then tap and hold the crossed arrow symbol that appears to the left of the object (this symbol is called the selection handle). As you hold your pen (or your mouse button) down, you can drag the object anywhere else in the note. When you lift your pen (or mouse), the object will stay where it was placed.

Figure 16.11. OneNote lets you easily rearrange objects and notes by dragging the selection handle to the left of the object.

Another great feature of OneNote's drag-and-drop organization is that you can pull objects up and down in the outline hierarchy easily by dragging left or right. In Figure 16.12, notice that I have dragged the Note 4 section down between the two sub-notes, and then outdented (dragged to the left) the Sub-note 2 item. This easy rearranging makes OneNote a fantastic tool for outlining and brainstorming.

Figure 16.12. Ad-hoc note reorganization makes outlining easy in OneNote.

Grouping Notes

It's easy to group note objects in OneNote. Just select the object you want to combine by tapping on the control bar, as shown in Figure 16.13. Then drag up or down to combine the selected object with another object, as shown in Figure 16.14. The control bar also lets you resize the note by dragging the right-left arrow at the right.

Figure 16.13. Select the object you want to combine by tapping on the object's control bar.

Figure 16.14. Drag objects together to combine them into a single object.

After you combine all the elements you want into a single group, it will look more like Figure 16.15.

Figure 16.15. Once combined, all the elements are treated as a single object in OneNote.

Creating Lists and Applying Bullets and Numbering to Your Notes

Notice that the last line of the handwriting is indented in Figure 16.14. This is the way OneNote differentiates between heading and bullet levels. If you want to create lists in OneNote like the one shown in Figure 16.16, just start writing, using the following suggestions:

Figure 16.16. Creating a list in OneNote.

• Keep items of the same level at the same indent.

• Indent significantly to change the level of the item.

• Leave a blank line between ideas.

• Going in and out creates a natural outline structure.

In the list in Figure 16.17, I selected the list and then tapped the Numbering button, which automatically added the outline numbering to my list. You can change the numbering format by tapping on the drop-down list to the right of the Numbering button, and then choosing a numbering style.

Figure 16.17. Tapping the Numbering button after selecting the text automatically results in a numbered list based on the indents that OneNote recognizes.

You can just as easily create a bulleted list by tapping the Bullets button on the toolbar, with the same drop-down selection capability.

Converting Handwritten Notes to Text

One great feature of OneNote is its capability to bulk-recognize handwriting so that an entire page or notes section can be converted easily to text. To convert a page of notes to text, simply right-tap the note page and select Convert Handwriting to Text, as shown in Figure 16.18.

Figure 16.18. You can easily convert a lot of handwritten notes to text.

Once the text is converted (and cleaned up if the recognition wasn't perfect), it can be selected and copied into other applications, such as Word, where the formatting will appear just as you have it in OneNote. Figure 16.19 shows how the text looked after I converted this section of notes.

Figure 16.19. The text, once converted, lacked consistent formatting, and contained a couple of typos (due to my handwriting). This can be fixed easily.

The formatting was a bit off in the text, so I selected all of it and made it uniform in font size to get the results shown in Figure 16.20. I also bolded the heading.

Figure 16.20. After only two formatting settings are adjusted, the text looks good.

Tip

OneNote is better than Journal for handwritten notes converted to text. It is quicker and easier to convert the notes, and you have more control over formatting in OneNote.

Organizing Your Notebook

It's easy to keep your notes organized in OneNote. The page tabs on the right keep your pages separated with easy access, while the section tabs at the top let you separate subjects just like you would in a multi-subject notebook.

Slice and dice your notes any way that makes sense to you. If you want to move a page up or down along the right side, tap and hold on the tab you want to move, then drag to the right, to the edge of OneNote, and drag up or down. You should see a double arrow, as shown in Figure 16.21.

Figure 16.21. You can move pages up and down by tapping and dragging along the right side of the page tab area.

If you want to move a page to another section, right-tap the page, select Move Page To, and then tap Another Section. You will then see a dialog box similar to the one in Figure 16.22.

Figure 16.22. You can move a page into another section by right-tapping the page and then selecting Move Page To.

Choose the section you want to move the page to, and tap Move or Copy. Move moves the page from the source to the destination section and leaves nothing behind. Copy will duplicate the page in the destination section, leaving the page in the source section intact.

Tip

Keep your notes organized so you can easily find what you're looking for later.

You can also choose Create New Section or Create New Folder for the page you want to move or copy by tapping the appropriate buttons. The Create New Folder button creates a new folder in the My Documents\My Notebook folder. This helps you organize your files. The Create New Section button creates a new .one file in your My Documents\My Notebook folder.