Workflow: Using OneNote as a Task Manager

One of the nice things about using OneNote as a task manager is the ease of being able to manipulate the information that you're putting into your task list. You can’t do that on paper!

I begin by selling up the section as a month/year heading. For example June 2023 would be my sectional heading. I then create separate pages for each day of the week labeling each page in the following way to make it easier for me to work with: 20230610 Saturday Task List.

I also create a floating page for Monthly Projects that I move with my current day page to keep the two together. I use the Monthly Projects for a reminder of ongoing things that I need to deal with that I can pull into a Day Task List as I work on them.

I keep a couple of other informational pages with the Monthly Project Sheet for quick referencing as well. It makes it easier for me to answer questions as they arise by keeping those listing easily accessible.

Since I create anywhere from 28 to 31 pages for the days in the month it is easier to create the first seven days and copy them as a group and adjust the information as needed once they are pasted back into the monthly section to create all the pages that I need. I also change the date on each page to match the date of the page. (Just the quirkiness in me)

This whole process only takes about 10 minutes to complete. A typical page layout is shown below.

I typically work on my task list either the night before or in the morning when I start my day. It usually entails me bringing any unfinished tasks from the previous day over to be worked on. I add on any new tasks that may have come in via email or Teams communications. I also receive task functions from workflow notifications that I have created in our ticketing system to be included in the list. I then slide the task up and down list to place them in the order in which I want to attack the list. I will use tabbing to keep subtasks underneath a major heading to keep a project together (as you see in the example above). I use the check box function to mark off when the task is completed on the list.

What are the benefits of doing this in OneNote? There are several. First, because of the freeform nature of the application it can bend to my needs on a daily basis. Second, Search Notebooks allows a word search though all of your notebooks through one search bar. Third, Organization, being able to manipulate the data from day to day and within a day to reorder information and change it makes for a quick and easy control of the data that you are working with.

Let me know if this type of article is one that you would like to see more of.

Microsoft Teams Wiki is no longer supported!

Microsoft announced in January 2023 that it would be retiring the Teams wiki in February 2023. The decision to retire the Teams wiki was made due to its low usage and the fact that it was not as feature-rich as OneNote. Users who have created wikis in Teams will be able to export their content to OneNote notebooks before the retirement date. After the retirement date, users will no longer be able to create new wikis in Teams, but they will still be able to access and edit existing wikis.

Here are the key dates related to the retirement of the Teams wiki:

• Mid-August 2022: The Teams wiki channel tab will no longer be configured automatically during the creation of new standard channels.
• February 2023: The Teams wiki will be retired.
• January 2024: The Teams wiki will be completely removed from the platform.

If you are using the Teams wiki, we recommend that you export your content to OneNote notebooks before the retirement date. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Open the Teams wiki that you want to export.
2. Click the More button (three dots) in the upper-right corner of the page.
3. Select Export to OneNote.
4. Select the OneNote notebook where you want to export the content.
5. Click Export.

Once you have exported your content to OneNote, you can continue to edit it there. You will also be able to access it from any device that has OneNote installed.

Boox Note 2 Plus-New Morning Routine

I had stopped bringing home my notebook quite a while ago so accessing information before leaving the house to go to the office had become very cumbersome. Now with my new Boox Note 2 Plus, I have been able to reestablish some of the routines that used to do when I had a working tablet computer in my hands.

I still like the android access to Outlook on my phone better than the town with even though they are very similar. Having color is that of just a black-and-white image is positive in this case. It’s also easier to differentiate what I’ve read an email not on the phone compared to reading it on the Note 2 Plus.

As I stated in an earlier article my primary notetaking application has become the Office 365 OneNote application. My main use for the OneNote application is daily task management and uses it throughout the day to keep track of what I need to do as well as what I have done. This makes it a very easy method for documenting things that I need to enter our ticketing program to support our customers. In conjunction with my workstation running the OneNote application I can easily move a task from one day to another as needed. I come here second because I will take any requests that come in through email and add them to my task list for the day at this time.

