OneNote 2007 and GTD

[carlc]

I recently started using Microsoft OneNote 2007 as part of my GTD system. My GTD "hub" is still my task list in Outlook, but I do use OneNote for three purposes:

1. Capturing daily notes on the fly for future processing,
2. managing projects, and
3. storage of reference material.

I am capturing and storing stuff in OneNote, then pushing it to Outlook during my weekly reviews. OneNote serves as an inbox and as a storage location for project information and reference material.

If anyone is interested, I created a detailed description of my setup (complete with screenshots) here:
http://manage-this.com/onenote-outlook-gtd-system/

Is anyone else using OneNote in your GTD system? How are you using it?

-Carl C.

[MiataPops]

Your blog has some very useful information, Carl. I use EverNote, and I found your comparison to OneNote very interesting. I don't plan on changing to OneNote yet, but you gave me some great tips on setting up OneNote to be compatible with GTD if I ever do. I bookmarked your blog so keep those posts coming!

[carlc]

Thanks. BTW, the folks at EverNote are finally catching on... Their new release supports Google Desktop Search, so it's pretty much a toss-up now.

I did use EverNote in my GTD system for over a year before switching to OneNote. I had some nice scripts for quick/auto capture which don't work quite as well with OneNote. If I get some time, I'll write that up as well.

-Carl

[Longstreet]

Hi Carl,

I have a very similar setup. I use Outlook 2007 for my task management and OneNote 2007 for projects. I really like the integration between the two.

I do have one favor to ask. Would you be willing to send me your projects template? I like the way yours looks and would like to try it out.

Thanks,
-Longstreet

[MiataPops]

I too like your projects template. I have OneNote on my home computer (I use EverNote at work) and would like to start using OneNote to "kick the tires" and take it for a test drive.

Thanks,
Dave

[carlc]

No problem, I threw a new post up there with the file and some instructions on how to install it as the default template for your @PROJECTS section. Here is the link:

http://manage-this.com/onenote-gtd-project-template/

Hope that helps!

-Carl

[Longstreet]

Hi Carl,

Thanks for making this available -- it is greatly appreciated. I will try this out and see how it works for me.

Best regards,
-Longstreet

[smithdoug]

OneNote is a delight; perhaps the most under-rated application I can think of... and maybe that's because the interface is so intuitive. OneNote is without peer for collecting and organizing--and re-organizing--all kinds of information.

A few months ago I openly speculated that OneNote might come in handy for a major web site development project I needed to undertake (made even more major by the fact that I had never created a web site before). OneNote turned out to be more useful that I had imagined. (Web site has been published too, although I'm not certain that I can call it "done". As anyone who creates web sites will likely attest, they're always a work in progress.)

I also speculated that MindManager would be my primary project organization tool; and bemoaned the fact that I couldn't link a particular brand in MindManager to a particular note in OneNote. As things turned out, I used OneNote far more than I thought I would and MindManager far less. If I could have only one of the two, it would be OneNote. Although if it were possible to link MindManager to OneNote, MindManager would become far more useful than it is. (Is anyone from Mindjet by any chance listening?)

Much is said of the Outlook-OneNote integration. When I'm working on a large, complex project I find it more fruitful to organize actions by project rather than context. I'll have actions (placeholders, really; things to do, things to research, things to look into) peppered throughout the pages and sections of any of my OneNote project notebooks. These are "tagged" as things to do, and two clicks will create a page listing all of these "actions".

[nununo]

Hi,

I too am in love with OneNote. Having just finished reading the GTD book, after some research, I decided to try to implement it around OneNote.

I pretty much did it but I recently realized a problem that, if I don't find a solution for it, will hinder everything.

First some details about how I implemented it.

