Pens,colors, highlighting - Note taking

[stern88]

I LOVE ONE NOTE - I own 2003 and I am currently using 2007 beta 2 . I have a
Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC and 2003 One Note came loaded. I use this
now more than I use Word and I am known for being a Word fanatic. I have a
suggestion regarding all of the pen color, highlighting wants and needs. I
am a HUGE note taker and have a system that I have used since my years of
studying in France. I constantly switch back and forth with pen colors and
highlighters while note taking. Green=definitions, Red=Important fact/note,
Blue=normal info, Black=check fact or info - Highlighters have the same sort
of definitions. Remember the pens that had 4 colors when there were no
laptops? Given that this is not an uncommon way of taking notes, and that the
laptop combined with One Note makes this a pleasure - what if you included 2
color palettes ( 1 for pens and 1 for highlighters) ? We could choose to use
them like floating toolbars and select colors for the pens and highlighters
on the fly. It seems like the ideal solution for all of the pen/highlighter
color requests being made. This way you retain 1 pen and select colors, most
people do not change the size of the tip as much as they change the colors. I
use a fine point for everything except highlighters, which I normally set to
thickness 5 and I usually do not vary size frequently. One Note is my
favorite app and I love everything about it !! Adding this feature would
accommodate everyone - especially those in classes or heavy note takers like
myself. It seems that throughout many of the Windows apps, these palettes
are readily available (like in paint - you could even use a right click
function with the palette). I would appreciate knowing how much effort this
would take to add this feature and if other would find this useful.
--
P. Stern

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http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...ae41-2ca47c7bc333&dg=microsoft.public.onenote

 

[Daniel Escapa [MS]]

You can already do this with note flags can't you?

Just look @ the default note flag for "definition" which makes the colour
green. Now you can edit the note flags so that you have your own ones in
there, just for this. Wouldn't that be what you are looking for?

Then you can open the note flags toolbar and use it as a floating palette
just as you want.

 

[stern88]

I love the flags, however sometimes you don't have a chance to contantly add
them. While taking notes, it's much easier to tap a button and change the
pen color. If there was an option to add flags with a right click, I might
use them more often. When I am taking notes, I really have times when if I
lift my pen off of the page, I miss crucial info. Classes sometimes have a
slower pace where adding a flag is a 1 second deal and is no issue. In the
working world - when you are in intense meetings and info is crucial, I know
it sounds funny, but to stop note taking to add a flag is not always
convenient, and info can be missed. I thing that the color palettes would
give a lot of users what they are asking for and that toolbar space with all
of the pens could be shortened. 1 pen, 1 size option, 2 palettes floating
seems ideal.

 

[Rainald Taesler]

While taking notes, it's much easier to tap a button and change the
pen color.

I don't agree on this.

If there was an option to add flags with a right click, I might
use them more often.

Just put the toolbar with the flags to the left of your ON screen.
Then it's just a left click (a click with the pen) which - as to my
experience with the pen of my tc1100 is a lot faster and easier.

Could it be that you are just missing the feature of the vertical
flag-toolbar on the left side?

Rainald

 

[stern88]

Thanks for your feedback. I do have the flags toolbar,however, many of the
posts are asking for color changes for the pen. The flags are nice and I
enjoy them, but it does not satisfy a color change inthe pen. I guess that
when a note taking system is in place and you have been using it for years,
you are hesitant to change it, you know, if it's not broken,don't fix it?
guess that a lot of other users have a need for several pens and
highlighters and I just thought that the palette idea would accommodate those
requests. The whole idea of being able to take handwritten notes on my laptop
is fantastic but if a lot of users are requesting this,I thought it might be
a viable solution. Does anyone know how hard this would be for the Microsoft
team? Since those palettes are available throughout Windows and Apps, it
seems like half of the effort is complete - or am I mistaken?

 

[Rainald Taesler]

[...] The flags are nice and I enjoy them, but it does not
I follow you on this.
It's just two different ways of doing things. and the one is no
replacement for the other.

Depends.
When upgrading to a new software (or even a new version) - and ON 2007
in some respects is like a new system - which offers new techniques
meaning more flexibility and more versatility and better ways of
organizing things, then one always has to face the problem of what to
do with old things.
So with notebooks.
Just leave the old stuff as it was or change the existing items in
order to gain consistency for the future?