I like reading the newspaper digitally rather than the actual paper newspaper that my wife gets so I scan the paper for any new and interesting topics I need to be aware of in local, state, national and of course sports.

The last thing that I access is a program that consolidates my RSS feeds into a quick listing that I can grab for later reading. The program I use is called Feedly. And I capture those articles I want to read at a later time with a program called GetPocket. The thing I like about GetPocket is that it strips out all the advertising from the webpages makes it much easier to read. I can then share that information if I need to with other people through social media or emailing them the link to the article itself.

And that’s my daily routine that is changed because of this new device.

OneNote's August update is here with a load of new features to try

I’m a big OneNote fan so I am always looking for new things that I can do with this application. Here is the new August additions:

• Text to Math: Use your keyboard to type an equation as text in OneNote, and use Math to solve it or draw a graph.
• Smart Lookup: Get definitions, wiki articles, and top related searches from the web without leaving OneNote
• Insert online pictures: Use Bing's Image Search to safely insert photos and images without ever having to leave OneNote.
• Tables of all shapes and sizes: One cell or many? Choose the number of rows and columns you need to organize your content. Once you've got a table, you can add or delete rows or columns, add table shading, or sort your content.
• More highlight colors: Yellow isn't the only color in the rainbow. Now you can highlight with blue, green, red, and more.
• Zoom in, zoom out: Use the new Page Width option on the View tab to zoom out to see all the notes on your page, or zoom in to focus on just what you need.

The August update version number is 17.841.5771 to have all of these new features.

OneNote’s new enhancements helps to keep your OneNote experience the same across all the platforms you use it on.

I always love to use applications that are available on all of the devices that I use. OneNote is one of those applications that I rely on ever since it jumped a head of Evernote a few years ago. So here is quick list of the changes that you should see:

• OneNote Reimagined: It's easier than ever to organize your notes with an improved layout. All of your notebooks, sections, and pages can be found in columns on the side of the app, efficiently navigable with screen readers, keyboards and more.
• Resolve page conflicts: Page conflicts sometimes happen in shared notebooks. We've made it easier to find and resolve the differences. Pages with conflicts will be marked with a triangle icon.
• Your pages, your way: Page previews provide a glimpse of what's in your notes by showing the first few words of text on the page, and a thumbnail of any pictures.
• Hide subpages: Create more room in your page list by collapsing your subpages. Select one or more pages, and from the right-click menu, choose Make Subpage.
• Find text on a page: Use Ctrl+F to quickly search for a specific word or phrase on the current page.
• You're the expert with Tell Me: Click the light bulb in the upper right corner of the app window, and simply type what you want to do in OneNote using your own words. Tell Me will guide you through the process as well as offer additional resources such as Help or Smart Lookup.
• See what's changed: When someone else changes content in your shared notebook, we'll make the page or section name bold so you know.
• Nickname your notebook: Add a nickname to your notebook to make it more personal and easier to find.
• Change the notebook color: Red for work, blue for personal? Change the color of your notebooks to keep things organized.

Are you ready for Evernnote Plan changes

By looking at how bright this image is it kind of tells you that Evernote is hesitant and letting you know exactly what their plans are and letting you keep able to actually read what it is that are your options. The biggest thing that struck me is that with the basic plan you can only sync across two devices. Very few of us in this day of age have only two devices that they're working with but I'm sure there are some of you out there that are falling into this category. So, Evernote has fallen into the category of giving you a taste of their product with the free plan to move you into their pay for plans to make it actually functional.

While I don't bemoan the fact that they are trying to become viable, I can't help but be glad that I long ago moved over to using Microsoft's OneNote. OneNote gives me all the integrations with the rest of Microsoft's products and operating systems and allows me to share the information across as many devices as I care to. While in theory OneNote is still a paid for product it does come with every one of Microsoft Office suites. LEARN MORE ABOUT BASIC

Granted that $34.99 per year for the plus package and $69.99 per year for the premium package really isn't that expensive for what you're getting. But the basic package you really don't get much of anything. If you buy into the plus package at $34.99 per year then you are not limited to the number of devices that you can use the program on. You get 1 GB of storage capacity and you can access your notebooks without being online, forward emails into Evernote and you get customer support but only through email communication. LEARN MORE ABOUT PLUS

