5 Ways to Use OneNote for Personal Productivity.

Organize Your Projects Using OneNote:

Microsoft OneNote is a creative and digital note-taking application for Office 365 customers. Microsoft OneNote is a productivity program for researching, note-taking, and data storage. It works similarly to Evernote and Dropbox Paper in that it allows you to store text and photographs in free-form projects that you can keep private or share with others. OneNote is part of the Microsoft Office Suite, which also includes PowerPoint, Word, and Excel. 

How OneNote organizes your information. 

OneNote simulates a notepad, complete with books, sections, and pages. OneNote allows you to create several notebooks, each dedicated to a distinct topic. You may have a notebook for business and another for personal information, or you could have a few distinct notebooks for each significant project. 

You can further arrange your notes by creating sections within the notebook. For example, if you work in sales, you could designate a different space for each client. Finally, you can have an endless number of pages within any area, making it easy to follow information over time. 

You can draw, sketch, and write notes longhand if you use OneNote on a tablet or PC with a stylus. 

Using OneNote to share notes. 

OneNote is a versatile product that you may use privately or share with others – as well as with yourself – across several devices.  

If you save your OneNote notebooks to the cloud using OneDrive, you may access them from any device that is linked to your Microsoft Office account. You’ll always be in sync with all of your notes across devices, whether it’s a phone, tablet, PC, or laptop. 

You can share complete notebooks with others by clicking the Share icon in the ribbon, but keep in mind that you’re sharing the full notebook, not just a piece of a page. 

A replay is a tool that allows you to generate a page of notes and then play it back like an animation. This is a tool that can be used in the classroom or when giving a presentation. 

How to get Microsoft’s OneNote on your PC and mobile devices to take notes. 

OneNote, a note-taking program included in the Microsoft Office suite, is available for Windows and Mac, as well as iOS and Android smartphones. 

OneNote is similar to note-taking programs like Evernote in that it uses a notebook-like structure to help you manage your information. You can create several notebooks, each with its own set of sections and endless pages. You can write free-form notes, insert photographs and video clips, add links, embed audio snippets, and do a variety of other things. 

While OneNote can be purchased as part of a Microsoft 360 subscription, it is also available for free. The free version is named OneNote 2016, and it was first included with Office 2016. It provides the majority, but not all, of the functionality present in the most recent version of OneNote, included with Microsoft 365. 

How to Install OneNote: 

The process of downloading OneNote is simple, albeit the version you download is determined in part by the device you are attempting to install it on. 

Click the Download button to get OneNote for Windows or Mac once you’ve found the page for your OneNote version. If you’re using a mobile device, you can get the program from the app store. 

After downloading OneNote for Windows or Mac, navigate to the downloaded file in your web browser’s file manager and double-click it to launch the installer and install OneNote. 

5 Ways to Begin Using OneNote 

1. Make a notebook: Open the appropriate version of OneNote and click on the name of the notebook you’re presently working in. 

This brings up a list of recently accessed notebooks and the option to ‘Add Notebook.’ 

2. Add sections: Use the ‘add button’ on the navigation tab to add sections to your notebook. 

3. Create Pages: The technique for adding a page in OneNote or OneNote for Windows is the same as for establishing a section. 

  With the pages in place, you can add, move, rename, and delete them as needed. You can also organize material by dividing it into subpages, which helps navigation. 

Right-click on the page you want to create a subpage for and select ‘make subpage.’ 

4. Add content: There are numerous ways to add content to your notebook, depending on your version: 

• Using a stylus, type or write. 

• Take audio and video recordings. 
• Take screenshots 
• File embedding 
• Text can be copied from a picture or a file. 

  Let’s take a look at the different options in OneNote, many of which aren’t available in OneNote for Windows 10. 

5. Insert and Format Content: To begin, use the format settings on the home tab of the ribbon to make your text easier to read. 

Then, using the Insert tab, enhance your text. Include files, Excel spreadsheets, images, or record video and audio. 

These features are especially beneficial for remote teams that work in different time zones. Team members can simply share feedback with their colleagues and offer more context to project activities. 

OneNote also includes the following content management tabs: 

Draw: This tool is useful for drawing and sketching notes. 

History: Track access, view recent revisions, and restore deleted files with the history feature. 

Review: Check your spelling and punctuation, and create a password to secure the file. Users can also translate text into any language supported by Microsoft Translator, which is especially beneficial for distant teams. 

View: Use View to customize the page according to your preferences, such as background color, grid lines, and size. To use the page alongside another document or web browser, create a docked window. 

If you’re using OneNote to document meetings, add crucial information to a page labeled ‘Meeting Details,’ such as the time, participants, and invitation material. This is a fast approach to document the meeting’s background for future reference. 

‘Meeting Details’ can be found under the ‘Home’ tab in OneNote or the ‘Insert’ tab in OneNote for Windows 10. 

6. Share your work: Before sharing a Notebook, make sure it’s saved in OneDrive. 

‘Share’ choices can be found under ‘File.’ Set permissions (edit or view), distribute by email or link, or share with meeting attendees from this page. 

You can see who has access to your Notebook in this section. To stop distributing the content, right-click on the appropriate person. 

Change their rights or remove the user entirely. 

Conclusion:  

OneNote, as you may have imagined, is a great productivity and collaboration application with a plethora of features. 

See Microsoft’s library of free OneNote videos and publications for more training options. 

Including OneNote in my routine has saved me time, made cooperation easier, and, most importantly, enhanced how I track research and ideas. 

In the following article, I’ll go through the advantages of OneNote for project management in further depth, including managing task lists.