For sure having different pens and highlighters would really be of
help.
A pen driven system can offer quite a lot an add a lot to
productivity.
Highlighting text (be in ON or Acrobat) like one does with a
highlighter on paper, underlining important paragraphs and adding
remarks like one does with a book, adding flags like one does with
PostIt tape-flags in a thick law-book etc.etc. come far closer to the
way one works in "real life".
And using a pen for this and other tasks make things far easier
compared to using the un-natural thing called keyboard.

No doubt about that.

I agree.
I did not at all want to deny the validity of your proposal.
My previous remark was only addressing your objections to Daniel's
suggestions.
These were pointed to a *workaround*, not more. One could also read
them as some kind of excuse <g&d>.

I agree that using flags which automatically colour text may be
useful. But it's something quite different from (a) different pens and
(b) sophisticated highlighting.

And as far as really productive usage of TabletPCs and their pen
features is concerned, IMHO the present version of ON has not at all
reached the necessary level.

Manual remarks and highlights added to documents (annotating text,
especially on imported documents) and highlighting still are not
really working the way it would be needed, f.e.:
* if one has highlighted something in a text using the highlighter pen
(which is the normal translation of doing it in the real world) puts
the highlight on top of the text and when printing it makes the
underlying text unreadable;
* highlights as well as annotations can not be tied to the text (no
grouping feature [IMO one of the most serious gaps in ON]); this means
that any editing of a text with adding or deleting something - as well
as a relocation of a text and/or an imported document - causes the
items to get out of sync.

To take care of these basic problems (possibly due to serious lacks in
the underlying conceptual models of ON) IMO would be far more
important than any details like changing colours of pens and
highlights.
As long as a highlight or an annotation are just floating around they
are not really usable the way needed. And in so far IMHO it does not
really matter how easy or difficult it was to change the colours.

Sorry, no idea on any internals on the side of MS.

I do not aspect that in the final of ON 2007 we might see any changes
with concerning the above outlined basic needs. May be doing something
with the colours might be possible.

Rainald

 

[Grant Robertson]

You can already do this with note flags can't you?

What a lot of people, especially MS people for some reason, seem to keep
forgetting is that you can only add flags to entire paragraphs. However,
when someone is taking notes there are many times where only one phrase
within a paragraph needs to be set aside as different.

However, what the original poster, as well as all the MS and MVP people,
seems to have missed is that all you have to do is right-click in the
toolbar area and choose the My Pens toolbar and he/she will have exactly
what they are asking for.

 

[stern88]

Grant - Thanks for your response. I have the pens toolbar, however A. There
seems to be a problem with the pens retaining any settings in the 2007 beta2
version. B. The pens toolbar is a great tool, but I am suggesting that we
might be able to do away with 4 pens (small thickness) 4 pens (thicker) and 4
highlighters. If we had a way of changing the the colors on the fly by just
selecting from a palette that is always visible - we could use 1 pen. In
other words - the toolbar could use a color palette and 1 button for
thickness. What do you think ? I keep going back to the palettes that appear
in "paint", the desktop settings, publisher, etc. - and all of the new office
2007 beta versions of Word, Powerpoint, Excel - seem to have exactly what we
could use in OneNote. Are you using the beta version ? If so, open Word. On
the "styles" toolbar, select "change styles" and then select "colors". This
would be ideal for One Note and it looks like all of the homework has been
done. Do you think this would be useful ? Are you a heavy note taker?

 

[Patrick Schmid]

Custom pens seem to be broken in B2.

Patrick Schmid

 

[Grant Robertson]

Do you think this would be useful ? Are you a heavy note taker?

Yeah, I am a pretty heavy note taker. When I am actually taking notes for
class I still do it in OneNote 2003 because you can easily rearrange the
paragraphs without them getting corrupted and without having to switch to
a different pen mode. In 2007 you have to switch to the text select tool
in order to rearrange paragraphs. In 2003 you can also easily indent a
paragraph just by starting a line farther to the right. You can't do this
in 2007.

Perhaps you are right about the pallets. It would be nice to have
programmable buttons that you could make do just about anything the
software could do with only one click. You could program a button to
change the ink color or to set the ink thickness, then arrange them in a
pallet of your choosing.