The premium package for $69.99 per year, takes you up to 10 GB of storage, adds customer support through live chat, allows you to search for text in PDF's, search for text in attached office documents, allows you to imitate PDFs, gives you the ability to scan and digitize business cards, provides the opportunity for presenting your notes, gives you an audit trail allowing you to browse the history of your notes and does a cross referencing so that you can see related notes and content. LEARN MORE ABOUT PREMIUM

So if you want a closer look at the pricing listed below click here and it will take you to Evernote's pricing page. For me, I am going to be sticking with Microsoft's OneNote program.

Lenovo is going to deliver on the Microsoft Courier design

This Microsoft CONCEPT device really grabbed my attention a quite a few years ago and I was really disappointed when it didn’t come to fruition. The article from Arstechnica describes the new Yoga Book in great detail and it seems to have everything that the original device promised. We’ll see in October when it is finally released. Do I want one? I don’t know now since I have gotten my hands on the Microsoft Surfacebook. I am truly in love with that device but having two screens on the same device could possibly create some interesting capabilities.

Microsoft confirms, kills Courier in one fell swoop – Engadget Journal Entry by Bob Appleby on May 5, 2010 - It is only right to report the demise of the Courier as since earlier this year I talked about how exciting this product concept was for me and several of my coworkers. In fact we were so enthralled with it we featured its video on the front page of our website for awhile. Darn it Microsoft, this is ...

Microsoft’s Courier takes some of the wind out of the iPad’s delivery announcement Journal Entry by Bob Appleby on March 7, 2010 - Friday was a very interesting day because of Microsoft Courier Tablet leak that occurred simultaneously with Apple’s announcement of the iPad’s release date. There has been a lot of hype surrounding iPad and how it is going to be super hit for Apple like the iPhone and iPod products have ...

Gizmodo Presentation on new Microsoft Tablet Journal Entry by Bob Appleby on September 28, 2009 - Not “Real” product yet, here is another prototype product showing a new design type that is using a hinged dual screen system. I would be interested in looking at one to see how it works, but I am slightly skeptical about the usability, and ruggedness of such a product. Microsoft’s product has even ...

OneNote July Updates

I love OneNote and it has become a central point of my daily information collection and distribution medium. Combine it with Office 365 and SharePoint file access on the internet and you have a product that will provide you a wonderful tool to capture your ideas and notes.

The earlier versions of OneNote when compared to the ability of products like EverNote was a little lacking. If you haven’t tried it out recently you really should. It is nothing like what it was a few years ago. Whether you are a school student, office worker or retired, this product is a winner.

In this article from blogs.office.com, they posted some of the new July updates to the OneNote program. The three main areas that have been added to include Inking, Clipping and Notifications. Take a look!

Stupid SurfaceBook Issue

Sometimes the simplest solution to a problem can escape you completely. One of the SurfaceBook Pen’s neat features is its ability to launch the OneNote App and initiate screen captures in OneNote. I was doing some adjustments turning off functions in the SurfaceBook to conserve battery life. However, I noticed that when I clicked the top button on the pen it no longer launched OneNote. I am sure you are all instantly knowing what I did but if you don’t, take a quick look at whether you have turned off the Bluetooth receiver. I’m sure you can guess that the pen communicates with the tablet through a Bluetooth connection. Silly me.

How to keep up productivity with cloud computing.

While the article that I would appoint you to is actually “How to keep up productivity when freelancing, with cloud computing", I think we can all take bits and pieces of this and apply them to our daily work life as well. You don't have to be a freelance worker to see some of the benefits that you would have from leveraging cloud computing components. I think this is a great article to take note of to see how many of the new millennial members of our society probably be working in the future. They are more attuned to using the devices to be connected to each other and it is not a far reach make as part of their work life as well. This is a great lesson on how to be able to be working from anywhere, anytime that suits you. Something as I get older is part of my wish list. I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on this.

