Use OneNote when mobile

Note: There won’t be any blog posts on Thursday and Friday this week (as I imagine everyone in the US being gone for the holidays, as will I).

We’ve talked a little about how easy it is to take notes with OneNote. It can handle text, graphics, screen shots, and even audio recordings with ease. I have used OneNote to record meetings so that I could focus on the conversation instead of typing in notes.

But what if you need to jot something down and you’re at your desktop instead of your laptop? Or if all you have at the moment is a Windows Mobile phone?

OneNote makes that easy, too. It can share a notebook among multiple computers and even allow several people to work out of the same notebook. (Tomorrow’s post.)

When you create a new notebook, OneNote asks how you plan to use it. If you want to share it between computers, you have a few options for where to save it. The easiest is to use one of those removable USB drives. If you like to save lots of screen clippings or record meetings into your notebook, just make sure you use a large drive.

You don’t need to do anything special to keep track of the files. OneNote will make sure all computers have the same version of your notebook.

If you have a Windows Mobile phone, you’ll definitely want to install the special mobile version of OneNote. It allows you to read and take notes on your smartphone and those new notes will magically appear in the notebook on your PC.

When you connect your smartphone to your PC using ActiveSync, it should automatically ask you if you want to install OneNote Mobile. If it doesn’t, from the OneNote menu on your PC, click Tools, then Options, then select OneNote Mobile from the category list. Finally, click the Install OneNote Mobile button. Soon, One Note will appear in the programs list on your smartphone.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk about sharing notebooks with other people. I’ll give you some tips to help you cut through the clutter and immediately see what’s new.

Suzanne