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Microsoft OneNote 2010 review

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Verdict

Better integration with Word, PowerPoint and Internet Explorer, together with huge improvements to co-authoring, move OneNote into the mainstream

Review Date: 7 Jun 2010

Price when reviewed: £60 (£71 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Ease of Use
5 stars out of 6

PCPRO Recommended

The phrase "note-taking software" makes OneNote sound like a peripheral, lightweight application, but Microsoft is making a concerted attempt to bring it to the fore. Indeed, it now stands shoulder to shoulder with Word and Excel: OneNote is bundled with all of the Office 2010 suites apart from Office Starter, while benefiting from an online version in the form of the OneNote Web App.

Full Office 2010 reviews

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Microsoft Publisher 2010
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Microsoft Office 2010 the verdict

The main sign of the application’s promotion to the front line of Office apps isn't in OneNote itself, but in PowerPoint and Word, where the Linked Notes button sits with pride on the Review tab. Press this and a miniaturised version of OneNote docks to the right-hand side of the screen. You might well ask: so what?

Well, let's say you receive a presentation and want to make notes as you view it. With Linked Notes activated, each note you make is tied to the slide you're looking at, so you can jump straight to the right point when you review your notes. Or, if you're researching a project, drag and drop text and pictures from Internet Explorer and those pages will be automatically linked.

This “Dock to Desktop” view isn’t just for Linked Notes. You can press the Dock button found in OneNote’s Quick Access Toolbar (above the ribbon) at any time to create a stripped-down version of the application, and then scribble down notes as you work in other programs. The clever bit is that Windows treats the left-hand side of the docked OneNote window as if it was the edge of the screen – you can’t drag other windows over it.

OneNote 2010 also sees far greater emphasis on sharing and co-working on notebooks. You can do this via SharePoint or even over the office network, but the greatest power comes via the web. Saving a notebook to Microsoft's SkyDrive service allows many people to work on it concurrently - Microsoft has introduced page versioning to make this fool-proof. Thanks to the OneNote web app, your fellow authors don't even need to have OneNote installed on their desktop.

Despite all these innovations, OneNote's main use is surely note-taking in meetings, and there haven't been many changes here compared to OneNote 2007. You can still record audio at the same time as you make notes (and then jump to the place in the recording when you're checking those notes later), you can still tag sentences with "Important", "To-Do", "Question", or whatever you define yourself. And, most cleverly, then use these tags to generate a list of tasks at the end of the meeting. It’s a brilliant way to be more organised.

OneNote didn't benefit from the Ribbon in Office 2007, and while its introduction in 2010 is welcome there are rough edges. Microsoft's premade Ribbon tabs don't feel well thought out in places, and it's particularly disappointing that the Backstage view is so basic, with the Print tab not even showing a preview of pages.

But we're being picky. While there's room for improvement, this is a great app that deserves its place in the Office limelight, and it could rapidly become the program that sits open all day, just like your web browser does now.

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Comments

User comments

Definitely worth keeping

I've already mentioned that I dumped the 2010 versions of Word and Excel and gone back to 2003, but OneNote is definitely one of the 2010 versions that are much better and is staying on my laptop.

I particularly like the Send to OneNote tool in Outlook 2010 which allows me to send important emails to relevant sections on the notebook, which is easier and better than the old method of switching screens to take a screen clipping.

By mviracca on 9 Jun 2010

Ben Searson

I used OneNote 2007 to create a knowledge base system for our engineers, everyone can add to it and then it syncs when you're connected to the office network. i can seen to get the 2010 version to see the 2007 files. I'm I doing something wrong????

By BenSearson on 10 Jun 2010

Brilliant, but...

This is one of those apps that I feel I should use all the time but just never get over the learning curve for.
Anyone know a good introduction/training resource that will wean me off my highlighter and post-its? MS's own material, like much of the stuff they put out, is full of breathlessly enthusiastic people doing absolutely trivial tasks.

