Onenote 2007 a Killer App?

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ckennedy

Registered
I have been testing beta 2 of ON 2007 and it has the makings of a near-perfect GTD app for me.
The new features which make the new version GTD-friendly in my eyes are:
1) Much easier navigation between sections/pages/notebooks
2) True integration with Outlook. I create a new Page for each of my GTD projects. On the page I keep random project related notes, web clippings, emails etc. When I want to identify a next action, I "flag" it and it creates a new task in Outlook (which allows me to synch to my palm). If I mark the task complete in either outlook or Onenote, it marks it complete in the other. Very cool!
3) The ability to hyperlink from page to page, section to section. This is truly great. I can link projects and reference materials together easily.
4) Super-fast search abilities

There are lots of other goodies as well. Abother great feature is the ability to link meetings and contacts in Outlook to pages in Onenote. Great for keeping meeting minutes and next actions as well as contact management. I'm not a huge Microsoft fan, but I think they've gotten this right.
 
J

Julia

Registered
One Note 2007

Hi,

I'm thinking of getting the ON 2007 beta too... I love ON, but I've gotten away from it b/c unless I'm really good about keeping it sync'ed with Outlook, my project info tends to be out-of-date on my ON pages.

Does the ON beta sync that easily with Outlook 2003 or do you have the new beta of that too?

Just curious - I'd love for both programs to sync easily.

Thanks,
Julia
 
R

randystokes

Registered
Is there any way to get the OneNote 2007 beta without getting the entire Office 2007 beta? Will the OneNote 2007 beta even work with Outlook versions prior to 2007?

Randy
 
T

Tom Shannon

Registered
Julia said:
Does the ON beta sync that easily with Outlook 2003 or do you have the new beta of that too?
Click to expand...

Sync isn't quite the right word. The changes are made in Outlook as you make them in ON. Its not a sync in the same way you would sync your Palm or another Windows program to OL. If you flag an item as a task, it shows up instantaneously as a task in OL.

Having said that, I'm still not sure how good the integration is. I haven't downloaded the Office beta because, frankly, I don't have the time to be a beta tester and deal with bugs right now. I have a hug project due tomorrow and I need Office to work. I did watch a video on the new ON, though. It looks like adding info from one or the other is easy. It wasn't clear whether changes in one or the other would show up. For instance, if I put meeting details into ON from OL, then change the date in ON, will the change show up in OL? If I add notes to the details in ON, will they show up in message section of the appointment in OL? I wasn't sure.

Tom S.
 
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Tom Shannon

Registered
randystokes said:
Will the OneNote 2007 beta even work with Outlook versions prior to 2007?
Click to expand...

My understanding is that its guaranteed to work with OL 2003. Before that they don't say anything.

Tom S.
 
C

ckennedy

Registered
All of the new intergration features with Outlook work with OL 2003. It is instantaneous synching between the two.
The Onenote beta is available as a stand-alone. I also downloaded Outlook 2007 and installed but it seemed to be a system hog, so I reverted back to OL 2003 unless and until I get more memory on-board.
The Onenote beta seems quite close to "ready for prime time" It seems very stable and quite polished. I'm using it daily. That said, it does exhibit a few quirks now and then (such as not being able to email Onenote pages). I'll tackle that one when I get a spare hour or so.
Anyway, well worth a download IMHO.
Cheers
CK
 
R

randystokes

Registered
You say OneNote 2007 is available as a separate download, but could you tell us where to find it? I looked on Microsoft's website, and don't see it as a separate download, and I've tried a Google search to see if I can find it to download, with no luck.

Randy
 
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Tom Shannon

Registered
ckennedy said:
I also downloaded Outlook 2007 and installed but it seemed to be a system hog, so I reverted back to OL 2003 unless and until I get more memory on-board.
Click to expand...

FWIW it probably still has a bunch of debug code in it. The final release will, possibly, take less memory.

Tom S.
 
V

Vramin

Guest
I've started looking at this beta myself. Of course, where I get stuck is: How far do I take it? I have a home machine with Outlook on it that I use as my main database, so my contacts and to do's live there (to-do's are all GTD'd up now, so that's where all of my lists are). I sync that stuff to my Treo so I have it on hand at all times. I use a notebook computer at work, but I don't sync the Treo to it. It could be a lot of work replicating everything in ON 2007, so I'm a bit hesitant. Then I have to consider how to handle where the notebook file lives, how it syncs with which Outlook instance, etc. Lots of variables.

I suppose the best thing would be to just sync the Palm with the notebook and make it the main repository, or go for the three way sync with all the devices. I just sort of like to keep all of my personal project stuff off of the work machine.
 
D

dgorecki

Registered
I've been playing around with this app for a couple of days now, and am really impressed. The things I particularly like is integration with Outlook and the flagging / tagging you can do. I've been using these flags to identify key decisions made, items that need to be discussed with key team members, etc. At any time I can view flagged items per notebook, all notebooks, etc.

The one thing I don't know is how OneNote and the Journal part of Outlook co-exist. Which is MS going to suggest to be used for what situations. There seems to be a lot of overlap now.

My guess is that OneNote would take over for Journal since MS is spending the time to synch OneNote to PPC, but not the Journal portion.
 
M

mramm

Registered
ON vs. Evernote

I have downloaded the ON 2007 beta and it looks nice. I have never used a note-taking app like that before and I was to add it into my system.

What is the difference between ON and Evernote? I am not very familiar with either, but I have heard that they are the best note-taking apps out there.

Thanks,
Michael
 
V

Vramin

Guest
Differences

Evernote keeps your notes on a perpetual "tape" in the order that you put them in. You can classify items by "stamping" them with categories, or you can create rules that put items into categories based on key words and such. You can also build task lists and todo's in it and such, and easily search the whole thing. I like and use Evernote, but now that I do GTD I'm starting to see the OneNote (at least the 2007 version with the solid Outlook integration) may be a better tool. OneNote lets you set things up as "notebooks" with sections and pages, which maps very closely to the GTD notion of file folders with sheets of paper in them. One tab for each of your next action contexts, another for your projects, and you're essentially done. If you're tracking tasks in Outlook then you can just mark a OneNote item as an outlook task and it gets copied right over there. If I can see more than one next action available on a project, I'll go ahead and note them in a list, then just mark the very next one to go across to Outlook (provides some of this project/next action linkage some people seem to be looking for). The page tabs along the righthand side become your project list, and the pages themselves the project support material.

I would try them both if I were you. I may continue to run both, using Evernote as my activity log, and OneNote as my GTD/project management tool.
 
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