OneNote, as I am sure you have determined by now, is the perfect platform for boosting your productivity. Its main features are great for getting your days in order and helping you organize yourself, but this program is also designed to make your life more efficient. In this chapter, you will discover ways to make your life even better with OneNote and you will also learn about some more awesome features that may be helpful to you.
Top Feature #1
You can take notes with OneNote without even having to keep the program open. OneNote comes with two keyboard shortcuts that allow you to take quick notes. By hitting the Windows key and “N,” a new page in OneNote will automatically open up and you can immediately start taking notes. When you take a note like this, OneNote will save it to your “Unfiled Notes” and you can go back and organize them later.
Another cool trick is that you can take an instant screenshot of your desktop and save it to one of your notebooks. This is useful for bookmarking information that you may need to use later. To take a screenshot simply hold the Windows key and S at the same time. The screen will go grey and a plus sign will appear. You want to highlight the entire area that you want to take a screen shot of. Once that is done, you will be given the option of where to save this picture in OneNote.
Top Feature #2
OneNote comes with preinstalled keyboard shortcuts that you can use to activate certain features without having to search for them within the program. Once you learn these keyboard shortcuts, odds are you will be able to store them in your memory and using them will become second nature over time. Once they become second nature they will be able to help you work much more quickly and efficiently.
Here is a list of the most helpful keyboard shortcuts in OneNote:
Ctrl+M Open New Window
Ctrl+Alt+D Dock Window
Ctrl+Z Undo (universal)
Ctrl+Y Redo
Ctrl+A Select All (universal)
Ctrl+ Period (.) Apply or Remove Bullets
Ctrl+K Insert Link
Ctrl+C Copy Formatting
Ctrl+V Paste Formatting
Ctrl+X Cut Selection (universal)
Ctrl+V Paste Selection (universal)
Ctrl+B Bold Text or Undo Bold Text
Ctrl+I Italics or Undo Italics
Ctrl+U Underline Text or Undo Underline Text
Shift+Enter Insert Line Break
Ctrl+Alt+1 Apply Heading 1 to Text
Ctrl+Alt+2 Apply Heading 2 to Text
Ctrl+Alt+3 Apply Heading 3 to Text
Ctrl+Alt+4 Apply Heading 4 to Text
Ctrl+Alt+5 Apply Heading 5 to Text
Ctrl+Alt+6 Apply Heading 6 to Text
F7 Key Spell Check
F11 Key Toggle Full Page View
Shift+F7 Key Open Thesaurus
Shift+F10 Key Open Context Menu
Ctrl+Shift+W Execute Selected Operation on Toolbar
Ctrl+1 Toggle “To-Do” Tag
Ctrl+2 Toggle “Important” Tag
Ctrl+3 Toggle “Question” Tag
Ctrl+4 Toggle “Remember” Tag
Ctrl+0 Remove All Tags
Ctrl+R Align Paragraph to Right
Ctrl+L Align Paragraph to Left
Ctrl+Shift+> Make Font Size Bigger
Ctrl+Shift+< Make Font Size Smaller
Ctrl+Shift+R Toggle Ruled Lines
Ctrl+N+F Insert File to Page
Ctrl+Alt+P Playback Audio/Video
Ctrl+Alt+Y Rewind Audio/Video
Ctrl+Alt+U Fast Forward Audio/Video
Ctrl+Shift+E Email Page
Alt+Shift+1 Insert Time/Date Timestamp
Alt+= Insert Math Equation
Alt+Shift+Up Arrow Move Selected Text Up
Alt+Shift+Down Arrow Move Selected Text Down
Home Key Go to Beginning of Line
End Key Go to End of Line
Page Up Key Scroll Up Page
Page Down Key Scroll Down Page
Ctrl+End Jump to Bottom of Page
Ctrl+F Search Page
Ctrl+E Search All Notebooks
Top Feature #3
With OneNote, you can compile a notebook of important handwritten or foreign documents for ultimate organization. For example, using the Inserts tab, you can scan and file receipts, notes, recipes, newspaper articles, book chapters, etc. and have them all in one simple file for quick access. With the audio/video feature, you can also enable a text search so that you can sit back and record things and then search for important words later on. You can enable the audio/video search feature by going to audio and video under options. Bonus Tip: If you have a tablet that connects to your computer, you can utilize the draw functions to take handwritten notes over anything you scan.
