Scoop’s Views

Are you one of those people who are constantly on-the-go? Do you work in more than one location, such as in an office, remotely — whether from home, other work sites, or customer locations — and do you work with large volumes of information? If you said yes, then get your four gigabyte USB flash drive handy.

Back in the early days of personal computers — in the late 1970s and early 1980s — there was talk that computers would one day lead to paperless offices. If you read reports that come out every few years, that’s hardly the case. Even so, it doesn’t mean you need to be buried under paper copies of everything you deal with on a regular basis.

Microsoft came out with a tool, Microsoft OneNote, a few years ago, and I first began using it three years ago, in 2005, when it was called Microsoft OneNote 2003. Now, in its latest form, Microsoft OneNote 2007, it’s even more feature-rich that before.

OneNote2007 has been installed on my computers since Microsoft Office 2007 was released one year ago this week. It’s a handy tool, and if you deal with tons of paper, research, notes, and well, just about anything else in an office-type environment, home, well, any environment, OneNote can help.

The concept of MS OneNote 2007 is simple: it’s a digital notebook. Think of those funky three-ring binders we carried back in grade school and junior high. I’m not sure what you carried in high school, but a clipboard, several manila file folders, a couple heavy-duty rubber bands, and a pen kept me organized. Even with that kind of setup, OneNote could provide a terrific solution.

Let’s start at the beginning: files, folders, data, and other "stuff" that accumulates, and look how OneNote fits into the picture.

Years ago, starting with Microsoft Windows 1, running all the way through Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 3.11 WFW, and on to Windows NT 4.0 Server, there was a program called CardFile, with a screenshot at left, as shared by Crystallina on Wikipedia, which was sort of an electronic 3"x5" card file. In reality, it was one of the first freeform databases that would come along over the years.

What could CardFile be used for in real life? Anything. The limits were left to your imagination, as anything you could write onto physical — paper — 3"x5" file cards could be keyed into the electronic version.

I had several CardFile collections, with one that was more of an obituary-on-the-go file, being one of my most-used files. Because I worked for newspapers, I kept information on people of note, such as wealthy, prominent business and civic leaders, as well as politicians, those who ran for office, and let’s not forget educators. Yes, if you were a "someone" of any standing, I had a card on you. Some people, when I would ask them for certain information, would sometimes ask, "Why would you be asking that? It sounds like you’re planning my funeral!" In reality, I was planning their obituary.

Other things CardFile could have been used for — and probably still is by people who are still running Windows 3.x — include recipes, notes for health care providers, grocery lists, directions, a telephone/address book, and virtually anything else.

CardFile was among the victims of tools and utilities that didn’t make it over to Windows 95, but that opened up a new market for software developers working in the new 32-bit environment. You could install CardFile on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME if you really wanted a non-maintained program on the computer, as the utility was included on the installation CD. In Windows 95, Microsoft introduced Outlook Express, and, using Schedule+, you could import your old CardFile files into the new format. For me, Schedule+ just didn’t feel right, so I began my search for a solid freeform database.

One of the earliest freeform database tools I found was Time and Chaos, a personal information manager — a planner/scheduler, phone/address book, and ToDo list manager, all in one. I’ve stuck with it over the years, using it for a variety of date-related things, including tracking birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, and many other things.

While working in the day-to-day news world, I used it to keep track of city council meetings, school board meetings, county planning commission meetings, and such. Since the appointment section had a section to let you store notes, I had the agenda added in that area, and after the meeting, all my notes, along with direct quotes and any other relevant information, went into that area. The great thing about using this tool was that you could secure the database with a password, meaning I was the only person who could see my notes, thereby keeping all other snooping characters out of the database. The funny thing about this database is that many of the politicians I covered knew about it. They would often ask if I had notes on them in the database. As I told them: "Anything you’ve done, anything you’ve said, anything embarrassing, every campaign promise, and anything else that caught my fancy is in your section." Oh, did that make them quiver, at times.

Over the years, for non-appointment material, I needed a solid freeform database I could depend upon for daily use. I used a variety of tools, including MyInfo, askSam, AzzCardFile, and others. While I have files in some of those formats, still today, I’ve moved past most of those freeform databases over the past couple of years, though I still use AzzCardFile fairly often, as I built up several large AzzCardFile collections over the years and now it’s a little hard — and would be extremely time consuming — to move them to another format.

I bought a copy of Microsoft OneNote in early 2005, wanting to check it out. When I bought it, I wasn’t sure exactly what it did, what it could be used for, how it worked, or how it would fit in with my work habits. In fact, in the first few weeks of having it installed on my desktop computer, I wrote to a few Microsoft folks involved with developing it and asked, "Here’s what I want to do, and here’s how I’ve done it in the past. What’s the best way to do this using OneNote?"

Complete Guide to OneNote by W. Frederick Zimmerman Read more about this book…

I got several replies, including a few that pointed me to the Microsoft Office templates gallery, suggesting I check out the available templates and "figure out how it works best for you." That was an answer that didn’t help much.

For a few months, MS OneNote 2003 sat on my computer, unused. Then, around May, while my two younger children were visiting for their older sister’s graduation, I pulled OneNote off my desktop, installed it on my laptop, and decided to use it when I was out and about.

