Onenote categories (like in Outlook)

[me]

My suggestion is Onenote should include categories like in outlook so you can
index notes by multiple topics.

This would be particularly useful to students using onenote for instance. A
note might be a lecture on "leadership" but also relevant to the categories
"change management" and "Human resources." This helps cope with the fact
that everything doesn't fit into neat sections; in real life topics tend to
overlap. You can use noteflags to do the same sort of thing of course but
there aren't enough of them. It would be easier to index by the words rather
than noteflag symbols anyway as the symbols are pretty meaningless.

Another way of thinking about it .. if it makes sense to organise your tasks
into one or more categories in Outlook, it certainly makes sense to organise
your notes a similar way!

As any good library will tell you indexing with categories is key to
searching successfully

 

[Andrew Watt [MVP - InfoPath]]

My suggestion is Onenote should include categories like in outlook so you can
index notes by multiple topics.

This would be particularly useful to students using onenote for instance. A
note might be a lecture on "leadership" but also relevant to the categories
"change management" and "Human resources." This helps cope with the fact
that everything doesn't fit into neat sections; in real life topics tend to
overlap. You can use noteflags to do the same sort of thing of course but
there aren't enough of them. It would be easier to index by the words rather
than noteflag symbols anyway as the symbols are pretty meaningless.

Another way of thinking about it .. if it makes sense to organise your tasks
into one or more categories in Outlook, it certainly makes sense to organise
your notes a similar way!

As any good library will tell you indexing with categories is key to
searching successfully

Hi,

Requests for categorisation and better searching have been made
frequently (not least from me).

I am sure that Microsoft is aware that there have been requests. What
makes it through to the product in its next version is a separate
question. We won't know until we know.

Andrew Watt
MVP - InfoPath

 

[me]

Well I hope categories are in the next release. I've not seen any previews
that they are on the way.

In the meantime , everyone else who is interested in adding outlook
categories to onenote notes - please vote for this feature at the top of the
thread! (there's only seven votes so far)
thanks
Paul

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

Well I hope categories are in the next release. I've not seen any
previews
that they are on the way.

Would more note flags be sufficient? How important is it for the
categories to synchronize with Outlook categories?


--
-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, MVP-OneNote/Outlook
Operations Coordinator
Stockholm/KSG - Honolulu
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenotefaq.htm

 

[me]

Would more note flags be sufficient? How important is it for the
categories to synchronize with Outlook categories?

No, note flags are limited and not text based. The key principals of
categories are - its a text named tag (like in Flickr), and you can have a
limitless number. Categories has been really well inplemented in products
like Evernote, and is a big obmission from Onenote in my opinion

 

[me]

My suggestion is Onenote should include categories like in outlook so you can
index notes by multiple topics.

This would be particularly useful to students using onenote for instance. A
note might be a lecture on "leadership" but also relevant to the categories
"change management" and "Human resources." This helps cope with the fact
that everything doesn't fit into neat sections; in real life topics tend to
overlap. You can use noteflags to do the same sort of thing of course but
there aren't enough of them. It would be easier to index by the words rather
than noteflag symbols anyway as the symbols are pretty meaningless.

Another way of thinking about it .. if it makes sense to organise your tasks
into one or more categories in Outlook, it certainly makes sense to organise
your notes a similar way!

As any good library will tell you indexing with categories is key to
searching successfully

Well it looks like we're not going to get categories in Onenote 2007. I've
seen the beta, and I could see anything

 

[Ben M. Schorr - MVP]

I'm not really sure what the issue is - can't you create your own keyword in
the text and use that as a category with the search?

We don't really use categories (other than entire separate pages) but if we
did we'd probably just do something like "catrospect" "cat:Client" etc.,
etc. and then use Search to find them if we needed to.


--
Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP
Roland Schorr & Tower
http://www.rolandschorr.com
Microsoft OneNote FAQ: http://www.factplace.com/onenotefaq.htm

**I apologize but I am unable to respond to direct requests for assistance.
Please post questions and replies here in the newsgroup. Mahalo!

 

[ricochet]

I'd like note flags to sync with Outlook categories, personally. It
would be helpful if you use labelling like gmail users do.

 

[me]

I think the previous post answered that question.

You collect notes for a particular project, but...the notes could apply
to other projects as well. If they've been well "tagged" (i.e.,
categories assigned)...a lot of modern software allows you to search and
display data based on a category search, and then work with them as if
they were all in the same folder. You can quickly find and use the same
notes in multiple projects easily.

