Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Microsoft OneNote: Handy, But Annoying

I've taken to using Microsoft OneNote to take notes...especially during the multiple training courses I've been taking during my ramp-up at work. It's very useful and pretty well put-together, but I've had some major annoyances that are impeding my productivity:

Screen Clips
Screen clips are essential in software. OneNote gives you a handy button to clip something from the last window you were in. You just press this button:

This leads to a screen where you can select the section of the page to clip...you select that section, and it magically inserts the clip into OneNote. Unfortunately, it includes extra whitespace and text on when the screen clipping was taken:


As far as I can tell, there's no way to get rid of this. It's frustrating. I've been Googling for the answer, but no dice so far.

Migrating and Organizing Notes
I've had reason to switch computers a few times lately. OneNote notebooks are kept in your user profile (My Documents >> OneNote Notebooks) by default, but migrating them with their structure isn't as simple as moving the files from one machine to another. OneNote seems to treat all migrated notebooks as new notebooks, instead of placing them within the Personal Notebook or the Work Notebook hierarchies. And short of buying Sharepoint, forget about storing them in a centralized repository like a SAN or NAS...

Make It a Hierarchy, Damnit
OneNote tries hard to give you tabs and buttons to organize your notebooks. Why not give people the familiar folder-based hierarchy?

I'll keep using OneNote, but damn...I'd like to find a way around these.

1 comment:

Raquel Hirai said...

I am not sure you do love Onenote, but thought it could be useful. Found this info on other blogs:

If you love Onenote, you should head over the to www.iheartonenote.com, the world's one and only community site for OneNote lovers everywhere. If you join between September 22 and September 29, 2009, you will automatically be entered to win a $200 amazon.com giftcard.

Perhaps could you participate and send your suggestions to the community?