New updates make OneNote even more powerful

I find myself using OneNote all of the time not only in the office but outside of the office as well for so many things. It has become the go to application for me to collect some thoughts, take notes while I’m on the phone, and keep up on meeting topics for our office. With recent updates to the program, there are even more things you can do with it. Some of the new features follow:

Users can paste a video link into their OneNote note, and they'll see a thumbnail of that video and have the option to play it. This will work in OneNote for Windows 10, Mac or iOS, and users can paste video links from YouTube, Vimeo, Vine and Sway.

In OneNote for Windows, users will be able to sign in using their Office 365 organization ID.

In OneNote for the Windows Phone, users can now speak their notes, as there's a new audio recording feature.

In OneNote for iOS, users can rearrange audio recordings, images, text and shapes by touching and dragging. They can also use a newly-debuted lasso tool to select items for grouping and rearranging. Finally, they now have the ability to insert multiple photos on a page at once.

In OneNote Online, users will be able to use Bing for Smart Lookup -- i.e. they'll be able to find related notes by selecting a note's contents and selecting an option in the right-click menu. The ability to find related items -- and act on them accordingly -- will be huge for people who are compiling and acting on research.

And for academic users, they'll have the ability to sort their stacks of notebooks by "your personal notebooks, notebooks that others have shared with you and OneNote Class Notebooks you belong to."

You can read the full text of the OneNote team's announcement here.

Surface Book-OneNote-Handwriting-Text

I have been continuing to work with my Surface Book and finding new things that I can do with the pen or other applications in Windows 10 that are really quite amazing. I have been working between the OneNote App and the Desktop OneNote Program to see what the differences are and how to work around some of the limitations I have found in the OneNote App. If you take a quick look at it you don’t have anywhere near the options but the big ot ne that I see missing is the ability to transform handwriting to text. This is something that the OneNote Desktop Program does very well and is missing from the App. Not a problem though. If after you have done all your handwriting in the OneNote App when you are at a meeting or seminar or wherever, all you need to do is jump to the desktop program and go to the draw tab while on the page with you handwritten text and choose the function to Ink to Text. It works like a champ

Office 15 peeked out behind the curtains…

Microsoft has started seeding its Office 15 technical preview to a select few earlier this year to get it ready for the public. Expect to see more of Metro Style interface, this should satisfy those Office detractors that have said that the ribbon bar is too cluttered. The cleaner interface and touch mode will make it easier to use on tablet devices as it is on the desktop.

Word15 has received several improvements. Microsoft is focusing on the “experience” of reading  and writing. The new Read Mode removes control and menu items to limit the amount of distractions on the screen. The text will be reformatted on the screen as you enter into the Read Mode. There is a new Resume Reading function that allows you to bookmark the current position so that when you resume reading the document you will be placed back into the last position you were reading from.

Two new features allow you view information in a more dynamic way. Object Zoom allows you to double click on an image that will then zoom into full screen mode. This is great for pictures of table data, screen grabs or your favorite pictures that have been placed in the document. Expand and Collapse is a tool that allows you to expand and collapse paragraphs of text underneath a heading. This allows you to start with a shorter document that can be expanded to handle more text detail.

Document collaboration has ben improved as well. It is easier to Track Changes, create and read Reply Comments made to specific areas of text. There is now a localized password function that allows you to make changes and lock them down with password protection. Present Online allows users to share documents with others through a browser window.

There is better PDF document handling built into this version as well. Word 15 will allow you to open a PDF document and have the document reflow on the screen to fit automatically just as if it were a native Word document. Inserting and view videos has become easier as well with new functions allow easy insertion of video and pictures from Faceboo, Flickr and other services.

Not surprisingly with the new Metro Style Interface, Word 15 allows users to more easily navigate through documents through the Touch Mode interface. This shows Microsoft’s focus with Windows 8 and tablet technology. It is going to be interesting to see all of these new touch centric features working together on Windows 8 based tablets later this year.