Outlook has this feature and it's one I personally use very heavily to
organize tasks, etc. It's also the basis for del.icio.us...and it's
usefulness should be obvious based on the popularity of that service.
It's also in almost all blogging software as well as Evernote, Treepad,
InfoSelect, MyInfo, Zoot, AskSam, InfoHandler, InfoRecall,
UltraRecall...shall I go on?

This is not a new idea. It is, however, outside the idea of trying to
duplicate a paper notebook. I think OneNote has successfully duplicated
the paper notebook, including it's limitations. It's time to step
outside that paradigm and implement some of the features one turns to a
computerized solution for.

DG,
thanks for this reply to my original post. I couldn't have explained it
better myself.
I just hope someone from the Onenote development team reads your post. It
strikes me, like you say, they are stuck with the notebook paradigm and are
duplicating all its paper limitations.

 

[me]

I'm not really sure what the issue is - can't you create your own keyword in
the text and use that as a category with the search?

We don't really use categories (other than entire separate pages) but if we
did we'd probably just do something like "catrospect" "cat:Client" etc.,
etc. and then use Search to find them if we needed to.


--
Aloha,

-Ben-
Ben M. Schorr, OneNote-MVP

Entering your own categories is pretty limiting Ben. For instance, its hard
to search for them and you can't view all your notes that match that category
in one click.

Also, that forces you to list somewhere all the unique words you're using for
categorisation so you can remember them.

It would be a lot easier if we could have categories like in Outlook. It
strikes me as really odd that Micrsoft's first PIM (outlook) has categorises,
but the information manager (Onenote) doesn't!

 

[me]

I'd like note flags to sync with Outlook categories, personally. It
would be helpful if you use labelling like gmail users do.

I agree with this comment.
Note flags in Onenote and categories in Outlook seem to me to be very
slightly different ways of categorising information.

Office 2007 is meant to be delivering integration between Outlook and
Onenote, yet we seem to have 2 completely different ways in each respective
package to categorise information! Seems crazy to me...

 

[EMRhelp.org]

Re: categorization and OneNote.

I have, as the MVPs around here will attest, constantly criticized
OneNote for not having categories, since Day #1.

OneNote 2007 fails to deliver categories.

OneNote, is 100% not an information manager as someone earlier
suggested.

It is a mediocre Notes Manager. That's it.

A great thread here was the one where the MVPs listed all the things
that OneNote was *NOT*. The list was very long.

OneNote 2003 is nothing more than Windows Journal with Tabs.

OneNote 2007 is an improvement. The biggest improvement is the
internal linking within OneNote. This fuctions well and makes OneNote
more useful than EverNote. (other than EverNote's incredibly useful
categories).

Why MS doesnt realize the information worker needs more integration is
beyond me. As well, why another company hasn't delivered anything
either.

Hope springs eternal.

 

[me]

Re: categorization and OneNote.

I have, as the MVPs around here will attest, constantly criticized
OneNote for not having categories, since Day #1.

OneNote 2007 fails to deliver categories.

OneNote, is 100% not an information manager as someone earlier
suggested.

It is a mediocre Notes Manager. That's it.

I suggest you post this comment to Chris Pratley Onenote blog- he seems to
be listening to ideas for Onenote improvements via his blog , and as he seems
to be in charge, he's the person to influence. I've posted on it, but I seem
to be a soul voice so far.

http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/

 

[EMRhelp.org]

Chris reads everything. He's a smart guy.

 

[EMRhelp.org]

me, you have a lot of good ideas.
Don't waste them here....

Look for the OneNote threads in the software section at
www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum
Chris Pratley definitely reads all of those threads.

 

[me]

me, you have a lot of good ideas.
Don't waste them here....

Look for the OneNote threads in the software section at
www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum
Chris Pratley definitely reads all of those threads.

Whereabouts? I can't see that much discussion on Onenote over the past month
in the tabletpc software discussion thread.

 

[EMRhelp.org]

Here is the big OneNote thread.

http://www.tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=24523

It's getting a bit dated I suspect.

Start your own thread

You've got some good ideas that need airing.

 

[Erik Sojka (MVP)]

You're the only one here who's ever claimed that OneNote was an
information manager. You're that "someone".