May 2nd, 2005 by Matt
One of the most useful features of Microsoft OneNote is noteflags – the different types of tags (flags) that you can assign to individual paragraphs within any note. You can use these to note to-do’s, something important that you want to refer to later, an item you want to remember to discuss with your boss, etc. Then, you could view a list of all noteflags of a certain type, e.g. view all new actions you’ve noted, or all items you need to discuss with your boss. For each item, you can check off actions that you’ve completed (or recorded in another action tracking system, like Outlook).
OneNote allows you to define and customize up to 25 different flags. This was one of my favorite features in OneNote and one which I utilized prolifically in my initial use of OneNote.
As I switched to EverNote, one of the biggest drawbacks was the lack of the equivalent noteflag functionality. I really wanted to at least be able to flag three types of information in my notes:
· Actions that I need to take
· Actions that others are taking that they will deliver to me
· Generally important pieces of information
I have developed a basic system of note taking over the past few years whereby I essentially track the above three items. This is easy to do with a paper notebook, but more difficult to do effectively with software. The ability to track at least these three things is a requirement for me, though, in any note taking system I will use.
Continue reading ‘NoteFlags in EverNote’
April 16th, 2005 by Matt
EverNote has become an essential part of my daily workflow and information tracking. Its simplicity and straightforward approach to capturing and organizing information just simply work for me.
Here are a couple of screenshots of the elements I mentioned in my previous post:
On the left, the TimeBand for all my notes. On the right, an example of the TimeBand when only a subset of notes are selected (when I select notes in one of my categories). Note the automatic adjusting of the scale, and the “>” to indicate the presence of notes on specific days.
Continue reading ‘Some EverNote Screenshots’
April 14th, 2005 by Matt
I’ve been living in the dark ages when it comes to note-taking and organizing software. Since the experience I describe below, which started in early February of this year, I’ve come to learn of several different software options in this genre. Before this, I was unaware of any.
The first I saw was Microsoft OneNote – I saw an on-line add for it and immediately went to check it out. After seeing the screen shots and an overview of its capabilities, I thought Microsoft had read my mind about what I wanted. I attend a lot of meetings and take a lot of notes, so I consume notebooks fairly rapidly. Organizing and finding past information in notes is always an issue, but sometimes just the act of writing things down helps me retain the information better.
With OneNote, I saw a way to capture notes on my computer, search through them, and index them in a virtual notebook. I had tried to accomplish the same on-line note taking capability by using Word and some fancy paragraph and character formatting styles, but it just wasn’t functional enough. There were too many manual formatting commands I had to use to organize my notes, and even then I couldn’t easily group into categories. I tried it for about 2 weeks and then gave it up.
So after being inspired by what OneNote could do, I quickly downloaded the free trial starting using it. I was impressed: I was quickly able to organize notes into categories and sub-categories. I could import appointment descriptions from Outlook into OneNote, I could type anywhere on the note “canvas”. I could even “ink” free form notes and mix them with typed text – if I actually had a tablet PC, that is. I was off and running with my on-line note taking.
Continue reading ‘EverNote vs. OneNote’