I know it's been a while since I've blogged here, and now I can say why. As of this week, my blog is officially moving over to The Office Blog platform at blogs.office.com. Moving there lets me integrate blogging into my regular work instead of only doing it in my "spare" time.

The new blog is simply called Microsoft OneNote and I'll be posting there regularly to keep you up-to-date on learning and using OneNote 2010. I'll also curate guest posts from the product team and other experts from time to time.

No matter how you use OneNote, I hope the new blog will become an indispensable resource for you. If you subscribe to the RSS feed on the new site, you won't miss a thing.

My sincere thanks to all of you who've lurked here these past couple of years, sent me lots of great feedback (I did read it all, even if I didn't always have time to reply), and commented in public. I really appreciate your readership and hope you'll follow me over to the new digs. (We're still finishing the new site, so pardon the dust here and there. We hope to have things polished and running smoothly within a week or so.)

Best—
Michael

That said, if you’re sticking with the released version of OneNote 2007 for now and you’re using it on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 or Windows Vista, I’m happy to share the good news that Microsoft Program Manager David Rasmussen has released an update to his 64-bit Windows print driver for OneNote 2007. (To read about the previous release, click here.)

Version 1.1 of David’s “XPS2OneNote” print driver fixes a number of issues that some people had on the 64-bit edition of Windows 7. This new version also adds the option to print to a single page or to print each page to a separate sub page (a frequently requested feature). In addition, you can now more easily scale printouts to a custom size.

Read David’s latest blog post for more information and for the link to the free download. And please be sure to read the instructions before installing and using the new version.

As before, David took personal time away from work to develop this latest version, so if you try this solution and it meets your needs, please consider leaving David some positive feedback about his efforts.

Happy Thanksgiving!
 

Depending on its complexity, Beta software typically offers little (if any) documentation. Too much can change during and after the Beta testing phase, and it takes a long time to put together a complete set of Help content.

For OneNote 2010 Beta, we’re trying something a bit different. There’s been such an unprecedented interest in OneNote, we’ve decided to post drafts of some of our documentation over the coming weeks and months to help you come up to speed with the new version and to give you an opportunity to comment on this Help content. I’m happy to announce the immediate availability of our new OneNote 2010 Beta Documentation site. If you frequently use the Help system in Office applications, please consider reviewing our Beta documentation and participate in the feedback process. It’s a great opportunity to help us deliver a great set of OneNote 2010 documentation.

You can simply browse to this site whenever you want, or you can press the F1 key in the OneNote 2010 Beta client to open it. A few articles are already available and we’re doing our best to strike the right balance between old and new features. Again, your feedback counts, so please let us know what features you most want to know about.

There are two special articles that I hope you’ll take a look at:

• Frequently Asked Questions   This living document will be updated frequently with common questions that we’re receiving about the OneNote 2010 Beta, about the Office 2010 Beta in general, and also about the Beta Documentation web site. Please have a look at this article now and again to catch up on important news.
   
• Documentation Request   If there are any OneNote 2010 Beta features, tasks, or scenarios that you could use some help with, post a comment on the site to suggest documentation opportunities. We’ll definitely look at such requests when deciding in what order new OneNote 2010 documentation will be written and released.

Thanks for trying out the OneNote 2010 Beta. A lot of people here have worked very hard to make it great and we really appreciate all of you checking it out and helping us test it.

By the way, if you’re not participating in the Beta, there’s no need to feel left out. We have plenty of free OneNote 2007 documentation and training materials available on the Office Online site — including Help articles, overviews, training courses, templates, and video demos.

Here are some OneNote 2007 shortcuts for you:

• Browse free OneNote 2007 “Help & How-to” Documentation
  https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/FX100647161033.aspx
   
• Watch free OneNote 2007 Video Demos
  https://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?assetid=CH100740841033
   
• Download free OneNote 2007 Templates
  https://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?assetid=ES101732271033
   
• Test your skills with a free OneNote 2007 Training Course
  https://office.microsoft.com/search/redir.aspx?assetid=CR102641231033

 

The wait is over! This morning at the 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft formally announced the public availability of the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, which includes Microsoft OneNote 2010.
 

