If you ask me, the best. “request” in Microsoft OneNote is the ability to paste a video link from YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, Sway (and more).
The playable thumbnail version along with my notes is a great way to set up Microsoft's note-taking tool as a serious learning platform. Of course, OneNote is a lot of other things too.
Microsoft OneNote is a Swiss knife for your note-taking needs, and you can multitask with some free OneNote apps. OneNote apps come in all varieties:There are featured apps from their own stable, and then there are some third-party plugins and integrations that help you get more out of your notes.
Let's make a list of the best and free OneNote apps that can help you stay organized and productive.
This handy official browser extension is the default capture tool for any information you find online. Clip anything you find on the web into a OneNote notebook of your choice with the Location Picker . You can capture a whole web page or a part of it. Because OneNote syncs across all your devices, clipped information is available anytime, anywhere.
OneNote Clipper is available for Chrome.
Those on the Edge browser can use the Web Note . Take a snapshot of a website and write to it. Once you're done with that, you can share the note using OneNote or email.
We miss the point when we say that Sway is a PowerPoint killer. He creates cloud-based presentations with Microsoft's PowerPoint Destroyer. Sway Create cloud-based presentations with Microsoft's Sway PowerPoint Shredder. Microsoft Sway is a new tool for creating cloud-based presentations. Sway offers a fast design experience and a canvas for your ideas. Sways are quick to create and easy to share. Read more . Sway is presented as a quick storytelling tool where you hand over the design to the app. You have control over the content, but not too much when it comes to the layout and design. PowerPoint is the packaged alternative on steroids for professional presentations.
Sway is incredibly useful for creating rich web presentations on the go. It can be an interactive personal story or a quick release.
With the Send to Sway add-in for Microsoft OneNote, you can organize all your content in OneNote and export it to Sway. Then let Sway conjure up a beautiful presentation of the raw content.
Choose the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the 1.5 MB app and install it. The plugin can be accessed from the ribbon. Collect content in OneNote and then save it. Click Send to Sway Icon on the ribbon to export it to Sway.
In the popup that appears, give your Sway a title. If you want to sign in with any other email ID, please sign out of the existing one. Now you can customize the presentation before finalizing it. Because Sway is cloud-based, you can easily share it with others and access it from any device.
Office Lens is the app to install without thinking if you want to take better notes with OneNote 12 Tips for Taking Better Notes with Microsoft OneNote 12 Tips for Taking Better Notes with Microsoft OneNote These 12 tips show you how to take better notes in MIcrosoft OneNote. Today, digital note taking is as much about the skill as it is about the tool. Read more . For those who haven't met it yet, Office Lens is Microsoft's new mobile scanner app that lets you take photos of whiteboards or printed documents. It then enhances your photo by cropping, sharpening, and straightening it so it almost looks like a scanned image.
It is available for free on Android, Windows Phone and iOS.
And right off the bat, you can use it in a variety of ways, as we told you earlier, starting with receipt scanning 6 of the Best Apps to Scan, Track and Manage Receipts 6 of the Best Apps to Scan, Track and Manage Receipts. receipt scanner apps will help you scan, save and organize each receipt for your personal or business needs. Read more to digitize your business cards How to scan and manage your business cards How to scan and manage your business cards We trade business cards because our memory sucks. Go ahead and use business card management apps to turn cards into their digital equivalent. All you need is a smartphone and the right scanner app. Read more.
The most important feature that makes the Office lens indispensable is Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Any printed text is automatically recognized so you can look up words in images and copy and edit them.
I wish I had Office Lens back at school. Using it with Whiteboard mode and OCR, could have saved hours of writing class notes.
If Office Lens hadn't helped me, I'm sure OneNote Learning Tools would have helped improve my academic grades. It has been described differently:from a top-rated dyslexia app to an education disruptor for transformative learning.
Instead of missing the blank, I urge you to read my earlier discussion of how OneNote's learning tools can boost a student's comprehension. How To Improve Your Reading Skills And Speed With Learning Tools For OneNote How To Improve Your Reading Skills And Speed With Learning Tools For OneNote Is Learning Tools For OneNote A Part Of Your Education? The free add-on for OneNote helps everyone improve reading and writing skills, including students with learning differences or gifted learners. Read More
The free toolbar add-on for OneNote 2013 and 2016 creates a more immersive reading experience. For example, you can take a photo with Office Lens and, thanks to OCR technology, convert it to text. This text can be read using the OneNote Learning Tools text-to-speech engine.