<rant mode on>
You would think that software developers would have figured out that
users would want this years ago. Instead they continue to give us a mixed
bag of functionality where some things are only available via menus and
digging deep down into several layers of dialogs and some things are only
available via certain buttons and yet other things are only available via
pull down menus that are on buttons. I know that some programs allow you
to write macros and assign those macros to buttons but you gotta be a
freaking programmer just to do that and get it to work reliably. Then in
the next version the darn macros break anyway. People just want a way to
make a button, set it to any darn function the program will do, without
programming, then put it any where they want. Is that so darn difficult
to understand? Geez you would think it would have become a universal
standard years ago. But Noooo! I'm not just complaining about Microsoft.
There isn't a single program that does this and it is the freaking Twenty
First century for crying out loud. I'm not asking for a flying car here.
Just give people the ability to customize things the way they freaking
want.
<rant mode off.... for now>

 

[stern88]

GREAT NEWS!! Microsoft DID include a palette for the pens !! If you take a
look at the writing tools toolbar,you will see a little color wheel - it
allows you tochange your pen colors on the fly, EXACTLY what I was looking
for!! I just LOVE MICROSOFT!! Now, I wonder if we could add another one for
thehighlighters ?

 

[stern88]

Yeah!! The color wheelworks for both the pens and the highlighters!! 1 pen, 1
pallette,1 thickness button - IT'S ABSOLUTELY PERFECT !! Thank you to
Microsoft for understanding how people take notes !!

 

[Rainald Taesler]

stern88 shared these words of wisdom:

[...] In other words - the toolbar could use a color
palette and 1 button for thickness. What do you think ?

Apart from what I said yesterday on the far more serious omissions
regarding annotating with the pen, I fully agree.

[...] If so, open Word. On the "styles" toolbar, select "change

styles" and then select "colors". This would be ideal for
One Note and it looks like all of the homework has been
done.

I did not yet test the other office 2007 applications.
But IMO even in Word 2003 annotating an existing text with the pen was
easier than in it is ON 2007. But I may be wrong on this.
How things can work - and IMHO should work in ON too - is shown by the
PDF Annotater
http://www.ograhl.com/en/pdfannotator/

Do you think this would be useful ?

Yes, it would.
Pls be so kind as to post this as a suggestion in "Connect" and drop a
link here so that we can vote for it.

Are you a heavy note taker?

Heavy?
The doctor said I'd better try to drop a few pounds <bg>

Note taker?
YesNo.
I'd like to become one. But quite some obstacles getting in my way
:-( :-(

OneNote is a fantastic piece of software, no doubt. And I'm sure that
I will heavily use it for many purposes. Taking notes and making
annotations on a TabletPC would need quite some improvement, however.

Rainald

 

[stern88]

One more thought - If you could make the color picker in One Note work like
the color picker in Word 2007 beta2, it would be perfect. We would have a
wider range of colors for both pens and highlighters.

 

[Rainald Taesler]

stern88 shared these words of wisdom:

GREAT NEWS!! Microsoft DID include a palette for the pens !! If
you take a look at the writing tools toolbar,you will see a
little color wheel -

A "wheel"???
I see this as a normal down arrow for opening sub-items.

it allows you tochange your pen colors on
the fly, EXACTLY what I was looking for!! I just LOVE
MICROSOFT!! Now, I wonder if we could add another one for
the highlighters ? --

You really got me with your idea of a unified palette so that I did
just overlook that needed tools for the selection - which I have used
pretty often - are there [grrrrh]

Rainald

 

[Rainald Taesler]

stern88 shared these words of wisdom:

One more thought - If you could make the color picker in One
Note work like the color picker in Word 2007 beta2, it would be
perfect. We would have a wider range of colors for both pens and
highlighters. --

May I repeat my suggestion that you post this in "Connect"?
You wont get it "on the list" otherwise.

Rainald

 

[stern88]

For all interested - This has been submitted as a suggestion in "Connect"
using id 175055 and named "Pens, Highlighters - Colors". If you would like
this idea and would like to vote to see if we can add this functionality -
please login to "connect" and cast your vote .. Thank you Rainald for your
suggestion.