Get More from Your Meetings: Treat Your Notes Like the Documents They Are
Published: January 31, 2006
When we think of documents, most of us think of such things as letters, memos, and reports. But, the capabilities and demands of today's connected world mean that virtually anything we record, electronically or on paper, is a type of document.
So, what about your notes? You probably would not send an urgent letter by horseback messenger or crunch numbers using an abacus. But, do you still take notes on a legal pad or type them as a simple text file? Instead, treat your notes like the powerful documents they can be, and you might find that they start doing more of the work for you.
This article will show you how to optimize your notes as effective reference and collaboration tools, in order to get more from your meetings, classes, and even those solo brainstorming sessions.
Note The examples in this article use Microsoft Office OneNote 2003. Learn more about OneNote 2007.
On This Page
Keep your own meeting minutes without learning shorthand
Your meeting notes are incomplete. Something important was said that you forgot to write down. It happens to everyone. But, how do you reconstruct the missing information? Actually, there is no need.
| • | The task: You need to get the details of something important that you neglected to write down during a meeting, conference, or class. |
| • | The challenge: Trying to reconstruct the missing information from the notes you took, or from your colleagues' notes, will take too much time and may not provide the answer. |
| • | The solution: Use the audio recording feature in Microsoft Office OneNote to record meetings, conferences, and classes in real time, and then play back exactly what was said at precisely the time you took any given note. |
Note Before recording audio, it is always a good idea to let those present know that they will be recorded.
How to get it done:
1. | On the Tools menu, point to Audio and Video Recording, and then click Record audio only. Audio recording will start immediately. A date and time stamp, similar to the one shown below, will appear at your insertion point when recording begins. |
2. | On the Audio and Video Recording toolbar that appears, you can pause or stop recording, start a new recording, and playback your audio recording as shown here. |
3. | To play back your recording, start by pointing to the note for which you want to hear related audio. |
4. | An audio icon  will appear to the left of the active line of text (or inked note). Just click the icon to hear what was being said at the time you took that note. |
Organize your notes for follow-up, without any extra time or effort
There were four items you needed to follow-up on from last week's meeting. No problem, except that there have been six meetings since then, so the notes you took about those four items could be anywhere.
How can you create a task list directly from your notes? You might be amazed at just how easy it can be.
| • | The task: You need to compile a task list from meeting notes. |
| • | The challenge: Notes for each meeting are on different pages—maybe in different files—and you do not have enough time to sift through and compile it all. |
| • | The solution: Use the Note Flags feature in OneNote to create an automatic, dynamic task list for any or all of your projects. |
You can flag items that require follow-up, things you need to remember, questions you have, or any of several other categories of flags, including those you create. Then, get a categorized summary of all the flags in your notebook or in any section you specify, instantly, at any time.
How to get it done:
1. | Click in (or select) the note you want to flag. |
2. | On the Format menu, point to Note Flag, and then click to apply the flag you need. The flag will appear to the left of your selected note. Flags that apply highlighting will highlight the entire paragraph.  In addition to being able to create flags for important items, notice that you can also customize your Note Flags or even create a Microsoft Office Outlook task from a selected note.  Sample notes with To Do and Question flags applied. Tip Note flags can also be accessed from the Standard toolbar or the Note Flags toolbar. |
3. | When you want to view flagged notes throughout your notebook, within a single section or page, or even view flags by when the related notes were taken, on the View menu click Note Flags Summary. The Note Flags Summary task pane will open, showing all of your flagged notes. The text associated with each flag shown in the summary pane is hyperlinked, so that you can quickly go to any flag in order to read related notes.  The Note Flags Summary task pane. |
Access and compile the notes you need in no time
You need to find a date, a name, or some project details that you wrote down at some point. But there have been dozens of meetings and even more conference calls on the topic since the project began, so those notes could be anywhere.
Perhaps, in a perfect world, you could just click a button to automatically see every related note without digging through notebooks and reading through files. Well, the world just got a bit more perfect.
| • | The task: Find an important note that could have been taken at any time. |
| • | The challenge: The note you need might have been taken in any of a dozen meetings and could be anywhere. |
| • | The solution: Use the OneNote search feature to provide an automatic list and links to every related note throughout your notebook, categorized as you need it. |
How to get it done:
1. | To use the Search feature, just type the text you want to search for in the Search box at the top-right of the OneNote page (directly above the page tabs for the active section). Then, click the green arrow to search. Notice that you can click the drop-down arrow beside that green arrow to select a portion of your notebook to search, as shown in the image below.  OneNote search options. The text "Lucerne" shown in this example is what will be searched for when you click the green arrow. |
2. | When the search is complete, the search box shown in the preceding image will turn yellow and provide additional options, as you see here. You can scroll through the results, or click View List to instantly see a Page List summary of all results and that is organized and has options similar to the Note Flags Summary task pane shown earlier.  The Page List task pane displaying results of a search. Note that all excerpts shown in these results are hyperlinked to the original note location. |
Turn your notes into a document that keeps on working
If you are like most people, you often takes notes about information you might need again in the future, or that you may want to share with others. When you take advantage of features like note flags, search, and audio recording in OneNote, your notes are easily organized and easy to access at any time. But, they can be even more than that as well. Consider two examples:
| • | Create a team notebook: When you work with colleagues on a project, consider creating a team notebook saved to a shared workspace, where everyone can easily access and add to the same note section. Get more information about Shared Workspaces or learn about using OneNote shared sessions to create a team diary. |
| • | Deliver a dynamic report: When delivering a report to others within your organization, take a moment to think about what program will be the best for your particular document. If you need a beautiful finished document with a great deal of formatted text, tables, and graphics—Microsoft Office Word is certainly the best home for that document. But, when you need a document that will become an active resource for the recipient (such as a report of research findings), consider delivering that report in OneNote. With your document in OneNote, you can easily organize your content into named pages for easy access. You can also add Note Flags for key points that the recipient can view at-a-glance in the Note Flags Summary task pane. And, keep in mind that the recipient can easily search any term in OneNote for a Page List that shows hyperlinked excerpts of all relevant results throughout your document. To learn about a variety of ways for using OneNote documents in your business, view a OneNote webcast. |
This article has shared just a few key tips for creating powerful documents from your notes. For more help and information on additional features for adding power to your notes, check out the OneNote home page on Office Online.
 | Stephanie Krieger
Stephanie Krieger is a Microsoft Office System MVP as well as author of the books Advanced Microsoft Office Documents 2007 Edition Inside Out (February 2007) and Microsoft Office Document Designer. As a professional document consultant, she has helped many global companies develop enterprise solutions for Microsoft Office and taught numerous professionals to build great documents by understanding how the Office programs “think.” Stephanie writes regularly for several Microsoft Web pages and frequently delivers Microsoft webcasts. Visit her blog, arouet.net, for Microsoft Office tips as well as information about new and upcoming publications and webcasts.
|
