I have discovered Microsoft OneNote. It usually only appeared when my printer wasn’t installed properly and a Word document would say Print to OneNote, which I dutifully then changed to my assigned printer. But then one day, I thought: Why not have a look what this programme actually does – apart from taking printing instructions from Word and Excel.

Wow, was I amazed. I suddenly had a really good organising tool at my fingertips. If you’re already using OneNote you’ll know exactly what I mean. If you don’t, let me show you what you can do with it.

In OneNote you create virtual notebooks. Just like a real notebook you can divide it into sections which contain pages. And that’s where the similarities with a real paper-based notebook ends. Because it’s virtual you are not limited to an existing number of sections and you can re-arrange them at your leisure. If you end up with a lot of section you can group sections together (into Section Groups) to form a higher level and you can have sub-pages to create lower levels of more detail if pages aren’t sufficient. And everything can be renamed and rearranged any way you need it.

You can easily copy/paste from any other programme including from web pages, import pictures, videos, sound clips, links, etc. You can take screen clippings which will be referenced where you got them from. You can add hyperlinks to webpages or other files or to somewhere else in the notebook.

You can mark any bit of text with tags like ‘To Do’,  ‘Contact’, ‘Remember for blog’ or whatever else you need, since the tags are also customisable. And you can also link to Outlook and schedule tasks.

That’s the how, now for the why and what for. If you ever needed something really versatile to catch all your ideas, references and random scribblings – OneNote will do the job. And here are just some ideas what you can use this programme for:

• create a wedding planner notebook
• use it for studying multiple topics/subjects
• a hold all for your goal setting
• a project planner
• a notebook to catch your ideas for a book
• a research project
• a moving house log
• the possibilities are endless …

There is a free trial version on the Microsoft website so you can have a play and see if it’s for you. The trial also comes pre-installed on lots of new computers. OneNote is also part of the Office Home & Student package and the Office Ultimate package.

Have some fun and try it out!