Has anyone tried the new Onenote 12? The new version seems to have some nice new features like:

Better user interface
Share notebooks and Sync bertween multiple computers
Page/notebooks templates
PPC version
Better clipping from Web and apps
Better note management including full drag & drop etc.

.. and the most important to me, feels quite lightweight!

Like many of you, I've been trying to find out (for years) the ultimate notetaking software and I know how difficult that is. I'm just wondering if others have tried the new version of Onenote and found it worthwhile.

Here are a couple of links:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/onenote/FX100647161033.aspx?CTT=96&Origin=CL100626961033

http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/onenote/HA101672671033.aspx

Best Regards

Stavros Grivas

I don't know that OneNote 2007 is the ultimate note taking tool, but I've been using it since early October (got it in the beta program) and I am using it exclusively now. It has been substantially improved in the different means for importing data, and for organizing data - now handles multiple notebooks, and a new concept "sections of sections" which can be nested one inside the other in creating a storage structure. Also, good coupling with Outlook 2003 for tasks defined in OneNote, for e-mail in Outlook, and meetings defined in Outlook.

I have tried a lot of them, the major one I have not used is Zoot. I have tried ADM, InfoSelect, Evernote, and Ultra Recall. Gave up on ADM when they got fixated on Skype (which I can't use at work). Every time I upgraded InfoSelect, I felt afterward like I should have known better - minimal improvement for substantial license cost. I found Evernote confusing, guess I'm wired in favor of a more hierarchical method. Ariadne reminded me too much of InfoSelect with a more attractive interface (emotional reaction). Ultra Recall is what I was using prior to One Note - the improved integration with Outlook tipped the balance for me. Right now as I mentioned I'm using OneNote 2007 exclusively, and I have stopped checking out the web sites for other tools in this category.

You can download a full-featured trial version from the Microsoft Office site - my copy will expire on Feb 28, 2007. Big download, a little over 200 MB.

Ray Cosner
St. Louis, MO

Hi Ray

I've been waiting with some anticipation to the next version of OneNote too.

However, I've never really thought of it replacing all my PIMs, especially in the data storage department. If I moved everything from UltraRecall and Idea! to OneNote, I'd be very nervous about the file sizes.

Do you store everything, such as archived emails and attachments, in OneNote? What are the file size(s) like?

TIA

Jack

I'm on the staff of the VP-Engineering of a large technology-driven manufacturing company - 30,000 engineers, 150,000 total employees. I'm involved in dozens of projects at a time. Being well organized is simply a survival requirement. I use OneNote (and Ultra Recall before that) to manage information associated with current projects, information that is likely to be important in the future, and general needed background information. I mention this as context for how I use a personal information manager - currently OneNote.

I do not use OneNote for archival retention, in general. I have set up one notebook to drag/drop items for archive, but there is not a lot of stuff in it. Typically our projects build upon each other, rather than simply ending. In my usage, the value lies in capturing and having fast access to recent data, and archival data is of little value to me. The half-life of the info I save in a PIM is probably 4-6 months. I'm pretty aggressive about deleting records once a project has ended, after delaying a month or so to be sure an activity is really finished.

One thing I really like is that it's much easier to reorganize pages, sections, and notebooks than in OneNote 2003 (drag and drop). It is very good for keeping detailed records of a project, for example, in OneNote and generating tasks in OneNote that are synchronized with Outlook 2003. It is much easier in this version (compared with OneNote 2003) to set up a hierarchy, and then change it quickly as projects evolve, split up, combine, etc. Hyperlinks also are much easier to set up - links to files, or Outlook items, or web sites including links across our internal network.

To answer your question, right now I have 12 notebooks, with combined 64 MB storage (accumulated in two months since I changed to OneNote 2007). At this level, OneNote responds as quickly as the day I installed it, and complete searches across all my notebooks run in about 3-5 seconds. Searches don't seem as fast as InfoSelect, but with OneNote searches running in single-digit seconds the difference is not meaningful to me. I generally put links to files into OneNote, rather than the actual file.

