Get more from the notes you take every day and everywhere

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 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 making an audio recording, it is always a good idea to let those present know that they will be recorded.

How to get it done:

1. Click the location on the page where you want to place the recording—for example, beside a paragraph or photo that you are commenting on.

2. On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Record button, and then click either Record Audio Only or Record Video.

   A time stamp is placed on the page.

3. Start recording your audio notes or video notes.

4. To finish the recording, click Stop  on the Audio and Video Recording toolbar.

   

   To display the Audio and Video Recording toolbar, click the View menu, point to Toolbars, and then click Audio and Video Recording.

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 them all.

• The solution: Use the note tags feature in OneNote to create an automatic, dynamic task list for any or all of your projects.

You can tag items that require follow-up, things you need to remember, questions you have, or any of several other categories of tags, including those you create. You can then get a categorized summary of all of the tags in your notebook or in any section you specify, instantly, at any time.

How to get it done:

1. Place the pointer in the paragraph that you want to tag.

2. On the Standard toolbar, click the arrow next to the Tag button, and then click the note tag you want. For example, to attach a check box to something that you want to follow up on, click  To Do.

   

   
   

   After you add tags to your notes, you can search your notes for tagged items, and you can group tagged items together according to tag name.

   In addition to creating tags for important items, notice that you can also customize your note tags or even create a Microsoft Office Outlook task from a selected note.

   

   Sample notes with To Do and Question tags applied.

3. To view tagged notes throughout your notebook, on the View menu, click All Tagged Notes.

   The Tags Summary task pane opens, showing all of your tagged notes. The text associated with each tag shown in the summary pane is hyperlinked, so that you can quickly go to any tag in order to read related notes.

   

   The Tags 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 that you want to search for in the Search box at the top-right of the OneNote page, and then press ENTER.

   To select a portion of your notebook to search, you can click the arrow in the Search box.

   
   

2. When the search is complete, the Search box turns yellow and provides additional options, as shown below.

   

   You can scroll through the results, or click View List to instantly see a Page List summary of all results. The Page List summary is organized and has options similar to the Tags 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.