 

Today, Windows 7 finally arrives in stores. In my personal opinion, it’s Microsoft’s best-ever operating system.

I’m not saying this because I work at Microsoft. I’m saying it because I’ve been personally using and thoroughly testing Windows 7 ever since its early builds were made available. The improvements that Windows 7 offers over its predecessor, Windows Vista, are plentiful, and the industry’s collective praise for them has been difficult to miss.

Though I must admit that I’ve personally had only very few issues with my various Vista computers at work and at home, I’ve sure had many an earful from my friends and family about it. Thankfully, with the arrival of Windows 7, we can usher in a new era of personal computing. I’m very happy about the immensely positive buzz about Windows 7 because it’s truly well-deserved. Hats off to the Windows 7 team. A job well done, guys!

As Windows 7 hits the stores today, I wanted to share a few tips about using OneNote 2007 on a Windows 7 PC. Whether you’re planning to upgrade now or later, I hope some of you will find this information useful.
 

If you previously ran OneNote 2007 on any edition of Windows XP or Windows Vista, you may have never even noticed the so-called “OneNote 2007 Screen Clipper and Launcher,” a small startup program that keeps the OneNote icon in the notification area of the Windows taskbar active. In the later Service Packs on Windows XP and in all editions of Windows Vista, icons that appeared in the notification area would eventually and automatically disappear from view, as it was assumed that they would clutter up the Windows task bar. Rightfully so, because most programs place needless icons there, many of which have little (if any) functionality.

However, in the case of OneNote 2007, the little icon in the notification area is actually quite useful. It provides easy shortcuts to launch the OneNote program window, or perform any number of tasks without starting OneNote itself — including opening a new Side Note, starting an audio recording, creating a screen clipping, and setting the user’s preferences for controlling the functionality of the icon.

Like its predecessors, Windows 7 helps you reduce taskbar clutter by hiding passive icons. However, whether or not you already knew about the OneNote taskbar icon before today, the following procedure will restore the OneNote 2007 Screen Clipper and Launcher back where it belongs. Give it a try!

If you haven’t already done so, install OneNote 2007 on Windows 7, and then follow these steps:
 

1. In Windows 7, click the Start button, click All Programs, and then click to expand both the Microsoft Office folder and the Startup folder.
    
   
    
   Here, you should see the regular Microsoft Office OneNote 2007 icon in the Microsoft Office folder. This is the main program icon for OneNote 2007. Whenever you click this icon, OneNote starts.
    
   You should also see the OneNote 2007 Screen Clipper and Launcher icon in the Startup folder. This is the little program that provides quick access to OneNote functionality from the notification area of the Windows taskbar.
    
    
2. On the Windows 7 taskbar, click the small upwards-facing triangle icon (to the left of the clock on the far right side of the taskbar).
    
   
    
   This will reveal any hidden icons in the notification area.
    
    
3. In the popup window that appears, look for the small OneNote icon.
    
   
    
   Although you can right-click the OneNote taskbar icon here and use its features, the extra click to unhide it each time can become cumbersome. Let’s permanently unhide it.
    
    
4. At the bottom of the popup window, click Customize.
    
   
    
    
5. In the window that appears, you can modify the OneNote notification icon. In the drop-down menu next to Microsoft Office OneNote Quick Launcher, select Show icon and notifications, and then click OK.
   
    
   
    
    
6. Now the OneNote Screen Clipper and Launcher features are available by right-clicking the small OneNote icon that now appears near the clock on the Windows 7 taskbar.
    
   
    
   While the icon is active, you can also use the Windows key shortcuts that are shown on this menu.
    
   Whatever command is listed in bold text on this menu is the command that will execute whenever you left-click the OneNote taskbar icon.
    
   The default setting for clicking the icon is to open a new Side Note (watch this video demo to learn more about this great OneNote feature), but you can replace this behavior with any of the other commands that you may use more frequently.
    