1 Hierarchy

My notebooks:

Inbox
Personal
Work
For Read


Each notebook (except Inbox which is just to dump stuff) has the following sections:

Open projects
Closed projects
Future projects


Each section has a page per project (being the first page for tasks not associated to any project). Under the title I have a ToDo list with all actions and make sure they all have one tag. Sometimes, if I get too many actions in one page, I outline them somehow, but in a very informal way just to make it more intuitive, because the real organization happens through the tags. Oh, and notes, reference and such also go on the project page if required.

2. Tags

Then I use tags to put everything together. I have the following context tags:


@ At home
@ Errands
@ Calls
@ Emails
@ Online
@ Offline
@ At work
@ To read
@ Waiting for someone
@ Calendar


And then I use two extra tags:


Process it
Depends on other


The first one "Process it" is just used to tag items in my inbox which are still not processed. I use the second one to tag all tasks which are still not doable because they depend on something else.

Finally, when I want to postpone a task to, say, on month from now, I create a syncronized task in Outlook with a reminder. So I also get to use the small red flag tag. In about one month I get a reminder in Outlook and I do the following:

- delete the task from Outlook
- tag the task with the proper context tag

3. Everything comes together with the use of the wonderful "tags summary" pane. There I can easily get lists of actions by context and bla bla bla.

I'm still fine-tuning and there as there are still somethings I didn't manage to implement:


my reference material is still scatered
I lack a way to sync OneNote tasks which must happen in a given moment with Outlook calendar appointments
etc


Well, that's it. This is my OneNote GTD system. Comments and suggestions are welcome.


And now here's my BIG problem: The tags summary doesn't find all tags. Even when I choose "all notebooks" the list greatly depends on which notebook/section/page I am viewing at the moment. This is really awkward and spoils everything. To be honest I still didn't understand if this is some kind of strange behaviour I still didn't grasp or if it is a plain bug in OneNote. Did anyone else get this problem? Any ideas?

Apart from this, OneNote is amazing. I really hope I can solve this problem.

Thanks!
Nuno

[Audie Cashion]

I searched the GTD Forum and have read with great interest all the threads discussing the +/- of using OneNote and Outlook 2007 together.

As I will be setting that up tomorrow, does anyone have anymore information on "Best Practices" or where to go to find that out (i.e. do we have any MS OneNote developers as part of our resources, or has David come out with an up-dated Outlook 2007 GTD brief to maximize this configuration)?

Any additional help would be appreciated. My set-up is a Motion 1700 Tablet PC (it's a pretty neat trick if anyone's interested, I'll be happy to share more details), and a Samsung Windows Mobile device, a Small Business Server running MS 2003 (but we may want to go to a hosted MS solution as we have a boutique real estate firm).

Thanks in advance for anyone who might offer additional help. I'll be happy to share my experience.

Audie Cashion CCIM

[carlc]

Nuno,

I have not seen the same problem with tags that you describe above. One difference is that I try and keep everything in one single notebook labeled "2007". At the end of the year, I will archive that notebook and keep it around only for search via Windows Desktop Search (WDS). I'm not sure if pulling tags across multiple notebooks is your problem. The system I use (see original post above) is pretty simple and doesn't require too many levels, so a single notebook works for me.

I had a similar question come up on my blog related to OneNote tags. Here is the answer I gave (http://manage-this.com/onenote-outlook-gtd-system/#respond):

"In general, as a former EverNote user, I can say I am pretty disappointed in how Microsoft implemented the tags in OneNote. Initially I was using OneNote tags to track which items had been processed vs. which were still "not done". This was a bit awkward in OneNote since there are no rules to automatically assign and unassigned tags, and no tag intersection panel like in EverNote. I tried to get around this by creating the tag "Summary Page" in OneNote during the weekly review. My problem with the summary page is that it's just a dead list with no links back to the original content. If you need to see beyond the title or first line, you have to navigate back to the original page. Finally, I settled on using the note location (@DOING tab vs. @DONE section) instead of tags. The only thing I use tags for in OneNote now is to categorize material for future reference. I wouldn't say it's part of my GTD system, just more of a filing method really." Honestly, even these tags aren't really necessary because I tend to find stuff via WDS and not via tags.

