MICROSOFT ONENOTE: The Best Personal Organizer

Many programs have been written over the years to help computer users organize their contacts, to-do lists, notes and progress, to link Web sites to certain topics, and to offer a variety of other activities.

These programs include Microsoft Outlook itself.

In recent years, however, the demands on such programs have become increasingly severe, including video, audio, sharing content and allowing others to revise content with all the revision capabilities of Microsoft Word.

It is unusual for Microsoft to get something right the first time, but the program I use very successfully is Microsoft OneNote, an add-on to Microsoft Office.  If you aren't a Premium Subscriber to Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Downloads, as I am, you can buy it separately at $99.

It is well worth the money.

Although hordes of computer users curse Microsoft's Bill Gates for his near monopoly on computer operating systems and Microsoft's occasional bugs and high software prices, many will love him for this "killer application." It makes working on a PC more intuitively user friendly, combining the speed of a word processor with the logic of a paper notebook made with separators and tabs along the top.

Even in the computer age, it isn't easy to keep track of information you generate, receive and share. Notes scattered across e-mail, notebooks and sticky notes can be easily misplaced or misinterpreted, and retyping notes from paper sources is time consuming.

But with OneNote, you can electronically take, organize and use notes on a laptop or desktop computer or Tablet PC by using a single place to collect and customize information. Integrating the freedom and flexibility of paper, OneNote captures textual, visual and audio data in many ways and organizes it according to your needs.

Users can efficiently organize and access the right information quickly to prepare presentations, organize for important meetings or study for tests. They can even protect sections for your eyes only, using password protection and encryption.

OneNote supplies one place to manage all of your notes, whether they are typed, handwritten, recorded as audio or video files, captured from a Web page or stored in picture form as documents, diagrams or other images. Data are saved automatically every 30 seconds.

As when writing in a paper notebook, you can click anywhere on the page and start typing notes. Important phrases or subjects can be highlighted using bold fonts, underlining or bullets.

Spelling errors are corrected in a flash. You also can give related notes the same format and focus on the information you are taking down rather than figuring out how to arrange it. In a second, you can copy, paste, drag and drop text and graphics from almost any source of data, whether slides from a Microsoft PowerPoint program, photos from Web sites or rows and columns from Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

A computer microphone can be used easily to record and synchronize audio notes that supplement text and graphics. A dictionary, thesaurus and Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia are integrated into the program to provide background information immediately.

As an alternative to Encarta you can use Wikipedia or any Google search and then drag and drop the text, audio, photos, video or just the URL into the topic.

Even if you lack a scanner, you can produce handwritten notes or draw diagrams with your mouse, a stylus (on a Tablet PC) or an inexpensive pen-input device attached to your computer. You can even search for specific words or phrases within handwritten notes and convert your handwritten notes to print fonts.

The development was not instantaneous. Chris Pratley, one of the program's designers, set up a Web site and blog to field comments on an online beta version of OneNote; this input is evident in the final product. Teachers or university lecturers, for example, can set up different pages for each of their pupils and students or combine lecture notes with graphics, while employers can produce integrated data on each employee or contractor.

The primary drawback of OneNote is that the upgraded 2007 edition will be released early next year as an add-on to the next edition of Office 2007, though an upgrade discount will be offered.

A beta version of OneNote 2007 is available, but it is offered only to MSDN subscribers. You can, however, take a ‘test drive' of the 2007 version here.

I strongly urge you to look at Microsoft's OneNote page.  You can learn more there than any screenshots I can show you.

Here is a screenshot of OneNote 2007 beta, which I recently installed.

Dennis Turner