   To learn how to change the settings for the icon, read Set the default action for the OneNote taskbar icon.
    
    

Windows 7 comes with the free Internet Explorer 8 Web browser. I understand and respect that users all over the world are free to choose alternate Web browsers, but I wanted to point out that Internet Explorer 8 has a very nice OneNote integration feature that you may not have known about. Because Internet Explorer also hides icon clutter, it’s easy to miss this feature. Thankfully, a few simple steps is all it takes to make this discoverable.

  The following procedure only works on 32-bit versions of Windows, for the reasons mentioned earlier in this blog post.

If you haven’t already done so, install OneNote 2007 on Windows 7, and then follow these steps:
 

1. Launch Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7 and maximize the browser window.
    
    
2. Near the far top right corner of the browser window, click the chevron symbol ( » ) on the toolbar to reveal the hidden Send to OneNote button.
    
   
    
   Although you can right-click the Send to OneNote button here to send the contents of the current Web page directly to OneNote, the extra click to unhide it each time can become cumbersome. Let’s permanently unhide it.
    
    
3. On the Internet Explorer taskbar (under the Search box), right-click in a blank spot near the left side of the Home icon.
    
    
4. On the menu that appears, click to toggle (in this case, un-check) the Lock the Toolbars command.
    
   
    
   When you have done this, a toolbar handle (a vertical dotted line) will appear near the left side of the Home toolbar icon.
    
    
5. Click and drag the toolbar handle towards the left and watch the chevron symbol ( » ) on the toolbar disappear once you have fully revealed the hidden Send to OneNote and Research buttons.
    
   
    
   Now you can easily click the Send to OneNote button whenever you want to send a Web page directly into your OneNote notebook.
    
     Some Web pages are formatted in ways that change their appearance outside of a Web browser. If this happens with a Web page that you want to import into your notes, you can capture information as a screen clipping instead of sending the whole page to OneNote.
   
    

As always, your feedback is welcome. I’d love to hear your impressions of Windows 7 and about your experiences with using OneNote 2007 together with Windows 7. I hope you’ll enjoy the combination as much as I am.
 

For as long as I’ve worked on the OneNote team here at Microsoft, I’ve never grown tired of hearing from real-life customers who sometimes take the time to tell us their stories about how technology and Microsoft Office products have changed and improved their lives.

This month, it’s my distinct pleasure to introduce Bruce A. Olson, a trial attorney and nationally recognized legal technologist. Bruce is the president of ONLAW Trial Technologies, LLC, a consulting firm offering trial technology, eDiscovery, and computer forensic services. He is AV rated, Board Certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and the co-author of The Electronic Evidence and Discovery Handbook: Forms, Checklists and Guidelines, published by the American Bar Association. Bruce received the prestigious “TechnoLawyer of the Year 2002” Award, was Chair of the ABA TechShow 2004, Vice Chair of the ABA TechShow 2003, and served on the TechShow Board of Directors from 2000 through 2004.

Bruce wrote the following article to offer a personal account of how he came to discover and ultimately rely on OneNote in his professional life. Even if you’re not a lawyer yourself, this glimpse into how a professional uses OneNote in everyday life is sure to inspire ideas for using OneNote in your own line of work. Bruce’s article will soon be available on the Office Online site as well, but I’m posting it here on Nota Bene in order to provide you with larger screenshots (click any of the images below to zoom to the larger versions).
 

The trial lawyer’s electronic notebook

By Bruce A. Olson

My opposing counsel kept looking at me with obvious envy as I made my argument to the judge why certain key evidence should be excluded from the trial we were involved in. I could tell from the look on the attorney’s face that he was puzzled how I could refer to portions of the record, prior witness testimony, exhibits, case law, and a brief that I had previously submitted, all without a single piece of paper in front of me. The only thing I used was my laptop and a mouse. He sat at a table with loose papers piled haphazardly, manila folders strewn about, and a Bankers Box on the floor, stuffed to overflowing.

