Microsoft’s OneNote

Microsoft’s OneNote

 

If you’ve ever used Microsoft’s competitor program, Evernote, then you’re probably pretty familiar with the concept: cloud-based note storage, to put it simply.

With all cloud-based storage systems, none of the notes you write are stored on your device or PC whatsoever. In the event of your laptop being stolen out of your car, or losing your phone, you will always have a full back-up online.  Phew, no more worrying when your system is going to crash. You start out with a full 15GB of data, and when you’re talking about text-based documents. If you’re a monthly subscriber to Microsoft Office 365, then you get up to 1TB of storage. That’s an insane amount; you’ll never need more than that.

Getting Started With OneNote

OneNote is a spectacular tool, but when it comes to organization, it’s groundbreaking. We’re doing everything online nowadays, on PCs, phones or tablets; there’s a need to organize our thoughts, and we can do that in various programs. OneNote makes it extremely easy.

One of the most useful features is when you have multiple users on your Microsoft Office subscription, and they also have OneNote on their phone or tablet, you can constantly communicate with them via text-based data, without fumbling with your cell phone’s touch pad keyboard or calling them. It’s killing two birds with one stone; getting your work done, and informing your family or colleagues that share a subscription with you about what you’re working on. This is great for family vacation planning when your children want to add items to your food shopping list, and so much more.

It’s the half-brother of Microsoft Word, and brings with it many of the same features. It’s able to implement charts, tables and other bits of helpful media, but also organize through our next topic: notebooks.

Exceptional Organization Through Notebooks

Notebooks are like folders, and if you’re an Excel user, you’ll already be used to tabs having different bits of info, only this time, they’re along the top of the content, not the bottom. You can have your different notebooks along the left side of OneNote for easy access; here’s the cool thing: when you move content into OneNote, it’ll automatically go into your home folder. This is especially helpful for when you’re saving data or images from the internet to view later, because you don’t have to go in and select the folders within the folders within the folders—you’re just dropping them into your home folder so you can access it later.

You also get a search bar function similar to Word 2016, which allows you to search for a specific word, and find any file that hosts that word in the title. There’s also another section beneath that in the search results field for files that simply contain that word, so if you can’t remember what you called a file, but you know a phrase or a keyword that’s in it, you can better locate it.

On the right, you’re going to see a section for pages. You can absolutely utilize these no matter what you’re using OneNote for. These are your different pages within the same tab, and your tab is located within your specific notebook. It’s a very easy-to-understand system, and mountainously helpful on all of your projects.

Inserting Features

OneNote has been hailed by college students all around as their go-to when it comes to studying, and taking notes in class. You can use the insert features, much like you would find in Microsoft Excel, and it’s located right next to the home tab on the top of the program. Just note this: though similar to Excel, it does no include formulas, and most likely never will. That would potentially threaten Excel, and while they’re by the same company, it would be one less reason to subscribe to Microsoft Office.

If you input a table, you not only get a customized set of options to add or remove items from that table, including graphics and such, but you can also insert images and other forms of media, like you’d expect on Word. Really, we’ve got a hybrid here, between Word, Excel and any standard notepad-styled document.

Part of OneNote can be password protected. Part. You can’t throw a password lock on notebooks, but you can lock certain media and tabs.

Collaboration Tool

If you are looking for a great tool to collaborate with your team, try OneNote, simply look to the top-right corner of your screen when you’re in OneNote, and find the “Person” symbol with a plus sign over the torso. Then add an employee or colleague to your project, now your connected and will be able  to get things done faster as a collaboration than you would working on your own.

Overall, OneNote and Evernote go head-to-head in a lot of areas, and it’s up to you to decide what works best for your industry. However, if you’re already invested in your Microsoft Office plan, OneNote is already at your disposal with all the extra storage capabilities.

Until next time,

Megabite

Categorised in: Technology Information

This post was written by Karen