Untapped Power at Your Fingertips: Microsoft OneNote

While G Suite (Google’s collection of cloud computing apps) is growing in popularity, Microsoft Office has been a business software standard since the 1990s. And Microsoft is a monster. Not in a bad or scary way, but in the sense that it is massive. It has so many programs that integrate in so many ways, it can be difficult for any professional to fully explore—and take advantage of—them all. As your trusted technology partner, we’re here to help you get more out of the tools you already have in place.

Learn about the untapped power of Teams here. Learn about the untapped power of Planner here. Learn about untapped hidden Microsoft Tools here.

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5 Reasons to Use OneNote

Available as a mobile app and wrapped into the Microsoft productivity suite, OneNote is an extension of Microsoft’s traditional lineup that many people have yet to take advantage of. Think of OneNote as you would any run-of-the-mill spiral notebook, except this notebook is digital, automatically backs up to your MS Office 365 cloud, and can be easily shared in part or in full. It has an incredibly useful ability to integrate with Excel, Outlook, and anything you want to drag, drop, or clip off the internet.

In other words, OneNote can be used by anyone for just about anything – to create lists, remember client details, organize ideas, gather inspiration…and you can use it to take notes, too. Here are just five of the reasons you, and every other busy professional out there, should consider diving into OneNote.

Curation

OneNote was built around the concept that most everything has a process. That makes it a really great tool for gathering anything that focuses on an idea – like images, thoughts, to-do lists, charts, reminders, audio, and video – and then being able to organize it. The potential is endless when it comes to the types of content you can save and arrange. You can use free-form pages or apply templates if you prefer more structure. You can attach files, create charts and tables, print from the app, transfer your pages into a Word doc, and keep everything you could ever need in one convenient place. And as you continue gathering information, you can move it around, organize it in different ways, share it, and even more.

Mobility

Ideas, creation, and research can never truly be contained to one place and time. With the mobile app and online version, OneNote travels with you anywhere and everywhere – continuously syncing all your content from your desktop to your tablet to your phone. Have an idea while driving or on vacation? Make a quick audio note and keep on moving. Your notebook is always completely accessible and never more than a click away.

Motivation

As the ultimate notebook, OneNote is more than just a simple piece of paper. You can easily change your notes into to-do lists by adding checkboxes, tag items and search by them, create reminders, and color-code anything you want. And by integrating with Outlook tasks, you can let your calendar and reminders keep you on track. It’s like a to-do list that can talk to you.

Organization

OneNote’s custom tagging feature and powerful search allow you to aggregate your notes so things are always easy to find. Tag your summaries and quick notes for fast and simple referencing based on terms you set yourself. Or use the search function and let OneNote look through typed text, handwritten notes, and words shown in images. Either way, your days of lost notes and wasting time searching for ‘that idea you had that time’ are finally behind you.

Collaboration

Arguably the most important reason for businesses to use OneNote is its ability to share and work with others…even in real time. This versatile tool is all about collaboration. You can choose to share an entire notebook or an individual section with a team member. You can also give them permission to edit or only to view the content. Integrating OneNote with Microsoft Planner can help teams local and remote stay organized, updated, and on track. It removes the emailing of documents back-and-forth and guessing which version is the most recent. With OneNote, you can regain control of your information and have the power to share as much or as little as you choose.

 

Bonus Reasons:

Creative uses of OneNote are limited only by your imagination. If you prefer to draw diagrams or hand write notes, you can do so in the app on your laptop, tablet, or phone. If you need to transcribe recordings, OneNote can make it easier. After uploading your audio or video file, you can play it and type out the transcript right there in OneNote. And anyone who has tried to press pause and play while flipping between programs will tell you how much aggravation this saves. Or if you’re interested in mind mapping, but you’re not ready to invest in an expensive new tool for it, test out the process with OneNote. The free-form pages allow you to move images and notes around in whatever ways make sense to you.

So if you have Office 365 and you’re not using OneNote yet, it might be time to give it a try. Take advantage of the untapped power at your fingertips.

Questions? Contact us. We’re happy to help you find the custom solution you need.

 

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