When my opponent was speaking, he spent as much time shuffling through his papers and folders as he did addressing the court. Eventually, his disorganization began to annoy the judge. At one point he simply could not find the case he was looking for. He begged the court’s indulgence and promised he would provide the case reference later, after he’d had an opportunity to reorganize his file during a break. The judge was not amused, was not willing to wait, and ruled against him.

Later during the break, the attorney came up to me and asked how I could do it. “You did the same thing during depositions,” he said to me. “How can you possibly have all those different parts of a case file organized in one place and viewable on your laptop screen?” I told him the solution was a good scanner and Microsoft OneNote 2007. I promised that when we were finished presenting the case and waiting for the jury to return their verdict, I would demonstrate how to conduct a paperless trial by using OneNote.

I was first exposed to OneNote when I received a complimentary license of what was then a brand-new product at the ABA TechShow. After I returned home and began to play with the product, I realized I had found a tool that had been an important missing link in my technology portfolio. I was already a technology power user. For many years I had scanned all incoming documents and loaded them and all internally generated documents into a litigation support program.

This kind of database program offers powerful ways to slice and dice information and to rapidly locate documents, photographs, and other electronic files. I’d also been an early adopter of trial presentation technology. This allowed me to take a document or picture, put it in front of a jury on a large screen or monitor, and highlight and annotate it just as John Madden does during Monday Night Football. However, none of these products, as sophisticated as they were, really gave me the equivalent of an electronic trial notebook. I needed an electronic legal pad, a place where I could easily organize my thoughts, create outlines of questions, create scripts for witness interrogations, and otherwise organize myself for either a deposition or a trial. I realized immediately as I played with my first version of OneNote 2003 that I could now create the electronic trial notebook I’d wanted. When OneNote 2007 became available, things only continued to improve.

Most trial lawyers organize themselves for trial in one of two ways — the “Bankers Box with manila folders” method or the “ring binder with colored tabs” method. Early in my career, I was ambivalent about the choices. Then I saw someone drop a four-inch wide ring binder on the courtroom floor. Several days worth of preparation went flying around the room, with no possibility of pulling it back together before the judge was ready to start. From then on, until I discovered OneNote, I was a “Bankers Box with manila folders” kind of guy. Because of this, the transition to OneNote was pretty simple. In many ways, what I saw on my screen in OneNote mimicked what I saw in the box and in the manila folders. However, if you happen to be a ring-binder person, don’t worry. The transition to OneNote will be just as easy for you.

What makes OneNote such an ideal candidate for an electronic trial notebook? First, when you open it, the opening screen looks like a blank page on a paper tablet. If you prefer, you can even download a free template from the Office Online Web site to make your OneNote notebook pages look like a traditional, yellow legal pad. The legal pad is the most basic of all attorneys’ tools, and this template can make even diehard traditionalists comfortable. I prefer starting with a nice blank white page. Once you open the program, just click the File menu, point to New, and then select Notebook. Then just follow the prompts in the wizard to create a new notebook:
 

Each notebook contains all of the materials that you’ll need for your case. You can create multiple cases and carry them all with you on your laptop when you go on the road. Also, OneNote has a collaboration feature that allows multiple users to work together on one case, with the ability to synchronize everyone’s work when desired.

After you create a case, you create sections that are like the manila folders in the Bankers Box method of organization.
 

In fact, each new section defaults to a tabbed manila folder view running across the top of the workspace. If you look at the pages in the section, it’s just like looking at pages in the manila folders in your traditional file. Using sections in OneNote, I can organize my entire case in the same way I always did. I normally have a separate section for pretrial motions and motions in limine. I have one section for each party’s opening statement. I then add a section for each witness. Finally, I add sections for exhibits, jury instructions, special verdict forms, and closing arguments. I can also color-code the tabs at the top for easy navigation.
 

I typically color all of my witness folders the same color. I use a different color for the witnesses called by the other parties as well as for their opening and closing statements. Each section then contains the type of materials you would ordinarily have in your paper file, just in electronic form.
 

