OneNote is Microsoft’s digital equivalent to a notebook or scrap book. You can use it to collect all sorts of information including images, audio recordings and videos which makes it excellent for research and collecting information you may need later on.
Not all versions of Microsoft Office come packaged with OneNote. Press the Windows key and type OneNote to see if you have it installed on your computer. If you do not have OneNote installed you can go to www.onenote.com and download and install it for free. Once you start making notes, you can use OneNote’s powerful search tool to search through your notes, even including text in images.
You can create multiple notebooks, such as a notebook for personal topics and another for work. Each notebook can have multiple sections and each section can have multiple pages. In real life this would look like a notebook with dividers for each section. To start adding information you can simply start typing on a page, or copy and paste items into it.
The main advantage of OneNote is its capacity to store different types of information all in one place. If you have a touch screen with a pen, you can make handwritten notes or drawings on a page which is great for brainstorming and for sketching out ideas. You can also use the tags on the home tab to create a To-Do list with check boxes you can tick as each task is completed.
OneNote also allows you to take screen clippings or save entire webpages in OneNote. Whatever it is you want to capture, open it up and press the Windows and N keys together and a small OneNote window will appear. The Screen clipping option will allow you to select a section of your screen to save as an image.
You can also integrate OneNote with Outlook to keep notes that relate to an email, task, appointment or contact in Outlook. Open the item in Outlook and click the OneNote link icon in the main tab. This will ask you where you want the linked page to be stored in OneNote. Once you have created a page, clicking the OneNote icon will open that OneNote page.