Microsoft OneNote Overview

 

Microsoft OneNote is a computer program for free-form information gathering and multi-user collaboration.  It gathers users' notes (handwritten or typed), drawings, screen clippings and audio commentaries. Notes can be shared with other OneNote users over the Internet or a network.

 

In OneNote, users can enter typed text via keyboard, create tables and insert pictures.  Unlike a word processor, however, users can write anywhere on a virtually unbounded document window by just clicking there.  Also, users do not need to explicitly save their work – OneNote saves data automatically as the user works.

 

OneNote saves information in pages organised into sections within notebooks.  The interface provides an electronic version of a tabbed ring-binder, into which the user can directly make notes and gather material from other applications.

 

• Pages can be arbitrarily large

• Bitmap images can be inserted without loss of quality

• There is no enforced uniform page layout or structure

• Users can move pages within the binder and annotate them with a stylus or word-processing or drawing tools.  Users may add embedded multimedia recordings and Web links.

 

While OneNote commonly runs on laptops or desktop PCs, additional features support pen-enabled tablet computers, in environments where pen, audio or video notes are more appropriate than an intensive use of keyboard. OneNote integrates search features and indexing into a free-form graphics and audio repository.  It can search images (e.g., screen captures, embedded document scans, photographs) for embedded text-content.  It also searches 'electronic ink' annotations as text, and phonetically searches audio recordings on a text key.  It can replay audio concurrently with notes taken during the recording.

 

Its multi-user capability allows offline paragraph-level editing with later synchronisation and merging.  This facilitates collaboration among workgroups members who are not always online.  More than one person can work on the same page at the same time - using OneNote as a shared whiteboard environment.