It’s easy to add information to a section. An important feature is the ability to blind type anywhere you want on a page. It means you don’t have to be a master of a word-processing program to use OneNote. Just place your cursor wherever you want it on the page and start typing. This is just like being able to write a note anywhere on your legal pad. OneNote also supports handwriting recognition, so even if you can’t type, you can use this program with a Tablet PC or with an inexpensive tablet input device like a Wacom Bamboo to handwrite your notes.

To speed things up, I use voice-activated dictation, so I just place my cursor where I want the note and start talking into my headset. I let the voice-activated dictation program do the rest. As you write your notes, you create individual objects that are like text boxes. These can easily be dragged to change the order, copied and pasted to a different spot on the page, or even pasted to a page in a different section. The same is true for photos, screen captures, multipage documents, and other types of objects you might add to a section.

If you can print out a document on your computer, you can just as easily send it to OneNote. This functionality makes the program easy to use by someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience with litigation software programs. All you need to do is make sure the items you want in your case are scanned into a folder somewhere on your local drive so you can easily find them. Open the item you want copied to the section in OneNote, and then open the Print dialog box and select Send to OneNote 2007 as your printer.
 

The selected item will be printed to the page you have open in OneNote, with the cursor position determining the insertion point. You can print the whole thing or just selected pages. After you determine the parameters of the print job, just click OK. This works ideally for printing photographs, documents and exhibits, legal motions and briefs, jury instructions, special verdicts, and all the other types of documents that typically make up a legal file. You can print from Microsoft Office programs, but you can also print from other Windows programs, including Adobe Acrobat. PDF files are not a problem in OneNote.

While even a low-tech lawyer can use OneNote successfully, this doesn’t mean a high-tech lawyer would want to look elsewhere. OneNote works successfully with all of the major litigation support programs typically in use. Thus, you can have a huge case in a litigation support database and use the sophisticated search tools to find the subset of documents you are interested in discussing with a given witness. You then print the documents to the witness folder or section, and they are ready for use in OneNote.

Alternatively, and particularly if you are using an online repository type of program where you are accessing images by using a browser, you can use the OneNote Screen Clipping feature to grab a copy of an image. You can also print to OneNote the different types of reports that are typically generated from the spreadsheet view of the litigation support program. Since you can also blind type at any spot on the page, it is simple to send a number of exhibits to a witness folder first and then go back and develop your outline for questioning the witness. Just insert the text next to the exhibit in the location you prefer. Once things are on the page, you can rearrange by dragging or by cutting and pasting, using the typical shortcuts that every user of Microsoft products knows how to use.

In addition to the print to OneNote function, you can use the Screen Clipping tool to get information on the page.
 

This tool is ideal for capturing Web pages and other information gleaned from the Internet. It works just as well as a way to capture selected portions of a document when you don’t want to print the whole thing. It’s particularly useful for grabbing selected questions and answers from a deposition transcript, or for grabbing selected quotes from a reported case.
 

To see how this all works in practice, assume you have a document that might be tricky to have admitted into evidence. You want to set up a script for yourself to follow so you take all the necessary steps to get the document admitted without objection. You can set up your line of questioning in the following way: First, create a section for the witness you want to use to introduce the document. Then, open the document in its native application. Assume it is a two-page PDF that you’ve placed in a folder on your desktop. Print the entire document to OneNote, so it’s now located on the OneNote page in the appropriate section.

Place your cursor above the first page of the document and start typing reminders of the types of questions you need to ask the witness to lay a general foundation for the admissibility of the document. Assume further that you have a hearsay problem with a statement on page two of the document. Insert a note between the first and second pages to remind yourself to address the hearsay problem before you try to have the witness read the statement in front of the jury. Highlight the troublesome statement by using the yellow highlighter from the OneNote annotation tools so it’s easy to reference.

