Download the new “Green Living Ideas” notebook for OneNote

In celebration of Earth Day on April 22, I’ve put together a new “Green Living Ideas” notebook for OneNote 2007 that you can download for free. You can use it to list, organize, and keep track of a variety of “green living” ideas, reminders, and opportunities. The notebook contains five suggested sections, all of which you can customize in any way that you want.

The first four sections of the notebook contain suggestions for simple checklists that can help you categorize and organize the personal choices that you have made (and can consider making) about recycling and composting, conserving resources and energy, and lowering your personal impact on the environment. In these lists, each suggested item is pre-formatted with the “To Do” note tag, which you can click to mark the checkbox as completed (where applicable) or click again to clear the check mark. This is useful for reminders that you want to track for completion or for tasks that repeat on a schedule. To customize or edit existing list items, simply type over any text that you want to change. You can also insert additional list items where they belong, or delete the ones that you don’t care about.

The fifth and last notebook section provides space where you can collect links to useful “green” Web sites that you’ve discovered. If you prefer to keep a copy of the information from these Web sites as part of your notebook, you can simply paste such information into this section, or you can choose to insert screen clippings directly from your Web browser. To learn how to do Web research with OneNote screen clippings, read Use screen clippings to capture information quickly, or watch the video demo “Keep it together with OneNote 2007.” For more in-depth tips and demonstrations about using OneNote to store information from a variety of sources, check out the video demo “OneNote 2007: An Executive’s Best Practices.”

Realistically, you probably won’t be able to follow each and every checklist item provided in this notebook template. That’s okay. As with most of our templates, you can customize the contents by deleting anything that doesn’t apply to your personal situation or preference, and you can freely add and modify other items in the template that will make it more useful to you. The final result is a custom Green Living Ideas notebook that you can use and share with your family, friends, and co-workers. (If some of them don’t have OneNote, you can still share your notes and ideas with them.) For a quick video tutorial about customizing OneNote templates, check out the video demo “Take the work out of note-taking with OneNote templates.”

The Green Living Ideas notebook is free to download from our Templates site and it works with all versions of OneNote 2007 — including the free trial version. You can download other, free OneNote 2007 templates — including full notebooks plus individual sections and pages — from the OneNote Templates catalog on the Office Online Web site.

Do you use OneNote at work (or want to)? Persuading your co-workers to stop using wasteful paper notebooks and endless printouts is the best way to help your whole office “go green!” If you could use some assistance with convincing your co-workers (and your boss) that OneNote is a worthy and environmentally friendly investment in the workplace, check out this free OneNote 2007 training presentation for PowerPoint that you can customize and then present at your workplace.

Our templates are just one small part of all the free stuff available on Office Online to help you learn, use, and recommend OneNote. If you’re looking for something specific and need help finding it on our site, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help.

Happy Earth Day!

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 21, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 22, 2009
  You have meat trimmings as something to compost.  Animal byproducts really shouldn't go in your compost. The notbook is a great idea though.  Thanks.

• Anonymous
  April 22, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 22, 2009
  Great idea, would definitely help to keep me accountable to do my part for the environment. Always start good, but then slack off. What about other ideas, specifically for investors to look into green businesses. I came across a company called e3bank today (www.e3bank.com).  Something to look into, I guess.

• Anonymous
  April 24, 2009
  There are ways for you to take action. There are things you can do each and every day to lesson the negative impact on the environment, starting right now.

• Anonymous
  June 05, 2009
  Hey! While the idea was a good one, some of the ideas presented in the notebook were pretty obvious (turn off lights when you leave the room), and others were downright wrong (no matter where you live, meat scraps should not go in your compost, and greasy food leftovers should also be avoided). I support the effort to get the information out there, but those of us that have it do not really need a notebook, and those of us that don't would benefit from more research.

• Anonymous
  November 07, 2009
  I am writing this from Madurai Kamaraj University India, with the view to develop our campus and affliated colleges to green campus.