Microsoft Office OneNote

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Microsoft Office OneNote

Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 running on Microsoft Windows.
Developer:	Microsoft
Latest release:	2003 Service Pack 2 / Sept 2005
OS:	Microsoft Windows
Use:	Notetaking
License:	Proprietary
Website:	www.microsoft.com

Microsoft Office OneNote, usually referred to as Microsoft OneNote, is a tool for notetaking, information gathering, and multi-user collaboration by Microsoft. While it is at its best on a Tablet PC where the tablet's pen and ink capability can be brought to bear, it is most often used on a notebook or desktop computer running the Microsoft Windows operating system.

The freeware Treepad and Infomagic for Windows have similarities to OneNote's idea of freeform information management, although unlike these early programs, OneNote does not use a database system. While many earlier systems relied on linear text flow (simple lists), OneNote visualizes notes as a two dimensional page. OneNote also adds modern features such as drawings, pictures, multimedia audio, video, and ink as well as multi-user sharing of notes.

1 Key features
2 Key shortcomings
3 Upcoming releases
4 Platform support
5 Competitors
6 Reference
7 External links

[edit] Key features

Automatic saving of notes—no need to remember to save or pick a file name and location
Simple section/page metaphor which resembles a spiral-binder notebook. Two clicks to get to any page with a medium sized notebook. "Back" and "Forward" buttons to browse notebook.
Full text, cross section, search capability.
User-defined note flags to mark important paragraphs, check off to-do lists, and other items in need of highlighting or categorization. A linked summary of the flagged paragraphs drawn from some or all of one's entire notebook can be viewed on a separate window to make it easy to mine one's notes for information one has categorized.
Screen clippings—use a hot key or menu command to initate a clip—drag out a rectangle and the image contained within is added to one's notes/research.
Outlining tools - collapse/expand multi-level outlines to make organizing thoughts easier
Side Notes which allow the user to quickly pop up a small window to take notes at any time.
Drag and drop content from Internet Explorer to OneNote preserves most formatting and automatically build a reference link back to the source website.
Microsoft Office Outlook integration for creating task items from OneNote notes. It is also possible to e-mail OneNote notes as HTML documents so they can be read even by people who do not have OneNote.
Audio and video recording that is synchronized with notes as they are written during a lecture or interview. Clicking on an icon associated with a given paragraph plays back the related portion of the recording.
Send notes to Word—take any set of notes and send them to Word to create a document.
Password protect any individual section to encrypt its contents.
Multi-user real-time peer-to-peer sharing of note pages. Invite other users to edit one or more pages of notes at the same time without restriction—useful for meetings or as an adjunct to teleconferences. Add pages as necessary.
On a Tablet PC, use a pen to handwrite or make drawings. Handwriting is searchable directly without having to convert to text. Direct conversion to text is also supported.
Import notes from Pocket PC (Windows Mobile) devices.

[edit] Key shortcomings

Limited generic export capability or API functionality.
No intuitive drag-and-drop ability for moving folders and sections (only pages and sub-pages) (Solved in Office 2007).
No equation capability makes it very difficult to take notes in statistics, math, or science courses.
Occasionally moves notes to other areas of the page. This can hamper formatting.

In August 2004, Microsoft released Service Pack 1 for OneNote 2003 which fixed several shortcomings and added a number of significant new features such as date/time stamping, import of notes from Pocket PC and video recording, as well as shared sessions and a button to transfer a "page" of notes to Word 2003. The current release of OneNote 2003 is Service Pack 2 (which includes all the changes made in Service Pack 1).

OneNote 2007 released to manufacturing in late October 2006 and is available to MSDN, TechNet and Volume License subscribers. It is scheduled to be on retail shelves in January 2007. It can also be purchased (in certain countries) by downloading the 60-day Office 2007 Trial from Microsoft, then converting OneNote 2007 to the full version ($99.00) by credit card from Microsoft (not available in all countries) or by buying a boxed version within 60 days (see link to Chris Pratley's blog below).

