Microsoft Office

From Michael Oldenburg’s Nota Bene:Lost your job? Let OneNote and Office help!

I’m going to start using this templete when applying for writing gigs and jobs.

With so many people losing their jobs recently, the Office Online team has gotten to work on a brand-new Career Center site to help Microsoft Office users with every step of their career or job search. As part of this effort, we’ve partnered with the experts over at Monster.com to make the whole process a snap. Like all of the resources on Office Online, the new job hunting tools are completely free, so be sure to see what’s available!

Once you begin mailing out dozens of job applications, your résumé, and your cover letters, keeping track of it all can be a daunting task. Fortunately, our new Career Center also offers theOneNote job application tracker. This template-based OneNote form can be added to any section in your OneNote notebook. It makes it much easier to keep track of the various job leads in your sight.

Using the template, you can keep track of the companies to which you’ve sent an application, résumé, and cover letter. You can also jot down which version of your résumé and references that you’ve sent out for specific jobs, and what the names and phone numbers of any company reps and head hunters are with whom you’ve been in contact. You can then use the job application tracker to follow up with each employer, follow up with thank-you notes, and remind yourself of upcoming interviews and phone calls.

Download and install the OneNote 2007 Job Tracker template

If you don’t yet have OneNote 2007, download and install the free trial version.
You can use and test-drive it for a full 60 days without any restriction or obligation.

Launch OneNote 2007 and then open the notebook section where you want to install the template.

Go to the download page and then click the Download button.
If prompted, follow any additional steps and instructions on your screen.

The template will automatically open on a new page in your current notebook section.
If that’s not where you want it, you can easily move the page to another notebook section.
Don’t like the template exactly as we’ve designed it? Watch a free video to learn how to customize templates in OneNote.

One of the things that is different about OneNote is that we are a folder based editor - not an individual file based editor. A good example of a file based editor would be notepad. It works with a single text file at a time. You open the TXT file, edit it, save it and move on to the next. I’m pretty sure the overwhelming majority of applications are like this. OneNote is different, though. While you can use OneNote to edit a single .ONE file at a time, we treat folders as a notebook. If you have multiple .ONE files in a folder, they each become sections in the notebook.

john guinn on MS Onenote problem:

He posted his question about what had happened over at our discussion groups. Here’s an excerpt:

A user wrote:

Somehow, somewhere, I dislocated the structure of my ON 2007 files. The result is that ON has converted previous ON notebooks and sections into section groups, and sections. Thus I now have one giant notebook in
the created folder MyDocs | OneNote Notebooks. It contains section groups which previously were separate ON files.
What should the main folder for ON notebooks be named. And how can I rearrange things to get back to the original group of separate notebooks.
–

“John Guin [msft] wrote…
It sounds like you right clicked the “OneNote Notebooks” folder in My Docs and selected to open it as a notebook. OneNote would treat that folder as the “parent” and all subfolders as section groups.
Here’s what I would do.
1. Ensure my backups are up to date.
2. In OneNote, right click and close all open notebooks.
3. Use Explorer to open the OneNote notebooks folder.
4. Navigate to the folders that hold the individual notebooks I want open, right click them and select to “Open as OneNote Notebook.”
Each notebook is named the name of the folder that holds it by default. You can override what the OneNote navigation bar shows as the name by right clicking the notebook in OneNote and selecting “Rename.” This will not change the name of the folder on the hard drive - it only changes what the UI shows. I do this frequently for notebooks that have long names to shorten them so I can see more notebooks at once.
John Guin

From the OneNote Self-help board:

I am using OneNote 2007 SP1 with Windows XP. When I am typing a note the
text will disappear at times and a conflict page will be created containing
the text I typed. I will re-type the deleted text and continue on; however,
the same process will happen again a minute or so later with yet another
conflict page created with the new text. How can I keep this from happening?
It appears it is related to OneNote trying to synchronize changes and the
conflict pages are there for me to resolve later on; however, this is very
frustrating.

I should point out that the software is installed locally and the OneNote
data files are stored locally. I am not sharing the OneNote files with
anyone…nor do I want to. I changed the Sync setting to “Work Offline,” but
this seems to have no affect. What am I doing wrong?

In addition, I frequently see an error message at the top of a section that
says “This section is corrupted. Click here to try to repair this section.”
Is this a related problem? I will often repair the section only to see it
become corrupted again later on. I never experienced these problems in prior
versions of OneNote. Help!!!!

Sounds like your section got corrupted somehow. Since repair doesn’t
seem to be working, I’d recommend copying all the content into a new
section and deleting the corrupt section once you have a copy of everything.
The conflict pages are likely a sideeffect of the corruption. Ideally,
you wouldn’t be seeing conflict pages at all in a single-user scenario.

From the cool new blog, I heart Onenote:

Ever wish there were some more great tips for using OneNote? Look no further, for the gang at i heart onenote have come to the rescue. Here are the top ten:

10. Ctrl “.” (period) to toggle bullets on and off. Tab to indent.

9. Ctrl-1 to triple-toggle ToDo checkbox (Todo|Done|nuthin). Customize the built-in tags and use Ctrl-1-9 to tag things, Ctrl-0 to remove tags. Don’t forget View/All tagged notes to query across all your notes and build summary pages pulling out quotes you liked, questions to follow up on, ToDos, etc.

