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Top 5 OneNote tips, and a nice little win

  • Artigo

 

A request I get face to face is "What is a way to get more out of OneNote?"  I don't think I've ever gotten this in email - must be something about the way people interact.  So after a year of using it far more than I ever did before, though, I want to share my favorite tips.  If you are in a hurry, you can use the patented "bold skim reading" technique to focus on the highlights.

 

  1. Holding down the SHIFT key while dragging outlines around the page will cause them to merge together. Try it: type on the top of a page, and then again near the bottom. SHIFT+drag the bottom outline onto the top. They become one larger area.

 

  1. File | Backup is where you can get to your most recently changed pages. This crops up fairly frequently, and is usually phrased as "Ack! I just deleted something important! Now what?"

 

  1. I almost exclusively use WINDOWS + S to get a screen clipping. A surprising number of users I meet rely only on the menu commands. This would save a little time if you don't want to force OneNote to the top to access the command, and works whenever there is a little OneNote icon by the clock (technically, if OneNoteM.exe is running). You don't need OneNote running to use this.

 

  1. My screen is small, especially on a tablet. I rename notebooks to save vertical real estate.  For instance, our "Test Team Notebook" has a relatively long name. I right click it and select Rename to "ttn" and it uses much less space. This does not actually rename the notebook - just the notebook name in the UI.

 

  1. I have meetings with all the people on my team regularly, and have a separate section for each. But that is boring. I asked everyone to give me a photo, and used MS Paint.net to "fade" the photo. Then I enlarged them each to about screen size, pasted them onto a page, and made a template for each section with a background photo of the person. I would post a picture of this, but I had to promise none of these photos would wind up on the internet.

 

Also, did anyone see Ed Bott's column over at Ziff Davis?  It's at https://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=402, and guess which application got rated "Favorite Windows Application" by his readers?  What a nice compliment, especially considering the size of the field.

 

On a side note for number 3 - I'm convinced that taking a week or so to do nothing but learn keyboard shortcuts for the applications you use would be worthwhile.  I've never really like the mouse.  Even when I first saw the Mac in 1984, I did not like switching my hands between the keyboard and the mouse.  It just felt clumsy.  I'm thinking that knowing and using the keyboard commands would only result in more quickly completing the task at hand. 

 

Questions, comments, concerns and criticisms always welcome,

John

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 25, 2008
    Yes, I meant SHIFT.  Sigh - it's been that type of week. John

  • Anonymous
    April 01, 2008
    I've got mild Cerebral Palsy, and buried at the bottom of your LOVELY tips for One Note is THE SINGLE MOST VALUABLE thing I've learned about any computer software, ANYWHERE: KEYBOARD COMMANDS!!!! I could go on for paragraphs about how I have to re-train my hands to learn a new mouse when my old one dies, but the point is, this very overlooked part of all computer use is especially helpful in One Note. I am currently using One Note on a laptop, not a tablet, and am putting everything from this machine onto my new EEEpc, STARTING with my One Note notebooks! Just using keyboard commands has saved me hours of work-- drag and drop is particularly troublesome for those of us with dexterity issues.

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2008
    I would love to use the Windows-S command, but it seems that Copernic Desktop Search has it hijacked (Windows-S launches Copernic0.  Any tips on how to get it back to OneNote or assign a different shortcut to it??

  • Anonymous
    April 29, 2008
    Hi MaryBeth, In Copernica, there is a tools options integration tab which lets you change the WINDOWS+S to something else.   Change that, then toggle the OneNote toolbar icon OFF and back ON again. Hope this helps, John

  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2009
    I print my workorders to onenote. I started having a problem and I can't figure out the reason and/or how to fix it. Everytime I send the info to onenote, all I get is a black screen. I can no longer see the valuable info I need. I convert the workorder to text, then email to my employees on their phones. Can you help me? Screen clipping taken: 5/14/2009, 10:45 PM

  • Anonymous
    May 14, 2009
    Hi Jeff, Can you send me more details?  What type of document are you printing, what version of OneNote do you have, do text files print properly, version of Windows, did this ever work, etc... If you narrow it down to a certain file or file type that will not print, feel free to email it to me (assuming it is not confidential or personal, of course). Sorry for the problems, but thanks for using OneNote.

  • Anonymous
    October 08, 2009
    I have the same issue with the black page printing about 1/2 the time when I try to print from Excel to OneNote any ideas how to fix this or why it is happening? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    October 08, 2009
    Can you look at my questions right above your post and let me know the answers?