OneNote 12 is now OneNote 2007, and it's in the box!

Naming baby!
Today our branding folks finally unveiled the naming for Office 12 (which includes OneNote 12). We will be known as Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2007, although you won’t find me using that 10 gallon moniker. It'll be OneNote 2007 from here on out.

Not surprisingly, Office is also "2007", and its official name is 2007 Microsoft® Office System. That term describes all the Office products of course, both servers (such as SharePoint) and clients.

Hey we're in the big leagues!
The other big news for OneNote is that it is now included in some versions of Microsoft Office SKUs. (Stock Keeping Units a.k.a. "packages"). We've proven our worth and graduated from AAA status!

If you go to the store to buy Office, you'll find a few different versions, but the most common will probably be Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007. This has a suggested US retail price of $149. This suite includes:

• Word
• Excel
• PowerPoint
• OneNote (woohoo! )

There will also be Standard, Professional and Small Business versions of Office available at retail, but these do not include OneNote. OneNote is part of the student-oriented "SKU" because it is seen as especially appropriate for students and we were looking for a bundle of software that matched students' needs but didn't have too high a price.

As you may know, retail sales represent only a small percentage of sales opportunity for Office and OneNote (which is one reason we don’t really advertise). Most of Office is sold to corporations directly. There's the well-known Standard version of Office with the four core applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) and there's the version most organizations use called Professional Plus 2007 (formerly known as Professional Enterprise Edition).

Professional Plus is a little different from the Professional version you see in stores. In addition to the core applications, Professional Plus has applications like Access, InfoPath, Publisher, and new for 2007: Communicator (our Instant Messenger for businesses). It also includes some special functionality integrated into the main applications to help with Enterprise Content Management (ECM). Essentially you can now have very organized workflow-based "content creation", meaning that you can start a document and the system can already know who sees it next for review, who approves it, etc.

Still More OneNote!
The exciting news for the OneNote team is that there is now a new "SKU" for businesses called Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 which includes everything in the Professional Plus SKU but also includes Groove and OneNote. This über version of Office is especially targeted at firms or groups within a firm that need to be mobile and collaborate a lot. For example consultants working a lot at remote sites or the mobile sales force.

OneNote makes sense here of course not just because it is great for note taking and capturing information in a mobile environment but also because of the Shared Notebooks feature. If you are out of the office a lot, you need a collaboration system that doesn’t require you to have internet access in order to work. OneNote provides that via shared notebooks which are like super-rich wikis that you can use offline and then have changes you and others made sync up when you later get a net connection. Groove of course is a nice complement as it provides a workspace for shared documents, forms, etc that can also be used offline. You can read more about Groove at Marc Olson's blog.

OneNote à la carte
And of course OneNote is still available as a standalone purchase. We're still offering OneNote for the introductory pricing of $99 ($49 for academic users). Get 'em while they're hot! I recommend the béarnaise sauce be kept strictly on the side though.

Some people have asked me if there will be a further discount on that $99 price for upgrade users who already have 2003. The answer is "that is the upgrade price". If you compare with Word 2007 standalone which retails for $299 and has an upgrade price of $109, you can see what I mean. Another comparison is Publisher 2007, which retails for $169 and has an upgrade of $99. Essentially the deal is built-in for OneNote. Come to think of it, we're all upgrading from paper...

Comments

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  "If you go to the store to buy Office, you'll find a few different versions, but the most common will probably be Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007. This has a suggested US retail price of $149. This suite includes:
  
     * Word
     * Excel
     * PowerPoint
     * OneNote (woohoo!)"
  
  "If you compare with Word 2007 standalone which retails for $299"
  
  Does anyone else find it odd that Word+ABunchOfStuff costs less than Word?
  

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  There are actually some subtleties that I didn't attempt to explain around the licensing which explains this. For example, Student and Home license does not allow the applications to be used for commercial use (or something like that). Basically if you want to use Word for "work" or commercial gain, you need to buy a different suite such as Standard or Word standalone. Hence we can offer the lower price. Also, nearly everyone qualifies for upgrade, so we sell hardly any full price Office or Word standalone since the upgrade suites are such good deals relative to those.

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  Hey, I just work here.

• Anonymous
  February 15, 2006
  Sorry, wasn't meant personal ;) I intially thought it was a typo... Could you or anyone else give some reasoning behind this decision?

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  Chris,
  
  Nice.  You guys deserve major Kudos.  I can't wait for Office 2007.  Now, if we could just get you to post a little more     regularly, that would be just great...  ;>)

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  I'm very excited about this release. Any chance we could see a Beta on MSDN?

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  Chris
  
  The XP version of the Student and Teacher Edition of Office had a EULA which allowed only one copy of the software to be installed.   The 2003 Edition upped that to three copies, which I was very pleased with.   Will the 2007 version continue this generous EULA "tradition"?  I sure hope so.
  
  BTW, I also am also puzzled by the ellimination of Outlook from the package, and would be interested to know the reasoning behind that.   Will a student standalone version of Outlook be available?
  
  Thanks for the information.
  
  Terri
  aka terriblue on the Buzz

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  Congratulations!
  Can't wait, when will the beta be released?
  Usually the beta is more than stable enough so that the added functionality outweighs the defects...
  My OnoNote is getting so big that especially the drag n drop and the hyperlinks between pages will be very welcome. And of course the shared notebooks...
  I hope we don/t have to wait till 2007.
  
  Greetings
  Bart

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  Hi Chris,
  
  I guess I have to ask the same question everyone is asking about this package: Why no Outlook?
  I know that Vista will have an enhanced Outlook Express, but I doubt it will be anywhere close to Outlook when it comes to calendar, tasks and contacts, all things students need. And all of that when you blog about Outlook-OneNote integration...
  