Assume further that you expect the witness to lie and deny that he ever wrote the document. Therefore, be sure to check his deposition transcript in advance, and find the section where he previously admitted that he wrote the document and made the statement in question. Use the Screen Clipping tool in OneNote to copy the questions and answers that relate to this admission, and paste them below the second page of the document. Now you will be prepared to impeach the witness with a prior inconsistent statement if he lies under oath at trial.

Assume you also have one of those stickler judges who requires you to cite the evidence code by number rather than by a general description of the rule in question. Use the Screen Clipping tool to grab a copy of the specific procedural rule from the electronic version of your court rules or procedural statutes. For good measure, grab a couple of quotes from cases in which it was ruled that the type of statement you’re trying to get admitted should be treated as an exception to the hearsay rule. If you want the full cases instead, print them to OneNote and then highlight and underline the important sections that relate to your argument with the annotation tools.

You’ve now pulled together all the pieces from your case file that you’ll need to get this particular item into evidence over any objection the other side might raise. Everything is located in one place, and you didn’t use a single piece of paper apart from printing the actual exhibit you intend to offer at trial. You won’t need to rummage around at counsel table trying to find the manila folder with the case law in it or the deposition transcript or the exhibit. Your line of questioning will be clear, concise, and focused on the witness rather than on the piles of materials.

These basic techniques can be adapted to address all of the typical functions a trial lawyer encounters during trial. Because OneNote is so simple to use, anyone should be able to use these techniques with a minimum of time invested in learning how to use the program. After you have the basics down, you can adapt the ways you use the program to fit your style. Keep in mind that it’s just as useful at depositions or motion hearings as it is at trial. In a sense, wherever you use a legal pad, you should consider using OneNote.

We all know that organization is the key to success at trial. Being organized is important, but appearing organized is also important. There is an intangible benefit to using OneNote at trial. If the judge and jury see you working coolly and calmly from a laptop, never struggling to find what you need, and seemingly able to adapt quickly on the fly, they will begin to give you and your case extra credibility. At least that is what my opponent told me after I’d shown him how to try a case in OneNote: “Bruce, you’ve made a convert out of me. As soon as I get back to the office I’m going to learn how to use OneNote. Be prepared. Next time I’ll match you on the battlefield!”
 
 

Game developer Bungie is one of the biggest names in the computer and console gaming market. The Kirkland, Washington company has 140 employees and is best known for its trilogy of Halo games, which are among the most successful video game titles ever released. The most recent installment — Halo 3: ODST — currently holds the #1 sales rank in Amazon.com’s Video Games category.

The development cycle at Bungie is quite long, with a new game released once every three years on average. During development, Bungie developers and designers gather and generate large volumes of ancillary materials during the pre-production phase, including text-based materials such as brainstorming notes, static visual materials that include character and landscape sketches, and even audio and video clips to help guide creative development. They also find inspiration in many places, including interesting images, graphics, and other media on the Web.

Traditionally, designers and programmers stored these bits of inspiration in different formats and locations. Without a centralized repository, sharing this information with colleagues might involve exchanging multiple e-mails, walking to another office, or putting files onto a shared network drive. Some materials are captured on whiteboards or bulletin boards; in some cases, whiteboards have even been sprayed with fixative and set aside to preserve their contents.

At the end of the development cycle, the company has traditionally needed to hire a temporary worker for several weeks to gather the production materials, scan in the production imagery, and organize it all into physical binders for archival purposes.

Because collaboration is such an important part of the game development process, Bungie wanted to find a way to more efficiently store all of its production materials, while simultaneously improving communication among development team members. “We wanted a way to share assets and information electronically and easily,” says Curtis Creamer, Senior Producer and Design Manager at Bungie. “We were working in an old paradigm, and we felt it was time to go digital.”

Any solution had to accommodate the different types of workers that compose a development team, and this shaped the company’s decision-making. “We have both artists and programmers on our team, and they tend to approach things in very different ways,” says Creamer. “The first thing we looked at was a wiki-based solution, and after a lot of investigation, we decided it was too technically complicated for a non-programmer, like a designer or artist, to quickly and easily get something up and running.”