8. Right-click on image (e.g. screen clipping), copy text from picture (also works great when searching for a screen clipping - Find (Ctrl-F) will find text inside your images!)

7. Using Live Mesh (mesh.com) to put notebooks in folders that are synced across my many machines

6. Win-N for a new “always on top” side note. Great for taking notes while reading other stuff like web pages, docs, PDFs.

5. Shared notebooks with my team (File/New/Notebook, select shared when the instructions ask you). anyone can edit at any time, even offline! Don’t forget to use features like ‘View/Pages I Haven’t Read’ and ‘View/Pages Changed Recently’. Also right click on anything to see who added it. Work disconnected if you like - your changes will sync and merge cleanly later. Offline/online, easy to use super capable group wiki!

4. Tab key after text to create tables on the fly. Type the first column heading, then Tab (Table magically appears!), next column heading, Tab and so on. Enter when finished the header row, keep going. Use Enter twice on an empty row to break out - never touch a mouse while taking notes!

3. I’m falling behind with my notes! Click “record audio” button to capture what people are saying so I can participate instead of take notes. Take the occasional one word note to indicate what was happening. Later click on those words to hear what we were saying. Great for brainstorming and interviews!

2. Flag OneNote items as Tasks to track in Outlook with Ctrl-Shift-1 through 5. The task is created in Outlook, and the done/not done status is kept in sync with OneNote.

1. Win-S to take a screen clipping and auto-file it in OneNote! Bonus: right click on the system tray OneNote icon, customize screen clipping to send only to clipboard to paste in other apps or OneNote as you like. (my all-time fave)

For the rest, click their link.

From Nota Bene: :Learn from a pro: Real-world draft management in OneNote 2007

Some of the best computer tips out there aren’t ever “in the manual,” so to speak. We search the Web to see if someone before us has solved a problem or found an easier, better, and faster way of doing something we want to do. More recently, the convergence of blogs, broadband, and high-quality video have made this a great experience. Whether someone has taken the time to document a step-by-step tutorial about how they use a program, or whether they shoot a quick video about it, the best ideas can come from watching someone else work — letting us peek over their shoulder while they complete a real-world task with the software they’ve chosen, and then learning from their technique and style.

On Microsoft’s Office Online Web site, we recently launched our new Podcast site, which houses a large variety of free videos for all things Office. You can watch these videos from your Web browser or download them to your Zune or your iPod for later viewing. If you like a particular channel or series, you can subscribe to it (via RSS or via the Zune or iPod marketplaces) and get notified whenever new episodes are available.

As part of our new podcasting efforts, I’m very pleased to announce today the premiere episode of “A Writer’s Guide to Microsoft Office” — a new podcast series written and hosted by my teammate (and former editor), Joannie Stangeland. In her first episode, Joannie shows us how she uses a variety of OneNote 2007 features to manage poetry drafts that she prepares for submission to publishers.

To view the video, clik the blue link above.

From Microsoft Offcie at Work blog: Your meeting notes are incomplete. Something important was said that you forgot to write down. It happens to everyone, but how do you reconstruct the missing information? Actually, there is no need.

• The task: You need to get the details of something important that you neglected to write down during a meeting, conference, or class.

• The challenge: Trying to reconstruct the missing information from the notes you took, or from your colleagues’ notes, will take too much time and may not provide the answer.

• The solution: Use the audio recording feature in Microsoft Office OneNote to record meetings, conferences, and classes in real time, and then play back exactly what was said at precisely the time you took any given note.

Note Before making an audio recording, it is always a good idea to let those present know that they will be recorded.

How to get it done:

1.
Click the location on the page where you want to place the recording—for example, beside a paragraph or photo that you are commenting on.

2.
On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Record button, and then click either Record Audio Only or Record Video.

A time stamp is placed on the page.

3.
Start recording your audio notes or video notes.

4.
To finish the recording, click Stop on the Audio and Video Recording toolbar.

To display the Audio and Video Recording toolbar, click the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Audio and Video Recording.

For MS OneNote

* Link between sections (OneNote 2007) I often have gems of phrasing in one section that I want to refer to in a totally different section. I could always copy the text, but it takes up space and probably interrupts the flow of what I’m going on about ad nauseam. Imagine: “If you want to see what I’m talking about, go to the X section and the Y page and look for the words …” No — that’s nuts. Instead, I create a link from one page to another. I open the notebook section containing the page that I want to link to, right-click the tab of the page in the margin, click Copy Hyperlink to this Page, and then paste the hyperlink wherever I want it to appear in my notes. Now my insightful mumblings are available wherever and whenever I need them.

* That is NOT my color, man! When you create a new section in OneNote, or when you start OneNote for the first time (the first time? Where ya been?), OneNote chooses a default color for you. Chances are it doesn’t suit you — it makes you look tired and washed out. Well, don’t just kvetch; change it! Right-click the section tab at the top of the page, point to Section Color, and then click the color that you want to apply. If you’re an ascetic, click None to remove coloring from a section entirely.

