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Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks
IainB:
The latest changes/updates in MS Office 2013 (including especially OCR features in OneNote) have helped to make life easier for notetakers. Example below:
Text of the above is in the spoiler below:
SpoilerFor research, don't make notes, just use clip-to-OneNote instead.
I wanted to record a note about the version details of a piece of software that was installed on a laptop.
To save myself the trouble of making typewritten notes, I opened the software in 3 successive windows/panels:
Desktop Assist - Toshiba Applications Installer - About I arranged the panels to overlap each other (as below) and took a clip-to-OneNote which
enclosed all 3 panels in a single image capture:
(Note: I drew the arrows onto this image later, using Screenshot Captor, to illustrate what I had done).
Once the clipped image was in OneNote, all text in the image was automatically detected and OCR'd, and also written to a hidden "Alternative Text" field. The scanned image text then all becomes searchable. This obviates the need for the user to make typed notes about the text in the image - i.e., the image contains the indexed/searchable notes. However, had I wanted to grab the actual OCR'd text from the image to use as text elsewhere, then I could have done this in two ways:
1. By selecting it via the "Select Text from Image" menu option:
The "Select Text from Image" panel can be very handy:
2. By selecting the text via the "Alt Text…" menu option: The "Picture Alternative Text" panel shows all the OCR'd text (including errors), and the user can copy this to Clipboard and also correct any OCR errors or edit/update the text with new text:
Note: There is an error visible (as indicated) in the Picture Alternative Text panel above.
The same error is in the text in the Select Text from Image panel, which, though it displays just the image of the text correctly, when you select and copy the text from that image, it copies as the error "Satelhte LSSSD - v". Though the user can correct that error in the Select Text from Image panel, as per below, there seems to be no way in which the copyable text in the Picture Alternative Text panel can be corrected/changed by the user. Each of the two panels seems to have its own peculiar text store.
Note: The ability to makes changes/corrections may be academic anyway, as, when the user makes changes/corrections to the text in the Picture Alternative Text panel, the text of these changes/corrections apparently IS NOT included in the index/search of OneNote. This seems less than ideal from a user perspective.
(If I want to make changes/corrections that I can find in searches later, then I work around this by copying the relevant Alt Text into a note below the image, and correcting any errors in that note text - which will be included in the index/search of OneNote.)
IainB:
Made an EDIT to Re: Microsoft OneNote - some experiential Tips & Tricks above:
EDIT by IainB on 2014-11-28 1059hrs: This functionality was replaced in OneNote 2007 and later. All you have to do now is type out a word or phrase with double square brackets at both ends - e.g., [[this phrase]] - and if a page in your open Notebooks already exists with that word/phrase as its title, then OneNote will underline the text of the word/phrase you have just typed in and turn it into a hyperlink to that existing page, otherwise OneNote will create a page with that word/phrase as a title, in the section you are currently in, and will underline the text of the word/phrase you have just typed in and turn it into a hyperlink to that newly-created page.
This is Wiki-like hyperlinking, and potentially incredibly useful.
IainB:
I just now stumbled upon this Lifehacker overview (not too detailed) and comparison: Lifehacker Faceoff: OneNote vs. Evernote
The post is dated 2014-03-25.
I think it could be pretty useful if OneNote and Evernote were somehow merged... :-\
dantheman:
Thank you Ian for sharing your OneNote experience and discoveries.
The bracket tip is a true gem! :Thmbsup:
One thing i miss with this program is a better integration with Windows own search engine.
Perhaps FARR will come up with a plugin for it someday?
Hint! 8)
Have been looking into www.tiddlywiki.com but i think OneNote has way too many advantages at present time.
One has only so much time to dedicate at using these programs.
IainB:
@dantheman:
Glad you found my notes useful!
Where you say:
...One thing i miss with this program is a better integration with Windows own search engine. ...
-dantheman (November 29, 2014, 08:14 AM)
--- End quote ---
- I don't quite understand. OneNote is already integrated with Windows Search.
What version of Windows and OneNote (MS Office) do you have?
What sort of things does Windows Search not pull out of OneNote (on your system)?
If you tell me, then maybe I can help.
Regarding www.tiddlywiki.com - yes, it is rather good. Frustratingly, it seems that nothing comes close to OneNote if you:
* (a) want or can make use of all that functionality (e.g., including rich text, voice sound as data, OCR, hyperlinking, tagging, etc);
* (b) want the integration with the Windows OS and Windows Search;
* (c) want the integration with MS Office and OLE (Object Linking and Embedding), and IE and want it to run on a stand-alone PC/laptop client and the Cloud (as necessary).
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