Folks are getting excited about the new OneNote 2010 and I can’t blame them. I’ve said for years that I believe OneNote is one of the best, if not the best, piece of software from Microsoft. Not only will OneNote 2010 be included in all Office 2010 versions, but we know it will be usable over the web and through Windows Live Sync as well. But one question that current OneNote users keep asking is: What happens to the OneNote 2007 data? Can it be used with OneNote 2010? What about data from the new version in old versions?

Dan Escapa from the OneNote team comes to the rescue again with these key points on compatibility:

• OneNote 2010 will fully read & write OneNote 2007 format notebooks, no need to convert a notebook
• There is a new OneNote 2010 format to support new features (such as versions)
• OneNote 2010 can convert notebooks from 2007<–>2010 formats and back

Dan reminds us that if you plan to share OneNote data with 2007 users, you need to convert your 2010 data into the 2007 format before sharing it. Eventually, I’d like to see Microsoft release a converter for OneNote 2007 owners. That would be helpful if they inadvertently get OneNote data in the new format but still have the old software.

The news that OneNote will be included in all versions of Office 2010 was welcome, and as more information appears, it seems OneNote will be getting more “cloudy” too. David Rasmussen, OneNote product manager at Microsoft, has blogged details about the next version of the note-taking app, and it’s sounding pretty good for mobile users.

• Sync to Cloud (Windows Live): Your notebooks sync and are available anywhere from any machine. Of course, this is in addition to all the existing ways you can sync notebooks — file shares, SharePoint, USB drives, etc.
• OneNote Web App: You can access and edit your entire notebook from a browser. This is even supported on a machine that doesn’t have OneNote installed.
• OneNote Mobile: A more complete OneNote version for Windows Mobile phones. Syncs whole notebooks. Syncs directly to the cloud. No need to tether your device. Richer editing support.

This is especially good news for Windows Mobile users, as the mobile version of OneNote has been very restrictive. This ability to cut the cord for syncing to OneNote Mobile is very good news, indeed. David’s details about the full OneNote to come are promising, and show a lot of improvements will be coming to a notebook near you.

The announcement introducing Microsoft Office 2010 got a lot of attention, especially information about the Web Apps. Office is a big money-maker for Microsoft, and every new major version is an attention-grabber. One little fact fell by the wayside during all of the hoopla, however: OneNote is to be included in all versions of Office 2010.

This is big news for OneNote users who previously had to buy a premium Office suite to get it, or pay extra for OneNote. The OneNote Blog gives us the straight scoop:

I thought you all would like to know that OneNote is now included in all Office editions! That means no matter what Office box you buy or what you company purchases OneNote will be on the disc!  I remember when I first started on the team OneNote 2003 was a stand alone version of and even though we were a part of Office but wasn’t in the box.  I would tell people what product I worked on and people would ask “is OneNote in standard?” or “I have pro I don’t see OneNote”.  Then when we found that we were included in the Home & Student and Enterprise editions we were overjoyed and excited to be in the box.  But now I can tell people that no matter what version of Office they buy they will have OneNote!  I feel like we have really come along a long way from a standalone app to being a core part of the Office experience.

The OneNote team is understandably excited about this “promotion” at Microsoft. OneNote is a fantastic application that is not promoted heavily by the folks at Redmond. Maybe this means more people will get exposed to OneNote.

Over a year ago, we commiserated in your Microsoft OneNote frustrations. A key feature, the “Send to OneNote” function, simply didn’t work if you were running a 64-bit version of Microsoft Windows Vista. We heard from the OneNote team way back then and although I understand the technical challenge involved, it still left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Pity too, because I still believe that OneNote is one of the most impressive bits of software to come out of Microsoft.

We later heard of a workaround that involved snapping and sending an image of captured data; the image file was then sent into OneNote. That’s a partial help but the ability to read and convert any text or ink data was lost in translation, i.e.: not ideal.