*Don’t burn your retinas with bad formatting If copying and pasting from a Web page to your notebook doesn’t retain the Web formatting, try capturing text in a screen clipping instead. On the Insert menu, click Screen Clipping, and then drag the pointer to create a rectangular selection around the content on your screen that you want to capture. A picture is worth a thousand words. Especially a picture of a thousand words.

Canvas for OneNote allows you to navigate and edit notebooks in a new way by providing a high-level canvas-view of all your content. he prototype lets you zoom and pan around; view and organize content in new ways; add new pages right where you want them; and even locate pages in a timeline view.

Discover the many ways that Canvas for OneNote can help you identify and find the content, pages, and sections you’re looking for.

See how adding, moving, and editing notebook pages and sections from a canvas view can help you get all your content right where you want it.

Watch how easy it can be to browse your notebook, organize content to fit the way you work, and find what you’re looking for using the Activity View and various visual cues.

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:4df5f112-f04a-490c-9d06-667126389298&#038;showPlaylist=true" target="_new" title="Demo Video">Video: Demo Video</a>

Requirements: Windows Vista and OneNote 2007.
Limitations:
Last updated: 02/25/2009

From the Office Labs blog:

Within Office Labs, we’ve been exploring alternate interactions with software that take advantage of the natural human capacity for spatial recognition in order to help users organize their digital belongings in much the same way that they organize their physical belongings. For example, pptPlex explored how presenting information could benefit from a canvas-based experience. Today we’re pleased to release Canvas for OneNote which explores how you can browse, organize, edit and create OneNote content using a canvas.

How does a canvas make things better? Think about your desk, with piles of papers on the corner and things in certain spaces. You have a lot of liberty to sort and arrange as you want. You know where certain things are, and you can go quickly and easily to those spaces to find them. Our gut feeling is that this canvas-like approach to organizing digital content is really promising, and with this prototype you can help us explore the truth of that feeling through your actual use, interactions, and work flow.

Canvas for OneNote was designed to allow OneNote users to navigate their notebooks more efficiently by using a high-level view of all of the documents, pictures, and anything else they’ve stored in their notebooks. Users will be able to see all their notebook pages and sections at a glance, and zoom into any content for which they want to see more detail or perform edits. It also enables users to organize sections and pages using spatial placement, easily browse and find content based on size and color, and add new sections or pages by simply double-clicking the canvas or using the toolbar. It also provides an Activity View to easily locate pages modified by date.

OneNote MSDN blog has these tips:

Tips:

For left-handed users, the page tabs and scroll bar can be displayed along the left side instead of the right, click Tools -> Options -> Display -> place a checkmark in ‘Page tabs appear on the left’ and ‘Vertical scroll bar appears on the left’. This makes it easier to navigate your pages when using a pen.
When a new page is created, the page tab’s name appears as “Untitled Page”. However, after you add a title to your page, the page tab adopts it as its new name. Even if you don’t explicitly give it a title, the page tab name will adopt the first few words of any text or ink that it sees on the page.
You can change a series of existing main pages into grouped pages by first selecting the range of pages, (this is done by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on each additional page) -> then right-click the selection -> choose Group Pages. This causes the first page in the selected range to become the main page and all subsequent pages in the selected range to become subpages.
You can also change all subpages within a group to be main pages by right-clicking the page group -> and selecting Ungroup Pages.
You can adjust the properties of a page by right-clicking the page tab -> and pressing Page Setup. This is where you can specify the paper size, margins, rule lines, and more. You can even set your page surface to be a certain color.
Pages come with a page title at the top. This is a special container that floats above the page surface and is reserved for text and ink only. All other content will be stored on the page surface. Immediately beneath the page title you will see the creation date and time. You can easily change the date and time by clicking on them. Once you do so a small control will appear to the side, click on it to select the desired date or time.

FEllow MOONies (MicrosOft OneNoteies), here’s part of an article from the OneNote and Education blog that has highlighted a study by a Finnish Educator.

Since it was launched in October 2003, the electronic notebook, OneNote, has been one of Microsoft’s best kept secrets.

Fortunately, more and more people now seem to be introduced to the program – fortunately, for OneNote is a very strong learning tool that may be completely personalized in accordance with to the users’ needs, not least their learning styles needs. The comprehensive tutorials that come with the program very instructively show its immense possibilities and flexibility, and in order for the users to make qualified choices among the many features, they would be well advised to use their learning styles. As the above table shows, quite a few learning styles elements are directly addressed in OneNote and the rest of them are indirectly addressed.

The Analytic and the Global Learners

The OneNote interface (and the interface of other MS Office programs as well) supports both analytic and global processors. Analytic learners are often not visual-picture oriented, and they should therefore stick to the text based dropdown menus and remove the icons. Globals, on the other hand, tend to be strongly visual picture learners and should wallow in toolbars with icons, even if this makes the working screen somewhat smaller.

Analytic learners can easily develop the very structure they need and prefer in order to build up knowledge. The flexible OneNote search feature prevents the analytic learners from getting lost in tiny details, and the use of hyperlinks between notebooks, sections, and subsections obviously has the same effect.