I am thinking about using OneNote to manage my s

[YS2003]

I am thinking about using OneNote to manage my sales and marketing projects. Since I heard OneNote can get sluggish as the data gets bigger, I would like to hear some suggestions/tips on managing the database.

I see many tabs when I launch OneNote (projects, classes, personal, side notes, reserach, and etc). Do you save one project (for example, a sales project to one customer) as one file in One Note? Or, do you use one file to cover mutliple projects by using tab functions? I feel it is convenient to open OneNote once and I can jump round various projects by clicking on the tab to each project or job. But, at the same time, I am concerned about the potential PC slow donw as this one file gets bigger as weeks go by.

I know I should be able to experient this by start using it; but, I would like to start off right by deciding on how I should manage the database.

[Chris_Pratley]

YS2003: OneNote doesn't use a database, so you may have heard wrong. I don't know the exact details of your business, but you might consider one project or one customer per section (tab on the top). Then add pages as you need (tabs on the right). If you end up with too many sections, you can create folders to put them in.

If you are concerned about slowness, try to keep each section under 1GB in size. I think it will be hard for you to get anywhere close to 1GB for a single section if you keep things organized as I described.

Good luck!

Chris Pratley (MS)
OneNote blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/

[Chris_Pratley]

YS2003: OneNote doesn't use a database, so you may have heard wrong. I don't know the exact details of your business, but you might consider one project or one customer per section (tab on the top). Then add pages as you need (tabs on the right). If you end up with too many sections, you can create folders to put them in.

If you are concerned about slowness, try to keep each section under 1GB in size. I think it will be hard for you to get anywhere close to 1GB for a single section if you keep things organized as I described.

Good luck!

Chris Pratley (MS)
OneNote blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/

[krypticide]

The other OneNote alternative, uses a single database, whereas OneNote uses a spread of section files. For me, I prefer the latter because it makes me feel more secure about the integrity of my data. Even if one section gets corrupted, I can still access everything else just fine.

[bcdechert]

I have to agree with Chris on this one (and he is THE authority!). I've been running a ON notebook since Dec 2003, and only last year did it make sense for me to create another notebook - just because the topical range was significantly different. In the original notebook I have 27 sections with page tabs running from 20 to 150. I have not found it to be sluggish and the search (based on flags) is still responsive. The range of documents and file types embedded, text; pictures; PDF; html; ppt shows, spreadsheets etc is pretty extensive as well.
So, I'd say your fears are not justified. Organization consitent with the way you work and need to manage/access your data is probably the most important consideration. Unless your data sets are gargantuan I wouldn't be overly concerned.

Cheers.