By worryman on 10 Jun 2010

Guide to Office 2010

@worryman. If you can wait until the 16th of June, PC Pro has produced a 150-page guide to Office 2010 that includes a getting started piece on OneNote 2010. Should be enough to help you!

The guide costs £7.99 and will be sold in WHSmith and online.

Tim Danton
Editor, PC Pro

By TimDanton on 10 Jun 2010

Sync Files

Ben,
Where are your OneNote files held? Network folder, SharePoint 2007 or SharePoint 2010?

OneNote 2010 can read and write 2007 format files but does better if they are upgraded to 2010 format. Of course, that requires all users to have OneNote 2010.

What do you mean by OneNote 2010 "can't see" the 2007 files?

Have you tried using File | Open and changing the file type from "OneNote Table of Contents (*.onetoc2)" to "OneNote Sections (*.one)"?

By Simon_Jones_RWC on 13 Jun 2010

Guide to Office 2010

Hi Tim
Thanks for the tip off, I'll look out for it.
And just so everyone doesn't think I'm a plant, let me say that I think PCPro has been very lenient on MS in its reviews of Office 2010. The changes are nice, but really dont amount to much for three years' work by what was (until the last few weeks) the world's biggest tech corporation. To give just one example, incredibly it is still much harder work to find and update contacts in Outlook than on most smartphones.

By worryman on 13 Jun 2010

Find and Update Contacts

worryman,
Could you expand on what you mean by "it is still much harder work to find and update contacts in Outlook"?

How are you having problems finding contacts? What are you trying to update that is difficult?

By Simon_Jones_RWC on 14 Jun 2010

Find and Update Contacts, a couple of examples

If you search in the Find a Contact box for a contact that is a company rather than a person, you are likely to get a blank results box.
If you get an email from a new address and want to add it to contacts, Outlook provides no help. If you try to find the contact it will just give an error message (rather than, say, suggesting someone with the same name so you can update them, or offering to start a fresh contact). On the other hand, Suggested Contacts seems happy to create endless duplicates for addresses already in my contacts list.

By worryman on 15 Jun 2010

Find and Update Contacts

There are two "Find Contacts" boxes. The one on the Home tab (Home | Find | Find a Contact) is a little temperamental. It appears to only search the "File As".

However, if you switch to the Contacts section in the Navigator the "Search Contacts" box (Ctrl+E) will search all the text in every contact item. So, type a company name and it will list every person you know who works for that company and any contact record you have just for the company itself.

You can use all the Search features in this box, searching for phone numbers, categories, addresses. The Search Tools tab on the Ribbon gives many possibilities.

To add a contact record for somone who has emailed you, right click their name/address on the email and choose "Add to Outlook Contacts". This will create a contact record for their name and email address. Add any other information you know about them (drag text or copy and paste from the email to the contact record). (TIP: Drag a large chunk of text such as the person's name/address/phone nos to the NOTES field on the contact record and then drag the individual bits from there to the relevant fields.)

When you click Save & Close, Outlook will check if you already have a contact record for this person and if you have it will offer to merge the information you've just provided into the existing record.

If you're getting an error message on trying to lookup an email address that suggests your installation of Outlook has a problem and you should try to fix it. Try repairing Office from Control Panel or check you have the "Outlook AddressBook" service installed and running.

The fact that you are getting duplicates in Suggested Contacts may also point to an underlying problem which needs to be addressed.

By Simon_Jones_RWC on 15 Jun 2010

Find and Update Contacts

Thanks Simon.
These are the work-arounds I use, and think they just support my case.
Outlook is unhelpful ("Could not find a contact with this address"; iPhone: "Add to existing contact? Create new contact?"
And something as basic as search on the ribbon is broken (as it was in 2007). Using my company-only example, the search generates a blank results box which leads to the message "The operation failed. An object cannot be found." Not when you want when looking for the number of your local curry house.
Outlook's shortcomings were really brought home to me by the fact that my phone and Outlook are both front ends for the same Exchange database.
As I say, what did they spend the last three years doing?
Thanks for all your help.
David

By worryman on 16 Jun 2010