Are you a note taker? a scribbler?

Do you often scribble notes when on the phone and then can’t remember what page of the note pad you wrote that important telephone number or URL? 

Why not use Microsoft One Note?

One Note is your very own personal note book where you can keep all those telephone scribbles organised and in one place.

Microsoft One Note is part of the Home and Student version of Office 2007. You can purchase your copy from various stores, the cheapest I’ve found (at the time of writing this article) is from ecostsoftware.com for £42.85.

One Note allows you to type notes, scan hard copies of documents or handwritten notes and store links to web pages, images and video clips.

I love One Note because it has the capability of gathering all the notes and creating individual project files, this is particularly useful for storing information for multiple clients and multiple projects.

If you would like to test out the software before buying to make sure it’s for you, you can download a 60 day trial from the Microsoft website

The focus for all activity using One Note is the Notepad which is split into sections that sit along the top of the screen as tabs. You can add as many tabs as you like and each one holds blank pages where you can type notes, paste information, add spreadsheets or audio clips. I like this feature, I work a lot with a client that asks me to do a lot of report formatting. I am able to insert the document into a blank page and make all the changes during our telephone discussion. This saves my computer ink and also paper of course ;o)

 Tabs accross the top organised by clients

One Note also has the capability of password protecting pages, this is extremely useful if you have a lot of passwords for social network sites for example, but make sure you don’t forget your chosen password because there is no way of retrieving it once it’s set!

Whilst One Note has many good features, using it as a notepad, I think only those who are able to type quickly would find it  less time consuming, many may get frustrated and revert back to the old fashion way of note taking.

Me however, I often suffer from Doctors writing syndrome and can never understand my own scribbles so this bit of software is my right hand man! i use it daily to keep track of my tasks, important emails and documents.

Do you like One Note but not willing to fork out the dosh? there are a few free/cheaper alternatives;

www.evernote.com, it doesn’t have all the capabilities that One Note has but works in a similar way, it can’t take screenshots of websites like One Note does, but can do mostly everything else.

http://notebook.Zoho.com Zoho Notebook lets you sign in using either a google or yahoo email address, it lets you save text and audio and also video. It works very similar to One Note in that it gives you pre-labelled       tabs for storing various information.

So get scribbling!

For more information on One Note visit http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/onenote/default.aspx