Hello all, I'm starting to like OneNote. I

[tablet_phantom]

Hello all,

I'm starting to like OneNote. I felt there was a pretty steep learning curve to start out, but now that I am into it, it’s making a lot of sense and already, I’m impressed.

Here are a few of my gripes:

Recording takes too long to start. I am running the Toshiba TabletPC (that’s 1.3 Mhz PIII processor with 512 MB RAM), and it takes 2-3 seconds for the recording feature to start. Obviously, this results in notes that are missing the first few seconds. The Sound Recorder Accessory doesn’t have any startup lag time at all, so I don’t quite get why this is.

OneNote takes too long to anticipate a new paragraph. I don’t want to click to start a new line because then I have a new bullet point. Perhaps a pen gesture for Hard Return or a slightly transparent/unobtrusive button or icon that you could press to get a new line.

I am getting some lines that are one complete thought, but are interpreted as multiple items on the same line. There should be an easy way to flatten or merge them all together into one thought if the applications interprets them incorrectly. For example... I am finding that I have a lot of sentences where the first letter is considered part of another line. When I select "The quick brown fox jumped..." I get two sentences "T" and "he quick brown fox jumped...". I try and drag that sentence to snap to an outline and you can obviously see what the problem is.

Moving Sections and pages seems clumsy. Say I want to move Section Tab number 2 between Section 5 and section 6. So I right-click Section Tab number 2 and choose Move. I am presented with a dialog box that says “The Section you are moving is placed below the section you select.” So naturally, I select Section 5, thinking that it will move Section Tab 2 below 5. Instead of putting Section 2 below section 5, it moves Section 5 to the very end of the list. It doesn’t quite do it the way I want it to. The only way I see to accomplish this is to keep moving items to the end, until it comes up with the order that I want. Why not just let us Drag and drop tabs like the way you can drag and drop Worksheets in Excel? Same for Pages. I should be able to easily reorder pages in a section. Currently the only way I see to reorder pages is to move them to the same Section.

Drag and Drop. I’d like to see a little more drag and drop capability. I’d like to be able to drag and item from the Web, hover over OneNote, and have it maximize. Then hover over a Section Tab that is not the one currently displayed, and for that tab to come up, then hover over a page that is not the one currently displayed and for that page to come up. Also, it would be nice to be able to drag a selected ink word, and drop it into the “Type Text to Find” box to search.

Gestures. I’d like to see some gesture implementation. I think this is an aspect that is sorely lacking from the Tablet PC. I am a keyboard shortcut fanatic, but when I’m in Tablet Mode, I want to be able to quickly do more.

Guides. When I start writing, the Guides always seem to be a little small for my handwriting. I like how they automatically get larger, but it would be nice if the guides would learn the average height of my words and therefore have a default size for Guides.

I can’t seem to figure out how to move the Title. Somehow, one of my titles has moved to the bottom right of the title area, and I want it back at the top left. I can select it but I have no way of moving it.

PocketPC. How about being able to sync Note from the PocketPC into OneNote?

Any thoughts?

A

[krisk85]

is there a fix for the 'new point' thing..

[Noger]

quote:OneNote takes too long to anticipate a new paragraph.

Easy one this. Try setting the "Set the width that OneNote suggests for handwritten paragraphs" option within Tools / Options / Handwriting. Set it to show the new paragraph early.


quote:Guides. When I start writing, the Guides always seem to be a little small for my handwriting. I like how they automatically get larger, but it would be nice if the guides would learn the average height of my words and therefore have a default size for Guides.


Does the guide not follow the ruler depth, try setting it bigger ?

[Bishop]

To fix your third gripe, Go to [View].[Toolbars] and turn on Drawing and Writing Tools. One of the buttons there is "Continue Previous Paragraph." It will merge the line last written on or selected into the preceding block. This is especially helpful in outlining.

[Trev]

The recording takes a while to start because it is creating a compressed WMA file. If it recorded as a WAV, it would start faster but the filesize would near 600 megabytes for an hour lecture. The beginning pause is for the compression alogrithms to start up.

[Noger]

Moving pages within sections is easy ... just select the Tab, drag it right a bit, and a little placement arrow will appear. Drop it where you want it to go.

Tend to agree that the same operation could be used for sections within a folder, but I do not have the same problems in using the "Move" right click option, it moves the section in the folder to right after the section I choose. Makes me wonder if you are moving it to another folder, in which case the section goes to the front of the folder. Thus if you want to move sections 1,2 and 3 to a new folder, you need to move 3, then 2, then 1, otherwise they get reversed.

Yes, drag and drop could be better as you say, I would like to be able to "snip" a bit of website, and have the UML hyperlinked in the note (MS snipping tool knows the URL, but it is lost when it goes into OneNote). Copy and paste (useful with the hardware icons on the M200) works, but drag and drop (or a right click find - like Research) would be good too.

[bpiltz]

Here's a URL to a OneNote FAQ:
http://home.hawaii.rr.com/schorr/Computers/OneNoteFAQ.htm#Digital%20Ink

This site has some good tricks and tips