Yesterday I got a tweet from Bhavishya telling me about a newer workaround that appears to be a far better solution. It’s not perfect, but pretty darn close and should carry OneNote users through the issue until the next release of the software. David Rasumussen developed the solution in his spare time and you can find it right on his blog. Essentially, his code uses Vista’s XPS printer driver and monitors a specific folder for new XPS files. Note that this isn’t an official solution from Microsoft, and as such, isn’t supported by them. Thanks Bhavishya!

Fans of Microsoft OneNote, listen up! If you’re running the productivity software on Windows Vista, you’ll want to download Canvas for OneNote. The prototype application comes from the Office Labs team and provides all new ways to organize your notebooks spatially and find information fast. The above demo vid I saw on Dan Escapa’s OneNote Blog explains it far better than I could.

You can easily move pages all around the canvas, group them, resize the groups and more. Simple zoom controls allow you to see your pages in more detail, so you can verify the information you’re looking for. There’s also a useful Activity View that highlights content you created during a specific period, using a time-frame slider. Very nice!

We have long been fans of OneNote and how it is so flexible that you can do almost anything with it.  One thing that we often hear users wish for is a ready-to-use day planner for OneNote to make it as useful as those paper planners.  You can build one yourself but that requires an awful lot of work so it’s great to see that user David has done it for you.  He’s built an entire 2009 day planner in the form of a OneNote notebook and while it’s a pretty big download (13.5 MB) we think you’ll appreciate it.  Check it out and be sure and thank David!

OneNote is a program that has revolutionized the way I work with its stellar note-taking features.  It is also one of the best programs for a Tablet PC (although it works well on any PC) with superb ink-handling capability.  I have taken literally thousands of pages of notes using ink on the screen of my Tablet PCs and it is hard to imagine life without OneNote.

One of the coolest features of OneNote is nothing new, it’s been around for a long time but I often hear OneNote users mention that they aren’t aware of it.  That technology is the audio recording feature of OneNote that can be used for a variety of functions.  OneNote will use a computer’s microphone to record a meeting or lecture for example and it compresses it on the fly so the audio file is not huge.  Once a recording is made OneNote puts the player controls right on the note page for easy access but this is just the start of the coolness. 

Audio recordings on a OneNote page are synchronized with the notes being entered on the note page.  This happens for typed notes and inked notes as well.  This means that in the future when you are going back over your meeting notes that if you read a note and wonder exactly what triggered it in the meeting you can hit play on the controls that appear when you hover near that particular point in your notes.  You can thus listen to the audio recording of the meeting or lecture from the EXACT POINT IN TIME that you made that note.  I have done this countless times and been able to hear right away exactly what was being discussed in the meeting that led to my note.  This is just awesome, there is no other way to describe it.  Try it and see for yourself.

Just yesterday I noticed that on my UMPC I couldn’t use the integrated webcams natively with Microsoft OneNote. After reading the various reader comments, I took a new approach this morning. I got to thinking how this wasn’t an issue in Windows XP, so I decided to focus on why that might be. This thought led me to the properties of the OneNote.exe executable itself; specifically, the compatibility and the security privileges.

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Feeling sick over the weekend, I laid low offline and decided to delve into some desktop applications instead of using the web apps I prefer. Since my cord was cut, I dug around in one of my favorite bits of software: Microsoft OneNote. I installed it on my UMPC a few weeks back and wanted to play with some of the advanced features. Previously, I’ve used OneNote Mobile on a Windows Mobile device to take pictures and have them automatically inserted in my OneNote notebooks. It came in handy with a home project in the past, but since I no longer carry a Windows Mobile Phone, I was looking for another option when it hit me: OneNote can accept images directly from a webcam. My Samsung Q1 Ultra Premium, has not one, but two integrated webcams, so I figured I was all set! Just use the rear-facing camera to snap pics of projects, documents, UPS tracking numbers and more to have them all sucked into OneNote for later use.

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Here’s a nice little OneNote add-on called Instant Navigator that gives you another way to find your notes. Once you install it, you can start typing any part of a note title and the results are instantly updated as you type. I rely heavily on the excellent and native OneNote search feature, but more search options are always welcome. From what I can see, the free add-on is supported on Vista with OneNote 2007.(via OneNote Extensibility)