Excel 15 updates include better/simpler methods for visualizing large data sets that you are working with. A  new Quick Analysis Lens feature lets Excel 15 users quickly access ways to visually represent data, and Recommended Charts and PivotTables helps surface the best way to visualize certain information based on data patterns. Flash Fill, a new feature to Excel 15, will also simplify the reformatting and rearrangement of data in an Excel spreadsheet. Excel 15′s Touch Mode feature is designed to let users browse through charts, graphs, and tables on tablet devices with their fingers and hands.

There are also some new chart formatting control features that use an interactive interface to fine tune charts quickly. Chart animations will help you to present your data in a dynamic display that will show changes as your data points are added or existing numbers are adjusted.

A new Excel Start Experience will provide access to a collection of professionally designed templates, including ones for budgets, calendars, forms and reports.

PowerPoint 15 updates include a big visual change. Microsoft is changing the default aspect ratio to a 16:9 display format with the thought of creating a professional-looking design with cinematic appeal. This complement most wide screen displays that are being used on your PC’s, Notebooks and Projectors today.

The new Start Experience is also present in PowerPoint 15, providing quick access to favorite files, professionally designed templates, and most recently-viewed presentations. A new chart engine access feature lets PowerPoint 15 users lift charts from Excel 15 worksheets and put them into slides without disrupting the existing formatting of a presentation.

Touch has been a big focus in this new version as well and the new features are designed to allow presenters to move through slides using a touch screen or tablet PC. PowerPoint 15 also features the same Resume Reading feature that has been added to Word 15 with automatic bookmarking the last position in your PowerPoint slide deck.

Outlook 15 hasn’t been left out either. A new peeks feature will let users see their schedule, view details about people they are emailing, and review tasks all within the same display. A new Weather Bar feature will also let users check the weather before accepting meeting invites or planning new meetings.

Inline replies has also been added to Outlook 15, letting users reply to an email in one-click. Microsoft has also made some improvements to its multiple email account support in Outlook 15, allowing users to view, create, and respond to all email accounts in one place, including Hotmail and other third-party web mail providers.

Animations in Outlook 15 have been improved to quickly move between email, calendar and tasks. The Metro Style interface takes up less space to provide more real estate for the presented information. Power users will be happier with the Context sensitive commands to provide simple, visible, on-click commands to help power users stay on top of their email flow.

OneNote 15 has also received the Metro Style Interface update. Auto-updating file views will let OneNote 15 users see content previews from embedded Excel and Visio files and any content updates that have been made in the original files.

Table support has been improved, allowing you to sort, add headers, and convert a OneNote table into an attached spreadsheet. This will bring improved calculation capabilities within your OneNote document.

The Touch Mode feature of OneNote 15 lets tablet users take advantage of their fingers and hands to move through pages and notes without a keyboard.

OneNote 15 also includes the new Resume Reading feature found in Word and PowerPoint 15, automatically saving the last position in a notebook so OneNote users can pick up right where they left off, even on a different PC or tablet.

Conclusion: I am looking forward to spending time with this product later this year when it comes out for general preview. The features that I have mentioned above are only some of the planned updates to the Office Products and I am sure there will be more touch and collaboration functionality as Windows 8 is finally released as well. Expect the release some time this summer and probably a RTM before the end of the year.

Evernote vs. OneNote

And the battle goes on. There have been some recent updates to both of these programs that have prompted me to take another look to see which one is better suited for what I need.

Evernote’s general capabilities are still not as rich on the PC/Desktop side as they are in OneNote but it still has a better overall feel and function between all of the different devices that you can bring it up on. I have listed a table below on some of the major features and how each product rates in respect to each other.