Top Feature #4
Templates are always a helpful shortcut and luckily OneNote has them. To view the notebook templates in OneNote, head over to the left hand side of the screen where you can see/add pages. Click on the drop-down arrow next to where it says “New Page” and select Page Templates. This will open up a window where you can view all the available templates. For your convenience, OneNote has broken down the categories of templates for students and business. The Academic templates can be really beneficial for students who want to organize their notes and the business templates are perfect for anyone who needs to plan for a meeting. There are many customizable options under the decorative category, all of which are perfect for giving your notebook a personal feel. The planner templates come with pre-organized checklists that are great for jumping right into your tasks and the blank templates offer a little more personalization with a basic feel.
Top Feature #5
The fifth top feature of OneNote is integration with other Microsoft programs. Specifically, Outlook and OneNote have a lot of integration features that can really boost your productivity (provided that you regularly use both of these programs). You can save content directly from Outlook into OneNote by looking for the “Send to OneNote” icon in Outlook. As you discovered previously in this book, you also know that you can send notebooks and pages in OneNote to Outlook. Whenever you send an email through OneNote, the program will add a footnote at the end that notes which program the content came from. You can customize this footnote by going under the Advanced Options settings and typing in a custom message.
The Send to OneNote or Email through Outlook features can be especially useful to those who deal with a lot of people daily. One idea is to store information, such as frequently asked questions or other informative documents and just send them out to clients when the information is requested.
You can also integrate OneNote with Microsoft Word. You can link your notes in OneNote to Word to avoid any excess copy-and-pasting. To link OneNote and Word, open Word and make sure that your document is saved in DOCX. Click on the Review tab and you will see a button in the toolbar that says Linked Notes. When you click on that button, a box will open up, asking you to select the notebook in which you want to save the linked notes. You can also do this with PowerPoint. Check out this tutorial, Linking Notes in One Note by InnovativeTeach, to learn more about this feature.
Top Feature #6
In OneNote, you can also change the type and feel of the “paper” you are writing on. Under the View tab you will see an icon that says Ruled Lines. By clicking on this icon, you will be able to select different types of “paper” from a drop-down box, such as ruled lines or grids. This can be useful if you’re used to the feel of a traditional notebook or if you need grid lines for mathematical equations.
Top Feature #7
With OneNote you can take your notes “to go.” By downloading the OneNote app on your Android or Apple iPhone, you can take all of your notes with you wherever you go. This is a great app to have because sometimes an idea can just hit you out of nowhere and it is important to be able to write it down immediately. The YouTube videos OneNote on Any Device, Wherever You Are by OfficeVideos and Introduction to SkyDrive by OneDrive are good starting points for learning how to sync and connect all of your devices.
Top Feature #8
Chances are that you may be keeping some personal information stored in a notebook on OneNote, such as your personal journal, account information, financial information, etc. OneNote has a password protection feature that allows you to guard off sections of your notebooks. You can lock a section of your notebook with a password by clicking on File and then Password Protect This Section.
Top Feature # 9
OneNote is extremely versatile. It is perfect so many different types of uses. If you practice all the features discussed in this book you should be easily able to organize your whole life into OneNote. Be sure to be creative. It is very easy to make a journal section by making each page a month and then just manually typing in the date of the journal entry. It may take a little effort at first to get OneNote to your satisfaction, but once you have done so... you will wonder why you ever had to go through all your previous torture before!