Hope that is somewhat useful.

Regards,
Carl

[nununo]

Hi Carl,

Thanks for your answer. I tend to agree with you that the way OneNote handles tags has lots of space for improvements. I followed your advice on keeping everything in one Notebook. I kept my logic but moved all sections to a single Notebook and gave them shorter mnemonic names. I still didn't test it carefully but it seems to be working fine now. Thanks!

Nuno

[lmw]

Thank you, Carl, for sharing your ideas and your template. I have been using OneNote for a few months, but had been struggling with making it flow. I eliminated all the "extras" - I now have implemented a @Doing, @Done, @Projects, and @Someday sections for my DAILY OPERATIONS notebook. The Projects template is a lifesaver, and I love being able to plan out my projects and assign tasks to them in Outlook as I go along. When the project is completed I move the entire page to @Done. I have a @ToDo section also where I collect my thoughts on "things to do" and assign tasks as I go.

I also have a @Work notebook and a @Home notebook. The work notebook is mainly for meeting notes, and receipts of customers orders - I run an online store, so as orders come in, instead of printing them out physically I print them to OneNote - I then have a searchable system, I can add tracking numbers, reference notes, etc.

I feel like I've cleared a hurdle - just wanted to say thanks. :)

[nununo]

Hi Carl and lmw,

I understand your system is simpler than mine and that you even can do without tags. But how can you get a list of next-actions across all your projects? That's the single main reason why I need tags. So that I don't need to browse through my dozens of projects in order to decide what to do next.

Nuno

[nununo]

Hi,

Much to my dismay, after moving everything to a single notebook the tags summary problem still happens. And I still didn't understand exactly what happens.

What I know is that in some pages, when I do a tag summary, I don't get any tags of type @Email for example. Then I set a @Email tag on that page and refresh the tag summary and I get all my 5 or 6 @Email tags. If I remove that @Email tag from that page... all the others disappear. The strange thing is that this doesn't happen in all pages. It really looks like a bug.

I don't know what to do :-(

Nuno

[carlc]

lmw - Great! Glad I could help.

Nuno - Here is how I handle next actions without using OneNote tags... First of all, any pages that aren't in my @DONE section get looked at during weekly review. Many of those will be the project pages (following the template linked above). Each project has an "Actions" section where I get all of the to-do's for that project out of my head. When it's time to make one or more of those items a next action, I flag it with the red flag which creates an Outlook task. Once it's in Outlook with a due date of today (or earlier), I treat it as a next action. Hope that helps. If you still want to be able to trust the OneNote tags, you might be able to get more in depth technical help (or at least report a bug) on the Microsoft OneNote forum. Here is the link (http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.onenote&lang=en&cr=US).

-Carl

[lmw]

First of all, any pages that aren't in my @DONE section get looked at during weekly review. Many of those will be the project pages (following the template linked above). Each project has an "Actions" section where I get all of the to-do's for that project out of my head. When it's time to make one or more of those items a next action, I flag it with the red flag which creates an Outlook task. Once it's in Outlook with a due date of today (or earlier), I treat it as a next action. Hope that helps. If you still want to be able to trust the OneNote tags, you might be able to get more in depth technical help (or at least report a bug) on the Microsoft OneNote forum. Here is the link (http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.onenote&lang=en&cr=US).

-Carl

That's exactly what I've been doing - it's seamless. :)

[paper-edv]

lmw - Great! Glad I could help.

Nuno - Here is how I handle next actions without using OneNote tags... First of all, any pages that aren't in my @DONE section get looked at during weekly review. Many of those will be the project pages (following the template linked above). Each project has an "Actions" section where I get all of the to-do's for that project out of my head. When it's time to make one or more of those items a next action, I flag it with the red flag which creates an Outlook task. Once it's in Outlook with a due date of today (or earlier), I treat it as a next action.
-Carl

If you made a OneNote-project task to an Outlook-task, then the next action is another task, do you write this task only in Outlook or first in OneNote, to have the complete project task history? There is no way to get an Outlook task to the task list in OneNote, or?

