Saturday, January 8, 2011

Organize Your Notes with OneNote

If you’re like me, you have sticky notes and scraps of paper all over the place. I’ve tried to get organized – really. I got a little spiral notebook to keep by my computer and guess what? I can’t find anything in it! Yes, there’s plenty of stuff written there but on which page? I know – I should have colored tabs or something, right?

For years I’ve wanted an easy way to make notes for myself (and actually keep track of them) on my computer. I tried having a dedicated Word doc just for notes – same problem as the spiral notebook. Last Jan I used a calendar template and that worked great . . . for about 3 months. WordPad, Notepad – nothing worked for me. What has actually worked the best is creating draft emails with descriptive subject lines, which is far from ideal. Well, I think I just got introduced to the perfect thing!

Recently my computer had a super crash and I ended up with updated software. Well, I don’t like change. If something is working, what’s the point? In fact, I was still using Word97 and loving it. I don’t like the Word2007 on my laptop and know from my limited experience that 2010 is even worse. But the most recent version is what my computer tech told me I had to have.

Enter OneNote

Part of the MS Office Suite, OneNote is an absolute dream come true! If you have it and you haven’t tried it already, DO IT NOW! Big WOW! I don’t really know much about it yet – just got introduced two days ago, but do I ever see the possibilities. You have this page on which you can write notes anywhere. You can make more pages with the tabs or open a new notebook. How cool is that? So all those sites I want to remember to check out further, my to-do list, other tidbits – all right there! And you can dock it to the side, open all the time.

OneNote is going to improve my life! No more wasted time looking for misplaced scraps of paper. No more flipping through a notebook. What a time management and organizational boon! If you already know all about it, please share any tips or tricks or cool features that you’ve found. If you haven’t noticed it yet (like me until two days ago) open it up and see if you find it as wonderful as I do.

2 comments:

  1. Crystal, that sounds like a winner. I did a quick search on the web and folks love that program. I'll keep in in mind when I upgrade my system. In the meanwhile, I guess I'll have to continue using my less than sophisticated spiral notebook (when I remember where I last placed it). :)

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  2. I'm not surprised people love it, Felicia - the more I use it, the more I love it, too. Now Word2010 - that's another story. But I have figured out a gew ways to make it as much like Word97 as I can:)

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