Feature	Evernote	OneNote
Notebook –this feature allows you to group notes together to make them easier to access	Two Level-You can create a master Group and then have notebook containers listed within the master Group or container.	On the surface it appears that you only have two levels here as well however, you may have as many Notebooks that you want. The second level is called a section in OneNote but there are two types of sections that you can create, the first is a Section Group which can create one or more Sections or more Section Groups. A Section then is what actually is the container for your note pages.
Free Form Entries	You don’t have this with Evernote	You can place your entries anywhere you wish on the note. I really like this feature and I miss it with Evernote.
Text Style	The basics are here but they are very limited.	A much richer choice of controls to enhance your text styles. You can create a much richer end product here.
Web Versions	Very similar whether you use the Web Interface or the Desktop Interface.	The Web interface is poor at best not only to the desktop version but also to what Evernote provides. This is the one feature that is a tipping point for me to continue using Evernote as my primary note taking application.
iPad App	Again, this is very similar to the both the Web and Desktop Apps. This makes it much simpler to move from one device to another.	Ugh! The newly released app is ten time better than it was but it still is a poor cousin to anything else. Still not good enough. Evernote wins here as well.
Application Interfaces	Evernote is very strong when it comes to integrating on the iPad with other applications. It should since this is the world that it has mostly evolved in. More and more secondary apps that I use have tie ins to not only Evernote but also Dropbox that these features keep me coming back.	OneNote has very strong tie ins with other Office Applications that I use a lot. This makes it very hard for me to stop using it but in reality, other than the task management associated with Outlook many of the other features that I want can also be found in Evernote.

So, for me I still lean towards Evernote as my primary note program but I still find myself jumping into OneNote when I need that extra formatting or connection to Outlook.

Let me know your thoughts!

Speaking of Evernote, Version 3.4 New Features

I am a active user of both Microsoft’s OneNote program and also the cloud based EverNote program. Why EverNote? Well, we have to look how I work to lead into the why and my need to document my research and meeting notes to be accessible on every device that I possibly can have it on. So on my PC’s I primarily use OneNote to share this information but I don’t have OneNote access to my phone or iPad. Here is where my EverNote account comes into play. Because it is cloud based, it is available to every device that I own that has Internet access. So whatever I put up in this area is available to me where ever I happen to be. Great addition to my productivity. Anyway, EverNote has come out with a new version that has added this list of new features. But on e of the things that really interests me the most is the growth in side applications that are taking advantage of this wonderful application.

New Additions in EverNote 3.4:

• Select multiple images from your camera roll at once and add them to a single note or make multiple snapshot notes
• Audio note recording limit increased to 90 minutes, great for lectures and interviews
• Audio recordings can now be played, paused and replayed from within the note
• Audio note playback can be controlled via the dock player, headphones or other external controls
• Send PDFs and text from Safari and Mail directly into Evernote via the “Open In” option
• 3rd party developers can configure their apps to send PDFs, images and audio into Evernote
• Print notes directly from Evernote to a network printer

The updates to Evernote are excellent and elevate the service back to the top of note-taking apps if you feel it had slipped at all.  If you don’t have Evernote for your iOS device(s) you can pick it up here and get to  taking notes.

How to Stay Connected

I talked a little bit about how I pick the devices that I use, in this post I want to talk about the what I am using to accomplish this. First, let’s go down the list of devices that I use both for the office and my own entertainment. At the office I have an i7 Workstation with dual 19 inch monitors in the traditional square or 4:3 format. At home my primary system is again an i7 but I am using a 32 inch TV/Monitor as my secondary monitor and a 22 inch widescreen for my primary screen. I also have three mobile devices, an 10.1 inch Acer NetBook, an iPhone 3gs, and my newest acquisition an Apple iPad.

Click to read more ...

Initial Impressions of Office 2010

I am starting a list of the the things I love and hate about the new release Office that is coming out and even though I know that I am working with Beta version, most of the product seems to be working fine with just a few quirks I have to live with. There are some integration issues with some of the products I for use daily basis, but I believe that these will be worked out very quickly once the final release arrives.

Click to read more ...

Evernote, a great tool to give you access to your information anywhere you have an internet connection…

I have been a big fan of Microsoft’s OneNote application and it is still a central part of my daily data collection and storage for all of the research that I do. But the one thing that I miss with it is the ability to access it from wherever I am when I have Internet access.

This online software package has clients for Windows, MAC OS X, iPhone, IPOD Touch, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Sony Ericsson X1 and Windows Mobile. Just about anyway that you would touch the Internet, from your desktop or phone you  can create and view information that you want to store and share with this application.