As the difficulties with the wiki-based repository became apparent, Bungie began exploring other options for aggregating production materials and discovered that a promising solution was already installed on the company’s computers. Bungie was using Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007, which includes the OneNote 2007 note-taking program. “I had used an earlier version of OneNote years before, but just as a place to jot down notes,” explains Creamer. “But that experience gave me an introduction to some of the program’s other cool capabilities, like being able to drop an audio file into a page of notes, so I started looking into it more.”

Creamer experimented further with OneNote 2007, and he discovered that it had become a much more robust program since his first experience with the earlier version. “At first, I just shared a notebook out on a server and started playing with it,” explains Creamer. “It ended up being a good solution and we stuck with it. We didn’t have to do any customization, and since we already used the Microsoft Office suite, we could use OneNote 2007 at basically zero extra cost for us. It was like a free bonus with software we already had!”

Bungie found that its staff quickly became proficient with OneNote. No training was needed because everyone was able to get up and running by just using it. As more employees became familiar with OneNote 2007, its use increased to the point where it became the standard repository for all production materials. “Among other things, it’s become the official place where we keep our design documents and concept imagery,” says Creamer. “All of our lead designers are keeping iterations of their designs in the shared workbook.”

Bungie users have taken advantage of the variety of options for accessing and working with a common repository that are available in OneNote 2007. “We generally use it as a shared workbook that lives on one of our internal servers,” says Creamer. “Employees access it through their workstations at their desks, through Windows-based laptops, and even on Intel-based Macintosh laptops that have Windows installed. People can also access the workbook remotely from home, or they can take content offline with them and then sync up when they return to the office.”

While most team members were quickly won over by the features of the OneNote 2007 solution, a few employees were reluctant to embrace it at first. “We definitely had some die-hard wiki fanatics who were skeptical,” notes Creamer. “The thing that eventually won everyone over was the fact that it performed very well, that information was updated on the fly, and that it was super easy to get things in and out of the workbook.”

The Bungie team also appreciated the fact that OneNote 2007 had features that appealed to both artistic and technical users. “OneNote 2007 has a number of features that separate it from a word-processing document or a wiki,” says Christopher Barrett, Art Director at Bungie. “As an artist, I love the fact that you can drop in an image, drag it around, and put it where you want to without fighting formatting imposed by the program. That makes sense to an artist’s brain. I also love the screen clipping feature that makes it quick and easy to grab an image off of a Web site. That’s really helpful.”

Use of OneNote 2007 continues to evolve and grow over time at Bungie, as staff members become more familiar with the product and aware of its full capabilities. “Now that we understand what we use it for and how we want to use it, we’re being more directed in what we’re doing with it,” says Barrett.

To learn more about the benefits that OneNote 2007 brings to Bungie, check out the rest of this case study.

To learn more about what OneNote 2007 can do for you, start with our What is OneNote? video demo, or view any of our other demos that are available for free on Office Online.
 

The idea is simple: Even though some people in a particular community won’t care about the narrow and targeted subject matter, those to whom it speaks directly will ultimately get more out of the content. Think of it as a different take on the saying, “We’re speaking the same language.” In Joannie’s case, the intended audience was fellow writers, editors, and poets like herself.
 

In the traditional online Help systems (a.k.a. the online documentation) for each Microsoft Office program, the content we author and publish on the Office Online Web site is generally intended for the broadest possible audience in hopes of assisting as many people as possible. As you may suspect, this approach has its pros and cons. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you probably already know that I personally much prefer detail and substance over general, “one size fits all” content.

While Joannie writes all of the episodes in her Writer’s Guide series herself, she commissioned me to do the filming and editing, as well as some of the related tasks (music, titles, encoding, and so on.). Her very first episode was dedicated entirely to OneNote 2007. Since then, we’ve switched to high definition to allow our viewers to see the screen capture segments more clearly, and we left Joannie’s office behind in search of more interesting venues that serve as the backdrop for the live introductions and episode conclusions. You may have seen some of the recent episodes from Richard Hugo House in Seattle, a popular place where writers and editors from the Pacific Northwest gather daily to immerse themselves in their craft.

