OneNote Improved Efficiency Functions Suggestions

E

ESAEO

I have to say that OneNote is probably the single best thing to come out of
Microsoft. However, there are several improvements to OneNote that can be
made to make it better and far more efficient.

Navigation -- Panning Tool / Navigator Tool:
Since the "pages" can be quite large, it would be great to have either a
panning tool (hand) or a navigation pane (thumbnail with movable visible-area
frame) to cover the vastness of a page much more quickly and directly than
with the scroll bars alone. I recommend the implementation of both as each
has their own benefits and hinderences.

Thought Connections -- Sketchable Connector Lines and Linking:
Many "notes" have divergent but related thoughts. The ability to connect
thoughts/notes via a quick-draw connector and/or quick-link that can either
jump to and/or expand/collapse bringing remote and divergent/related thoughts
into immediate proximity to the note/thought your are currently working with,
without actually displacing the remote thought from its established postion
(unless desired).

Organization -- Shuffleable Items ((sub-)Pages, Note Items, Tabs):
Right now I have to either copy/cut & paste or use menu commands to reorder
notes, pages or tabs. Why can I not just drag & drop each of these objects
into place. With all of the dynamic movement already implemented in OneNote,
I cannot understand why the same is not applied to the environment.

Draw Assist -- Basic Shape Tools and Basic Shape Recognition:
Just to speed some notations along, either having tools for rectagles,
triagles, ellipses, penta-/hexa-/octagons, straight lines (with snap-to
angles @ 15º or 45º increments).

In-Flow Flags:
I like the flagging tool a bit but it only allows flagging of entire
paragraphs. I'd like to have flagging of multiple portions of a paragraph in
flow.

Flags -- Comments:
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see a way to put comments with any
flag that would allow me to explain the reason for the flag. If not already
implemented, please do.

Object Grouping:
I'd like to be able to group notes/thoughts on a page together to be treated
as a single object for postioning and collapsing. This would speed a lot of
on-page organization.

Page Space Control -- Remove Excess White Space:
I have found several instances where in the process of rearranging
notes/thoughts on a page that large gaps became a bit of a pain to work with.
I would love a counter-function to the "Insert Extra Writing Space" of a
"Remove Extra White Space", to quickly bring remotely floating notes/thoughts
closer together without having to manually move them.

Sub-Page Controls -- Expand / Collapse Sub-Pages:
I would like to be able to expand and collapse sub-pages. When the page
list gets a bit too long, this would greatly help.

Sub-Page Controls -- Sub-Sub-Pages:
It would be nice to have multiple levels of parent/child pages (with the
aforementioned expand/collapse funtion). This would greatly improve thought
organization.

Sub-Page Controls -- Sub-Page Header:
I would prefer a deliberate location for sub-page naming rather than a
sub-page being named only by the first line of the first note/thought on the
page. Sometimes, that does not work for me. It's not bad, but it can be
clumsy at times, not having the heading (sub-page names) actually in the
header.

That's it for now.
 
A

alainr

Excellent suggestions. All of these suggestions would enhance my experience
with OneNote and make it much more efficient!
 
D

Dan

A number of great suggestions! I especially like:

Thought Connections - Sketchable Connector Lines. I tried to use OneNote to
"sketch" a mind map today. (sort of a network of thoughts organized around
key concepts). I spend so much time trying to arrange the boxes and
hand-drawn arrows that my mind lost its way. So much for a mind map! A huge
part of capturing "notes" (i.e. information and thoughts) and organizing it
is ease in doing simple sketches and graphics. I don't need PowerPoint.
Already have that. This is just to sketch out notes and ideas along with the
other information I am keeping about a project.

Draw Assist - for similar reasons as expressed above. But I was also
surprised that I had not help in drawing a simple straight line to help
compartmentalize portions of a note.

Comments on Flags.
 
D

David Rasmussen [MS]

Esaeo,
Thank you very much for taking the time to share this detailed list. We in
the OneNote team definitely appreciate this kind of feedback. It's very
helpful.
 
J

JT

Great suggestions indeed. Just being able to SORT the tabs without having
to manually move them would make the product 50% better. Honestly, I don't
know how this product ever got released without a SORT capability.
What is the next GA release date?
JT
 
J

John Waller

Just being able to SORT the tabs without having
to manually move them would make the product 50% better.

I fully agree.

This is my no.1 feature request for the next version.
 

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