If you hare aware what OneNote does, your will be able to understand the concept of Evernote which has been modeled after it. This software program is available as a free application and if you find yourself bumping the limitations of the free version you can upgrade to the premium version for only $5/month or $45/year for a yearly subscription. Evernote Premium gives you bigger upload capacity, supports more file types, and offers enhanced security. Plus, you get PDF searching, faster image recognition, and no ads. The following chart shows you a few of the benefits of the upgrade:

I am finding this an extremely useful application that provides me with the link that I’ve been missing to bring data to my iPhone as well as any desktop that I am currently using. Try out the free version to see if it has a place in your software arsenal. I think that it just might.

Evernote – finally a reason to use it.

I had talked about this program a while back and had likened it to a poor version of OneNote, a program I am sure that if you follow this blog you know I am a big fan of it. Evernote describes its program: “Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.”

There are clients for:

• Mac OS X Leopard
• Windows
• iPhone / iPod Touch
• BlackBerry
• Palm Pre
• Windows Mobile
• Web Clippers
• SanDisk U3

On the desktop you can create notes the contain both text and audio, find printed and handwritten text within images, Clip web content into notes, capture screen shots and synchronize your notes among all of your desktops and mobile devices. The last feature is what really caught my eye. When I saw that I had an iPhone client I finally found the connection that I was looking for to easily share information between my devices. Information anywhere is a big thing for me and this just one more spoke in the wheel to give it to me.

In the free version you have some file limitations that over the next few months I’ll see if it gives me any problems. They have two versions, free and premium. I have captured a screen shot below showing the differences between the two versions. The paid version costs $45/year or $5/ month if you are not sure that you want to commit to it.

How does this translate into real numbers we can associate with. Evernote has again done the math for us and here is a chart showing what these limitations might be with real types of data.

If you are using this to share textual information between devices the free version should be more than adequate. However, if you are capturing a lot of websites, pictures or audio notes than you may want to consider the Premium plan. In my case, I just want to be able to share data between my desktops and mobile easily and this seems like a great method to do so. I am still using OneNote to share the greater portion of info between my desktops, but I needed this one piece to tie in my iPhone and now I think that I have it. We’ll see.

To give you an idea of the text formatting capability on the web interface I have captured a screen shot below for you to look at. It has standard formatting functions including Bold, Italics, Underlining, Super and Subscripting, Left-Center-Right justifying, Strikeout, indent, Line Insertion, Line Numbering and Bullets, creating a hyperlink and clearing a hyperlink assignment, removing formatting and TODO Checkboxes. You can color your text, change fonts and size (these are limited but you have a small amount of flexibility).

When you are creating a note you have the ability to enter tags for the note to later group on, and to assign the note to a folder that you create that is called a notebook. Once you have assigned tags to your notes then you can list your grouped notes quickly by opening the tags group and showing all of the tags that you have entered. Click on the tag group you are interested in and just the tagged subgroup notes will be displayed. You are given several management tools for your tags as well such as creating new tags, renaming a tag, deleting a tag and removing the tag from all your notes that contain the tag.

You have several methods for getting notes into Evernote. You can clip information from a website, enter info from your desktop application, enter info from a web browser, email to a specified email address, or from your Mobile device. You can then sort your notes on the source of the notes, by the type of information the note contains (images, audio, PDF, Ink, Encrypted text, Attachments, To Do lists, unfinished To Do Lists and Finished To Do lists), when the notes were created and when they were last modified. All in all a wide variety of choices to get at your data and quickly focus on what you are looking for. I didn’t mean to leave out the fact that you can also type in a key word that will search all of your notes and quickly display those notes that contain the search word or characters that you entered.

Lastly, if you wish to create a notebook that you want to share data with others you have that capability as well. Drawbacks, not sure on the onset here that I see too many yet but I’ll get back to you on that.

How to Series – OneNote – Updating auto capture locations

Every month I update where my OneNote Captures will automatically default to when capturing a webpage or Outlook email. The following video will show you what I do each month so that I everything works just the way I like it too!

How To Series - OneNote Updating auto capture locations