Microsoft OneNote 4+

As a writer, one never knows when an idea strikes. When it does, OneNote is there to capture lightening in a jar. If you can write it, paste it, or record it, OneNote is a repository for inspiration of any sort. The features I find the most useful are the ease in categorizing ideas, accessing the files from anywhere, and meeting minute creation (more on that later.) Create your projects, insert sub-folders and then begin to add pages and pages of materials. I have a “binder” for my writing and a “folder" for each project. In each folder I add pages (chapters) and have a few pages for notes on relative subjects. The ability to return to my writing cave and have all that info at my fingertips is a Godsend - infinately better than carrying a hardcopy note book (although there is no feeling like pencil to paper) or finding that napkin you used to scribble the outline of the next Hemingway novel.

Then there is the creation of meeting minutes. If you have Outlook, go to the Home tab, then select Meeting Details. It will give you a listing of your scheduled meetings. Select your meeting and watch OneNote pull in the meeting details, including Subject, Date and Location, Attendees and the details listed in the messasge section of the invitie. I used this recently and the feedback from management was laudatory. Microsoft’s OneNote is a hidden gem worth discovering.

Great app. Takes some time to build up a workflow, but once you do it’s miles ahead of almost every other note taker. Only exception is Notability, which I think has a little bit better handwriting capability, but not nearly the organizational ability that OneNote has. If you want to be able to organize your notes into more than just one tier of folders, then you have to move to OneNote. The organization is way better than any of the other apps out there, and there’s way more support on the backend as this is synced through Microsoft’s OneDrive cloud, so you know that it has the support of a company that’s not going anywhere.

The only annoyance I have with it, and the reason it’s 4 stars and not 5, is that I have to “Open” all of my notebooks again on each device if I haven’t used OneNote on it for more than a few days. I don’t know if this is to simplify syncing issues between devices and save space on each device, but I would rather there was an option to keep notebooks on a device and keep them synced. That way if I want to start taking notes right away, I don’t have to keep throwing all of my impromptu notes into whichever notebook is the most synced and then move it later. I use this exclusively on iOS/MacOS devices, so maybe there’s some compatibility issue built in by Apple to handicap Microsoft’s apps just a little bit, or vice-a-versa.

After investigating many different solutions for my needs, One Note has worked the best for me. As a creative professional, I like the freedom to type wherever I want, as an organizational freak, I like being able to easily make checklists and keep things accessible through the notebooks, section tabs and pages. Love being able to drag and drop a spreadsheet, pdf, or other doc right into the page. Definitely saves paper in my office. I go to a production meetings often. The organizer types up the itenerary and notes, and emails the content to the participants, then prints out 20 copies of about 6 pages of stuff. I bypass the paper completely. copy the content of her docs, paste them in OneNote and use my laptop or ipad at the meeting exclusively. What is really great is when my ipad battery dies during a meeting, I can whip out my phone and pick up where I left off. I have had some issues where I have had to repeatedly log in to my MS account on the iPad, but that is the only aggravation. I advocate the use of OneNote to my coworkers. I have only scratched the surface of what you can do with it, but it works great for me. I would like to have the option of text alignment when using a ruled paper background. Keep improving. I’ll keep using it every day.