[edit] Upcoming releases

OneNote 2007 has been announced and is scheduled for release in early 2007 as part of the Office 2007 suite along with Windows Vista. Features include:

Support for multiple notebooks—create a notebook for each class one takes or project one works on.
Table support, including easy creation while typing using just the Tab and Enter keys.
Hyperlinks into/between notes. Create an indexed personal or shared knowledge web and point to notes in OneNote from other documents or emails.
Server-hosted shared collaborative notebooks (like a rich, offline, editable wiki). Any user can edit online or offline at any time, and changes are automatically merged, as well as marked with who made them and when. Additional features allow highlighting changes made since one last viewed the notebook, or any pages one has not read yet.
Search system is now indexed constantly in the background for much faster response.
New ink model for ease of use as well as new features such as lasso selection.
Drawing tools (for diagrams, flow charts) work with pen, mouse, trackpads, etc. to get cleaner looking results vs. hand drawn. Shapes can be repeatedly stamped for easy reuse.
Support for email tools other than Outlook (emailing notes only).
Drag/drop support for easy rearranging of pages, sections, and notebooks.
Integration with Microsoft Office Outlook, including note pages linked to Contacts and Calendar items, as well as buttons to send emails to OneNote and direct creation of Outlook tasks in OneNote, which sync two-way with Outlook.
Integration with Internet Explorer, including buttons to send Web pages to OneNote for research and data collection purposes.
Automatic text recognition in scanned documents, clipped images or photos of documents. Target text is highlighted in context in the image
"Print to OneNote" capability to allow documents or web pages from any application to be sent to OneNote where they are indexed and made searchable
Support for embedded files such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF etc. placed on a page but kept in native format so they can be launched and viewed/edited in their source applications.
Support for OneNote "packages", which consist of subsets of your notes plus embedded documents and recordings wrapped into a single file for easy distribution and sharing.
Support for searching audio and video files (match on phonetic equivalent of a typed word)
Save notes as PDF or XPS (XML Paper Specification) files for perfect fidelity when sharing notes with others who do not have OneNote.
Built-in "napkin math" calculator for quick in-meeting calculations. Type simple equations using arithmetic or trigonometry and OneNote solves them in-place (e.g. "19.72/12=", followed by a space results in "19.72/12=1.64")
New "full-screen" view with minimal UI to optimize screen real estate for note taking.
Two-way sync with Windows Mobile-based SmartPhones running OneNote Mobile (also announced and shipping with OneNote 12). In addition to text notes, voice and photo notes taken with the device (such as business card photos) are indexed and can be searched using the PC version of OneNote.
Additional extensibility (API) to allow customization and tools that import or export data from OneNote to connect it with other systems (such as Customer Relationship Management tools or a Document management system).
Windows Desktop Search 3.0 (WDS) enables fast search on your computer using indexing technology. It helps you to find your documents, email, music, photos and other items. The search engine in Windows Desktop Search 3.0 is a Windows service that is also used by applications such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Office OneNote 2007 to index application content and deliver instant results when searching within an application.

[edit] Platform support

Microsoft OneNote 2003 is only supported on Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 or later and Windows XP. A feature with similar (but comparatively limited) functionality to OneNote's is available in Word 2004 for Mac OS X, called "Word Notebook."

OneNote 2003 will run on any hardware that supports the required operating systems.

OneNote 2007 will run only on Windows XP SP2 or later versions of Windows.

Many Office apps support importing/exporting MIME HTML (.mht), including OneNote, Word, and Internet Explorer. Therefore, any modern browser that recognizes this file format is a suitable platform for viewing OneNote's exported MHT files. OneNote 2007 will also support exporting notes as PDF which is likely to be a better option than MHT if editability is not required.

Microsoft may, in the future, make available Mac or Pocket PC versions. OneNote Mobile for Smartphones (Windows Mobile 2003, 2003 SE, and 5) as well as Pocket PCs (Windows Mobile 5 only) has been announced as part of OneNote 2007.

[edit] Competitors

Since the introduction of OneNote, EverNote and GoBinder have emerged as competitors on the Windows platform. There are many notebook applications available for the Apple Macintosh. The open-source application BasKet is the most noteworthy competitor in the Linux/Unix field.

[edit] Reference

Two very popular free-from databases on the Windows platform are askSam, from askSam Systems, and Info Select, by Micro Logic. Both have been available since the mid-90's.

Info Select for the Palm Organizer provides bi-directional synchronization between Info Select databases on a Windows computer system and Info Select databases on Palm PDA's.