In late August, we received permission to film the next few episodes of the series at the Montford Press, a magnificent, privately held letterpress studio in West Seattle. Its proprietor, Carl Montford, is a lovely and learned man, who seemed to enjoy spending the day with us nearly as much as we enjoyed seeing all of the treasures that he had collected over the years. For a self-confessed typeface nerd like me, who has been geeking out on all things type since long before there was ever talk of “fonts,” I felt like a kid in a candy store in Carl’s studio. Just like art school takes care to pass on to modern students all of the old-fashioned ink-and-paint wisdom of the great masters, the sort of equipment and tools that we found in Carl’s studio still manage to inspire and influence the ways that our modern, computer-based printing and publishing solutions work and evolve. While I personally enjoy the many conveniences of the computer programs that I use (OneNote in particular), I still have a deep appreciation for seeing beautiful, inked letterforms press down on heavy paper to create a unique impression than can last through the centuries.
 

Joannie and I just published the very first episode from our Montford Press shoot. Although its “how-to” portion focuses mainly on line spacing techniques in Microsoft Word, I did want to mention it here on my OneNote blog because, as she often does, Joannie gives OneNote 2007 a prominent shout-out.

Have a look, if it interests you:
 

  You can watch all of the podcast episodes that Joannie and I have produced so far on our YouTube playlist.

Joannie loves OneNote as much as I do, and she uses it daily to get her ideas and creative writing out of her head and onto the page. Whatever your own profession or personal aspirations, Joannie’s Writer’s Guide series does a nice job of showing off how OneNote can be used with the other Office programs to make your life easier. The cool thing about narrow-casting is that its themed content doesn’t necessarily have to speak to you directly; much of the time, the how-to knowledge that it shares is universally useful.

The real question is: What do you think of “narrow-casting”? Do you like the idea? If so, what kinds of themes and series would you be interested in seeing? OneNote for students? Teachers? Lawyers? Physicians? Tablet PC users? Do only professions make good content themes or is there another kind of audience segment in the OneNote community that might benefit from content narrow-casting? Please post a comment to make a suggestion or to share your thoughts and ideas. If you don’t like the idea of narrow-casting, I would like to know your reasons for that, too.

As always, thanks for dropping by for a visit — and thanks for using OneNote!
 

Over the years, many students and teachers who already rely on OneNote in school have told us that they wish OneNote 2007 were standard issue in every classroom. The word about OneNote’s many benefits in school has traveled fast, but a lot of people in education still have no idea just how well OneNote is suited to daily use — inside and outside of the classroom.

For those of you who are taking OneNote to school for the first time, here are some of the free back-to-school resources that are currently available on Office Online:
 

The entire first part of the Office at School: For Students site is dedicated to OneNote 2007. Check out how an MIT grad student uses OneNote in the classroom, learn how you can use OneNote with the Cornell note-taking method (a free template is provided to help you get started), watch a demo or two to discover new features you may not have tried out yet, and be sure to check out the many student-oriented templates you can download for free. OneNote integrates nicely with some of the other Microsoft Office programs, so be sure to browse through the rest of our student site, too. Are you a student who’s looking for more ideas and resources to help you in the classroom and in your studies? Post a comment with specifics here on my blog and I’ll do my best to help you find them!
 

Well, now there’s another reason to love it. Microsoft OneNote now has its very own fan page on Facebook, which means you now have an easier way to get free tips about your favorite program, share ideas about the ways you use OneNote, and get answers to OneNote-related questions that you’ve always wanted to ask.

The nice thing about joining the OneNote fan page is that it integrates nicely with Facebook’s existing news feed and notification system. You can choose to see Help & How-to tips in your Facebook news feed automatically or read them only when you want to. Similarly, if you post something on the fan page, you can choose to be notified whenever someone responds to you.

Of course, I encourage my valued readers to do the same right here on my OneNote blog. ;)  Your comments are always welcome and appreciated, so please let me know if you found this information useful.