It may be designed for students and educators, but if you believe in lifelong learning, try it with any educational material. A feature like Focus Mode It can help you keep your attention and improve your understanding.
OneNote and Evernote are always at war for our attention. There are reasons to choose OneNote over Evernote How to migrate from Evernote to OneNote, and why you should migrate from Evernote to OneNote and why you should. Do you think Microsoft OneNote is better than Evernote? Or maybe it just suits your project management style. Either way, here's how you can easily migrate all your notes from Evernote to OneNote. Read More
This free and official plugin makes it easy to find Evernote content on your computer and send it to OneNote with one click. You should have Evernote for Windows installed, or you can import notes from an Evernote export (.enex) file.
The export process creates a new OneNote notebook for each Evernote notebook. Every page in Evernote becomes a page in OneNote. Optionally, you can also use Evernote tags to organize your notes within your notebook. Each tag will become a section in OneNote that contains the pages that are tagged with that term. Attachments such as PDFs and images are also imported along with your notes.
Know that some of the tag structure you might have worked hard to create in Evernote could be destroyed by the change. The plugin only picks up the first tag. The Microsoft support page says:
As a blogger, you may want to go from capturing blog post ideas in OneNote to writing them seamlessly in WordPress. If you write something in OneNote, then OneNote Publisher for WordPress might be the app for you. OneNote Publisher for WordPress exports a OneNote page directly to a WordPress blog.
Moving from OneNote to WordPress creates some formatting issues as it creates a lot of extra HTML tags and issues with paragraph/line breaks. You may need to do some cleanup.
OneNote is the perfect companion for more intensive writing tools like Microsoft Word, as it has the organizational structure that supports brainstorming and research. Selected pages and page sections can be submitted as blog posts. You can also create your own calendar in OneNote to keep track of your publishing schedule. And if you're used to working in OneNote, it should be more productive for you.
Give it a try and let us know in the comments how you feel about it.
OneNote also has a native Send to Blog option (File> Send> Send to Blog ) that helps you post to a blog directly. Uses the web publishing features of Microsoft Word.
Onetastic is a set of third-party plugins developed by a Microsoft developer who took it up as a hobby. Download and install to extend the functionality of OneNote with a host of features available in the Ribbon. Additional capabilities include macros that automate routine tasks like find and replace, a calendar view for your OneNote pages, custom styles that mimic Word, and a convenient way to set your favorite pages with shortcuts.
To illustrate the power and scope of macros, here is a screenshot I borrowed from the Onetastic blog. List the onetastic ship macros with:
Furthermore, Onetastic also comes with a Macro Editor which allows you to build your own. Remember, any repetitive task can be replaced with the time-saving utility of a macro. Omer Atay runs a clean site and this macro tutorial should get you up and running for your needs. For the lazy, Macroland is a free macro repository.
Onetastic is available for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows systems. Thank Omer for this fantastic resource that is completely free.
The seven OneNote apps are the best among the free lot. Between the excellent Onetastic and the basic Clipper, you can nail most of your notes. OneNote has a small corner dedicated to featured apps. Maybe, you will find something you like there. Automation powerhouses like IFTTT and Zapier are definitely recommended. IFTTT has over 100 recipes out of the box, and Zapier offers another 29 across a wide range of services.
Thanks to these digital handshakes, you can take notes like a scientist How to use OneNote like a world famous scientist How to use OneNote like a world famous scientist Charles Darwin would have loved OneNote. He was an avid note taker who recorded everything he observed. Here's how he could have used OneNote to organize his work and further his research. Read More or Automate Your Learning 7 Easy Ways to Quickly Automate Your Learning with IFTTT 7 Easy Ways to Quickly Automate Your Learning with IFTTT You don't need to go out looking for learning. You can set up a system to ensure that the right resources find their way automatically. Here's the secret to saving time. Read more . Getting information into OneNote is easy, organizing it requires some discipline on your part.
And you can always create your own OneNote app.
What's the best OneNote app that's a must-have for your workflow? Is there an application that deserves a place on this page, free or paid? Tell us.