  Patrick

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  wow...one note without outlook...to get both we'll need the Standard bundle (presumably at more than $149) PLUS the One Note "upgrade" at an additional $99.
  
  How would OneNote 2007 integrate with OpenOffice?
  
  
  sk

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  How about an "advanced home & student edition" that adds Outlook to the package?
  
  Patrick

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  Don't know if this is the right place for sugestions, or if it was suggested before, anyway, I do all sorts of research, photoshop, webdesign etc, and it's kinda annoying having to insert stuff on my onenote, since I'm always pressing ALT-TAB, losing focus of my original application, searching on onenote where to put the stuff, going back to the original program (again alt-tab) losing focus of onenote, and to get things worse I use Opera for my browsing needs, so I can't quickly move pictures on websites as easily as when using IE. SO heres my suggestion for onenote 2007: I'd like a way to run my apps INSIDE a onenote's tab or page, so when I click on that page, that program runs with its window resized just like it was 'inside' that page, and both programs (onenote and my app) never lose focus to each other, almost like Onenote swallowed that app, so it only has one bar on my programs list (the onenote) and when I minimize to tray that app minimizes too. I'll try to make some screenshots to demonstrate what I'm thinking and post later if needed. What do you guys think?

• Anonymous
  February 16, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 17, 2006
  Hi Chris,
  Any idea on the pricing in £?
  As a 'mature' student I am very disappointed in the lack of Outlook in the Student package.   I would rather have the same  programmes in the 2007 student and teacher version as the 2003 version and have Onenote available as a standalone  upgrade.   I assume Outlook Express in Vista is not a PIM like Outlook?
  
  I need a PIM to keep track of student stuff, work stuff,  plus family/kids stuff but not necessarily one as 'business' orientated as Outlook.  How about a Student Outlook ?
  
  Take a look at GoBinder 2006 beta, if the final version  manages to iron out the current beta issues I might end up choosing that over Onenote and Outlook.

• Anonymous
  February 18, 2006
  Chris,
  
  The best solution for students and teachers who want Outlook might be to purchase it separately at an academic price to supplement the Student package of Office 2007.  I notice that I can get Outlook 2003 as a standalone product with an academic price of $66.80 at one of the educational resellers.  I imagine that the new version of Outlook will also be available at an academic price when it comes out.  You can get nearly anything at an academic price from legitimate academic resellers.   I suppose the little known Professional Academic Edition with Access will no longer be produced.  
  
  Terri
  aka terriblue on the Buzz

• Anonymous
  February 18, 2006
  Latest Update: Just noticed what's missing from the cheap edition - see note further down...
  
  Plenty of information has been flowing around the tech blogs about Office 12 for a while now, but Microsoft's Marketing people have

• Anonymous
  February 18, 2006
  Susan, meet Terri; yes, the price for Student and Teacher 2003 plus academic (or non-academic) price of OneNote is about the same as Student and Home 2007 plus academic (or non-academic) priced Outlook - so I don't think there's all that much difference in the end. As for the MSRP in £ or € I'm afraid I don't know. I do know that we try to keep the suggested prices about the same worldwide. But we don't control the actual prices retailers charge - in the past I have heard that European prices can be quite a bit higher than we suggest, while US prices are usually lower than we suggest.

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 19, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  February 21, 2006
  Hi,
  
  I love OneNote!
  
  My trial of OneNote 2003 expires on Feb 28, and I would like to continue using it ... however if a buy a retail copy of OneNote 2003 now, will I have to repurchase when OneNote 2007 comes out? When is it coming out .. very very soon? (I don't see it on Microsoft Office's site yet) If it's very soon and I would have to purchase twice, I would like to wait for the 2007 version ...
  
  Thanks for creating a great product!

• Anonymous
  February 21, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  April 10, 2006
  Chris,
  
  For the pricing, how about removing Power Point and adding Outlook?  Mail and Calendar are a must for me personally.  Never got into Tasks, because it was too complex for my  needs.  Don't see a purpose for Journaling for my personal needs.
  
  I use OneNote, Outlook, and Word regularly.  I use Excel enough to want it available.   I have no home need for PowerPoint.  I especailly don't see the need of powerpoint considering that I could, for the most part, accomplish the same thing with One Note Pages and subpages.
  
  How about making PowerPoint the extra application to buy?
  
  Melissa

• Anonymous
  April 11, 2006
  Melissa: This is a tough one because everyone will have a different opinion. PowerPoint is actually used a lot in schools, and this is the "Home and Student" edition after all. You could make an argument to remove Excel, but a lot of people do budget stuff in Excel and it's actually got a lot of uses today that you would never guess ("fantasy football" is the top downloaded template for Excel...). Although every person can point to an app they never use, every application in the Office system is used by a significant segment of the population so there is no perfect set.

• Anonymous
  April 14, 2006
  Susan:
    I just looked at GoBinder.  It looks like an incredible ripoff of OneNote.  I wonder if MS will be going after GoBinder for infringement, as there are simply too many similarities in the product.

• Anonymous
  May 25, 2006
  Some time ago when I announced that OneNote 12 was going to be called OneNote 2007, I mentioned...

• Anonymous
  June 11, 2006
  quand et ou sera disponible one note mobile pour pocket pc 2003, la version dans office 2007 n'accepte pas les fichier .caB
  cordialement

• Anonymous
  August 05, 2006
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  August 05, 2006
  I'm copying this comment to http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2006/02/02/523852.aspx, where it'll be more relevant.

• Anonymous
  December 03, 2006
  Some time ago when I announced that OneNote 12 was going to be called OneNote 2007, I mentioned that

• Anonymous
  December 13, 2006
  The comment has been removed