Computersight -

I don’t like chaos. I don’t even like the the idea of chaos, that’s why I always try to keep everything in some kind of logical order. After searching far and close for a software to organize all the digital information, some while ago, OneNote was recommended to me. Being a Microsoft product I thought to myself it must be a known one, and if I (!) haven’t heard much about it till then, it’s probably not that great. Wrong. Oh, how wrong!

OneNote is a digital notebook. It has pages, and colored sections, just like a paper notebook. But with the power of technology it becomes so much more. One can make any number of notebooks, with any number of pages, customize them as they like, chose some of the many wonderful template designs they have (they are beautiful, and it’s all about the looks, right?) and get their work done.

screenshot by author

Microsoft has some really good presentations and overviews of the product so I’ll talk about the features I like most:

Labels – I can just write down a random idea, movie to watch, to do item etc., put a suitable label for it and find it really fast anytime.

Page designs and templates – I’ve always liked pretty things so the “Artistic” templates for pages are my favorites

Multiple notebooks – you can chose from templates (e.g. student notebook) or take a blank notebook which you customize. You can have a personal notebook, work notebook, project notebook, research etc. You can even share a notebook with other colleagues.

Fast note taking – if I’m in the middle of something and I suddenly get an idea for a totally different topic I can just click the icon in the right of my task bar and a blank note page appears, where I can quickly note it down.

I also use it as an agenda (for personal planning). I tried a zillion planning softwares and tools (many of which really good) but not flexible enough for me. I can use OneNote just like a paper agenda – make a new page for each day (for example) write anywhere on the page, draw, insert pictures, diagrames or to do lists. I wish I knew about it while I was in AIESEC! 

And finally here is the official presentation of OneNote. (Internet Explorer recommended)