Don’t you love it when you find money you didn’t even know you lost? Or getting into bed with newly cleaned sheets? Or when you sneeze and a stranger says, “Bless you?” Or when you’re being chased by zombies and suddenly find a hidden stash of guns and ammo? (See 1000awesomethings.com for more awesome things.)

    How about finding a very helpful application that’s already installed on your computer and for which you have already paid?

    For many of you, Microsoft OneNote is exactly that application. You don’t know what it is, but you already have it. OneNote is a part of the Microsoft Office Family of products for Windows and if it’s not already on your computer, you can download a trial or buy it for $100 from store.microsoft.com.

    Okay, so what is OneNote and why do I care? OneNote is a brain helper. It helps organize your thoughts. It helps capture and organize information from  a meeting, class, or seminar. I personally use it to outline my thoughts or break down more complicated projects into doable tasks.

    I’m not ashamed to say it, I’m a big Microsoft fan. They write good and sometimes great software. But even though I’m a fan I am utterly amazed that after twenty something years Microsoft Word still can’t make a numbered list or create an outline. I know it has those features. They just don’t work. In fact those features are among the most frustrating features in any software program on the market today. Maybe Word 2010 will finally be able to make a numbered list that doesn’t screw itself up.

    I think the OneNote people have some Apple Computer in them. OneNote just works. It seems to anticipate what you want to do and do it for you. It has amazing features and is extremely flexible. First, it does outlining very well and in many different formats (Roman numerals, traditional outline format, symbols, or create your own outline format).

    You can also use OneNote to record audio from a seminar or meeting while you take notes and the audio recording will be synchronized with your outline. If you capture five points in a forty-five minute seminar and click the third point in your outline, the audio moves forward to that point also. It’s amazing.

Use OneNote’s tagging feature to place a star by important items or a question mark by items you have questions about or insert a functioning check box that you can click once the task is complete (another awesome thing–checking the box for a task completed). OneNote also enables you to search and group tasks (and any other tagged item) entire notebooks. For example, if you have a ten page outline with several questions, you can simply filter the questions and see them together in one list.

    OneNote also enables teams to collaborate on notes. Imagine one co-worker at a meeting on Dallas talking to manufacturing while you’re in St. Louis meeting with management from the same company. You can share the same notebook and see each others’ notes updated in near real-time. OneNote will synchronize the two sets of notes into a single page, if desired.

    So next time you find a twenty in your jeans after you pull them out of the dryer, remember OneNote and use it organize your brain. Technically yours.

   

    Bott Technology Solutions helps small to midsize businesses with computer technology needs. Greg may be reached via e-mail at gregbott@bottinc.com or at 601-207-0509.