Favorite OneNote tips

I meet people who’ve seen the OneNote icon and have never clicked on it. After they see what they can do with it, it doesn’t take long for OneNote to become one of their favorite applications.

Last week, I shared some tips for efficiently taking and organizing notes. Today, I’d like to share a few of my favorite tips for saving time within OneNote.

Screen clippings

You can take pictures of your screen – or part of your screen – and drop them into your notebooks. This is really useful for times that I find a cool chart or diagram online, but I don’t want to save the entire article.

The fastest way to grab a “screen clipping” is to hold down the Windows key and press S (while in OneNote). Your mouse cursor will change into crosshairs. Just drag a rectangle over the part of the screen you want to save and OneNote will automatically drop it onto a new page in your Unfiled Notes section.

Copy text from pictures

This is pretty amazing. If you have an image in your notebook that contains text, you can copy that text to the Windows clipboard. You don’t need to type anything! Just right-click on the image and select Copy Text from Picture. You don’t need to paste the text in your notebook unless you really want to. When you use the search feature, OneNote automatically searches the text inside pictures. Pretty cool!

Send anything to OneNote

Regardless of what program you’re working in or what format your data is in, you can send it to OneNote just as easy as you can print. In fact, you can “print” directly into OneNote. When you click print in the application, select the “Send to OneNote” printer driver instead of your usual printer. You’ll get a new OneNote unfiled note that will look exactly as if it had come out of the printer.

Need more space!

Sometimes, during meetings I jot down quick notes and then go back and fill in the blanks after the meeting is over. Here’s a tip to add more space without having to click around and hold down the Enter key: Select the Insert menu, then click Extra Writing Space. Drag the mouse where you need extra room. One word of warning: If you create extra space in the middle of the outline, this technique will divide your outline into two.

Have a favorite OneNote tip? Share it in the comments section!

 

 

Suzanne