Using Office OneNote 2007 as a Collaboration Tool

No discussion of document collaboration tools in the 2007 Office release is complete without a mention of Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 shared notebooks and live sharing sessions.

Shared Notebooks and Live Sharing Sessions

In the previous version of Microsoft OneNote, it was possible to create a shared notetaking session, now called a live sharing session. In these sessions, you can invite others on your network or over the Internet to share specified pages of your notebook in real time. During a live sharing session, participants can edit the same pages from their own computers and see notes from all participants as they’re taken.

Note 

Any type of note that you can take in Office OneNote 2007 on your computer can be taken during a live sharing session, such as typed notes, handwritten (inked) notes, audio notes, or screen clippings.

In OneNote 2007, it is now also possible to create shared notebooks. You can share a notebook with your other computers as well as with other users, such as when you want to keep a team notebook for a project. Shared notebooks can be accessed and edited by multiple participants simultaneously and automatically remain in sync.

Creating a Live Sharing Session

To create a live sharing session in OneNote, on the Share menu, point to Live Sharing Session and then click Start Sharing Current Session for a task pane that will guide you through the necessary steps. Or, from any open task pane, click the name of the active task pane and then click Start Live Session from the task pane list.

Creating a Shared Notebook

To create a shared notebook, on the Share menu, click Create Shared Notebook. This opens a wizard that walks you through the steps to create and share the notebook. Shared notebooks can use any OneNote template and have all the same capabilities of regular OneNote notebooks.

You can save your shared notebook to a SharePoint site, a network drive, or any shared drive location. Note, however, that to share a notebook, you must have rights to share files and folders on your computer.

For more information about Office OneNote 2007, see Chapter 5, “Organizing and Finding Information in Microsoft Office OneNote.”