Creating Your First Outline

As previously mentioned, you can let OneNote help you create outlines automatically. To create a simple bulleted outline, use the following steps.

1. Click in your OneNote page to create a new note container.

2. Type the asterisk symbol (Shift+8), a space, and then some text. As soon as you click the Space bar, OneNote converts the star to a bullet.

3. When you're done typing the line of text, press Enter. OneNote puts another bullet on the next line. To indent that bullet and change it's appearance, press Tab.

4. Type the second line of text. You've now created an outline, shown in Figure 14.4.

   Figure 14.4. You can create a basic outline in four easy steps.

   

As mentioned previously, to create a numbered outline, just type the number 1, a period, and a space. OneNote converts the type to a numbered list. Once that happens, you'll notice the AutoFormat icon slightly below and to the right of the 1. Click the drop-down arrow next to the lightning bolt icon to display the choices shown in Figure 14.5.

Figure 14.5. You can tell OneNote to stop creating numbered lists or undo the creation of the list.

Press Tab to indent the outline. If you need to decrease the level of indentation, press Shift + Tab.

To continue creating the numbered list, enter your text and press Enter. OneNote will create the second line of the list with the number 2. To turn the list into a numbered outline, just press Tab to turn the number 2 into the letter a, as previously shown in Figure 14.3.