Capabilities in OneNote 2007 that I am not using: (1) OCR of images, and search including text from images via Windows desktop search, but I am not using that capability as I don't have a lot of image files and I use X1 for desktop search. In effect you can attach unstructured metadata to an image file by putting text notes on the same OneNote page with the file (or the link to the file). (2) Audio files can be captured via microphone and attached to a page of information, but I am not using that. (3) Also, it has a lot of features for a tablet PC, but I have a traditional notebook and so I do not use those features.

I hope this helps. I do not consider OneNote to be the ultimate tool. Personally, I loved Ecco and still consider it to be the closest to fully meeting my personal needs. However, my employer is focused on Outlook, and OneNote meshes very well with Outlook. I tried to straddle the fence with both tools for a few months, but that was futile so I reluctantly stopped using Ecco.

Ray

Hi Ray

I have tried OneNote on and off throughout this year, and now with this recent production release it seems well worth taking seriously. I have also used UltraRecall (UR) extensively, but in essence, even though the functions and features of it all seem very conducive to info organization efficiency - and it integrates quite well with Outlook - I find that quite soon into adding stuff in UR - I can't see the wood for the trees so to speak.

I'd be interested know why you prefer OneNote to UR - in terms of its relative ability to keep you organized and with priorities easily seen and processed? Did you find UR wasn't so "Ultra" in its "Recall" after all - or was the switch to OneNote mainly again the Microsoft standardization thing?

Regards, Ian

I quickly got lost in the fixed tree structure in UR. A hoisting ability (like ADM) would help. I don't find OneNote as difficult, with substantially more data today than I ever had in UR (thanks to the easier importing from diverse sources). However, I am concerned going forward, as ON only displays one row of section headings. When you have more than can be accommodated in one row (say, 8-10 sections depending on screen resolution and length of titles), you have to scroll. Maybe I'll get used to that. Another way to deal with it, of course, is to use notebooks or sections of sections so that a one-row display is sufficient.

Both I and others have suggested multiple rows of section headings (if needed) as a desirable improvement in the OneNote discussion group within the Microsoft Office site.

- Ray

Thanks for your responses Ray.

One last question - what do you do with emails you want to archive?

- Inside OneNote?
- Link to OneNote?
- Leave archived in Outlook?
- Some other solution?

Jack

Stavros, I think the best note taking software is Zoot & I have tried/tested/played with/licensed most of them at one time or another

--
Jan Rifkinson
Ridgefield, CT USA

I generally import key e-mails into OneNote rather than leaving them in Outlook and linking them into One Note. They are then kept as needed in OneNote, then discarded when the need has ended. I also leave them in Outlook, where most of my e-mail is automatically deleted after three months.

Ray, the suggestion for the ability to hoist has certainly been made to UR many times.

ADM not only hoists on topic, but you can select on the basis of key words, which provides another way to get at the data.

MDE InfoHandler allows you to select on the basis of one or more key words called categories.

And as Jan has pointed out in another post, Zoot is probably the best note-take around.

Daly

Ray Cosner wrote:

I quickly got lost in the fixed tree structure in UR. A hoisting ability (like ADM)
would help. I don't find OneNote as difficult, with substantially more data today
than I ever had in UR (thanks to the easier importing from diverse sources). However, I
am concerned going forward, as ON only displays one row of section headings. When you
have more than can be accommodated in one row (say, 8-10 sections depending on screen
resolution and length of titles), you have to scroll. Maybe I'll get used to that.
Another way to deal with it, of course, is to use notebooks or sections of sections so
that a one-row display is sufficient.

Both I and others have suggested multiple
rows of section headings (if needed) as a desirable improvement in the OneNote
discussion group within the Microsoft Office site.

- Ray

Jack,

I've been using ON starting with the betas for round about 6 months. My biggest Notebook at the moment is only about 70 meg but I've noticed no problems. In terms of project management and filing other kinds of data, each "folder" gets its own file. So at least in my case, though I have many in the 10-50 meg range, none have had a chance to really accumulate that much in the way of size from embedded files.

Tom S.