Well, an "out and about" utility to keep all my notes and other material together, making it easier to move to my desktop later on, provider a nice idea. In fact, I used that approach several times. Then the realization that synchronizing the files would be much more logical, so I purchased a second copy of OneNote 2003.

Since my collection of items saved to OneNote was growing, I made a concerted effort to see how others were using it, as well as check out some add-ons that were available.

I found one add-on for OneNote 2003 that allowed me to "print" any electronic document directly to OneNote. That add-on is no longer needed in OneNote 2007.

One really cool feature of OneNote 2007 is that if you add an image, such as a scanned image, saved in JPG, BMP, GIF, or PNG — and probably other formats, as well — OneNote does an on-the-fly optical character recognition (OCR) of the image. What’s that mean in plain, everyday English? It means that if you place a scanned image of a document into OneNote 2007, the program will look at the image, "see" the text in the document, recognize it, and in the background, make it available for you to copy-and-paste, either elsewhere or on the same page. Pretty cool, huh? That is one feature that saves me typing time or time actually sitting down at the scanner and scanning in documents, then performing OCR without further action on your part. Well, you do need to ensure that OCR is enabled in the settings (Tools → Options → Other → Text recognition in pictures).

What is the process to copy the text from a scanned document? Unlike most programs, OneNote allows you to copy text from an inserted "print" image and paste it elsewhere for editing, and it’s as uncomplicated as it sounds. To copy the text, you simply:

1. Right-click on the printout image and then do one of the following:

• Click Copy Text from this Page of the Printout to copy the text from only the currently selected printout picture.
• Click Copy Text from All the Pages of the Printout to copy the text from all of the pages of an inserted printout picture.

2. Navigate to the page in your OneNote notebook — or, for that matter, any other program — and left-click at the point where you want the text to be positioned, and then press CTRL+V (or right-click and choose PASTE) to paste the copied text into the new location or document.

Daily use of OneNote

A product manager on the OneNote team, Daniel Escapa, has released several handy tips, to say the least, about using OneNote. One tip was a way to add specific OneNote pages to the Windows Vista start menu search results.

TechSmith, the company behind software products such as SnagIt and Camtasia Studio, released a SnagIt add-on that allows you to send any image captured in SnagIt to any location in OneNote. Very cool. It’s a SnagIt add-on that I use a few times a week, giving me the freedom to use screenshots to help illustrate my point.

For other uses, such as research, keeping track of items in the news, email, meeting notes, and ToDo lists, not to mention calendar items, OneNote has a proven system behind it, especially when you look at the growing Microsoft Office template gallery. For example, do you need a 2008 calendar template for OneNote? Not a problem, well, at least not in finding one. You will have to decide which one is the right one for you.

I have one OneNote notebook I keep that is full of snippets of HTML, PHP, XHTML entities, and other coding fragments I use on a regular basis. By having everything stored in OneNote, I no longer have to code everything entirely from scratch, but it also means that if I am looking for the entity coding for the mathematical sign for divide, something I don’t use very often. To find the code, all I have to do is type "division sign" into OneNote’s search panel and it will search all my notebooks and show every reference. In this case, there’s only one reference, and it shows me that for the "÷" sign, I will need to enter ÷ in the HTML code so everyone, regardless of browser or computing platform, can see the same thing.

One of the best examples I’ve seen of a OneNote power user that I’ve seen is Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s Business Division. Check out the Raikes’ video on the OneNote training site. Be sure to check out the suggestion that begins at the 0:06:02 mark.

While I browse the Web every day, there is always something I read — generally many things — that I want to keep. Since so many sites come and go, and Webmasters who yank pages off their sites after a specific date, such as after an event is over, I learned a long time ago it’s easier to grab complete Web pages while they are still online, giving me access to the information on my computer so I can review it in the future.

There are other times when I am planning the organization of a new section of a Web site, or, for that matter, the initial design of a site. What do I do? I create a OneNote notebook just for that project, create various sections, and begin putting things together, including adding notes about content that will be needed, sources that could be used, and copies of images that should be considered for the site.

OneNote is also a tool that integrates tightly with Microsoft Outlook, and during the initial install, OneNote adds a button to the Outlook toolbar that allows you to export email or other Outlook items to OneNote directly. You can create Outlook appointments in OneNote, then, when done, add the appointment to Outlook through OneNote.

As with other Microsoft products, OneNote also allows you to email OneNote sections or notebooks to others. Since everyone doesn’t have OneNote installed on their computer, Microsoft addressed that issue. When you send an email and attach a OneNote file, you can also have the content be added directly to the body of the email itself, and attachments, such as zip files, mp3 files, or images, attached to the email separately.

Two other features of OneNote are that you can record audio and video — both at the same time or either one separately — and have it save direct to the OneNote file in which you’re working. The files are, by default, optimized to allow you to be able to save a two-hour presentation, for example, in a very manageable file size. Most people I know, though, would want to increase the quality, which would then increase the overall file size. But, as hard drives get bigger, the issue of file size becomes less of an issue.

I am not an employee, contractor, or investor in Microsoft, so no, I am not getting paid or kickback for this post. I am writing about OneNote because it’s a great tool that I’ve used now for a couple of years, find it useful in so many ways in my daily life, and with each passing day, find new ways to incorporate it into my life. Why not check it out for yourself today? It is designed for PCs only, so Mac folks have to suck it up. A downloadable trial version is also available on the OneNote site.