What is OneNote? Spend 4 min to find out!

LifeLog

Writing this video from rooftop restaurant in HCMC, Vietnam… amazing view of the bustling city. What is OneNote? Do you know the answer?

What is OneNote?

It is part of Office since 2003 . Till version 2007 it was a part of Office Professional edition. So many users never noticed it. But since Office 2010 it is part of standard Office.
Unfortunately, even today (Jan 2017) people don’t know What is OneNote.

OneNote joke

In every session I conduct, I always take an instant poll – how many of you use OneNote.

Usually only ONE hand goes up. Then I say “that is why Microsoft chose the brand name ONEnote!”

But trust me, after a short demo, everyone wants to use it immediately.  Amazing product – when you know it!

View this popular video

This video, created by me, was posted by MS New Zealand some time back. Now it has 150,000+ views. It is not a large number for YouTube popularity. But considering that OneNote is a fairly unknown product, it is a very encouraging sign.

Have a look and you will understand What is OneNote.
More importantly, you will think “why did I not know this earlier!”

This video was created for MS New Zealand in 2011. During those days, I was just learning the art of video creation. Therefore, the video is not as refined as I would want it to be. However, the content is very popular. 123,000+ views as on Jan 2017. It covers OneNote 2010. However all the features are still available.

Video Recap

1. OneNote is used for storing anything which is not yet a formal document
2. Use it for taking notes while studying, researching or during meetings
3. It integrates very well with Outlook. Action points noted in OneNote should be converted to Outlook Tasks.
4. Use OneNote tags to categorize your notes. Finding tags across notebooks is a great feature.
5. Do NOT create a single new notebook and stuff everything into it. Create as many empty notebooks as you need, based upon your work.

In the next article, I will discuss How to start using OneNote