[paper-edv]

I also speculated that MindManager would be my primary project organization tool; and bemoaned the fact that I couldn't link a particular brand in MindManager to a particular note in OneNote. As things turned out, I used OneNote far more than I thought I would and MindManager far less. If I could have only one of the two, it would be OneNote. Although if it were possible to link MindManager to OneNote, MindManager would become far more useful than it is. (Is anyone from Mindjet by any chance listening?)


MindManager 7 and OneNote 2007 are working together! Have a look at http://mindjetlabs.com/cs/files/folders/mindjet_labs/entry1382.aspx

[nununo]

Hi Carl,

Now I got it.

I was already using some linked outlook tasks, but when I read your description I guess I didn't quite realize how you were using them. That's a great idea! I'll try to implement it.

But, If I understand correctly, in Outlook you'll get a single list with all your open tasks, right? Don't you feel the need to group them by context? Anyway I guess it can easily be done using Outlook categories.

Thanks for the link to the Office forums. Actually I didn't know they existed. I was getting ready to submit an official support ticket. It turned out that more people are complaining about my disappearing tags problem ;)

Cya,
Nuno

[carlc]

If you made a OneNote-project task to an Outlook-task, then the next action is another task, do you write this task only in Outlook or first in OneNote, to have the complete project task history? There is no way to get an Outlook task to the task list in OneNote, or?


paper-edv,

The tasks in Outlook can either come from flagging an item in OneNote, or directly in Outlook (CTRL-SHIFT-K). Ultimately all of the tasks will end up in Outlook. You can manually push completed task information back to OneNote, but I don't think there is a need to do this. The reason is that each task contains the project [tag] (See description here for details (http://manage-this.com/onenote-outlook-gtd-system/)). Since WDS indexes across Outlook and OneNote, you can quickly get a complete project history by searching on the tag. It's also a lot of extra work to push completed task details back into OneNote ; )

[carlc]

But, If I understand correctly, in Outlook you'll get a single list with all your open tasks, right? Don't you feel the need to group them by context? Anyway I guess it can easily be done using Outlook categories.


Nuno,

I do still use Outlook categories to manage contexts. After flagging an item in OneNote to create the task, I right click on the flag and select "Open Task in Outlook". As soon as the task opens, I use ALT-G to open the category pane and assign the context. I wish there was a quick way to have the context/category assigned right from OneNote, but unfortunately that's not supported yet.

-Carl

[nununo]

Hi Carl,

Perfect. Not only this makes even more sense than what I was doing, this way I can avoid using tags summary and so I don't have to worry about that bug.

Thanks! ;)

[nununo]

Hi Carl,

I noticed you're using a section group called Done to group your archived stuff. But why don't you use a separate notebook instead? Once you're in a section group you cannot see the other sections and have to click "up" to go back to the upper level where you see them. With a different notebook everything remains visible at all times.

I realize you have one notebook per year but I guess it would be fairly easy to, at the end of each year, move everything from the "Done" notebook into the "2007" notebook.

Or am I missing something?

Nuno

[nununo]

Hi,

While tasks are easily synchronized between Outlook and OneNote, I still didn't find an elegant way to do the same for calendar items.

Now, to move a task to the calendar, I manually create a calendar entry in Outlook and then mark the task with a special tag called @calendar but this can get messy and confusing since they're not synchronized.

Anyone has better ideas?

Thanks,
Nuno

[carlc]

I noticed you're using a section group called Done to group your archived stuff. But why don't you use a separate notebook instead? Once you're in a section group you cannot see the other sections and have to click "up" to go back to the upper level where you see them. With a different notebook everything remains visible at all times.

Nuno - Nice idea! That also has the added benefit that at the end of the year you really don't have to move anything. If it's in the "@Done" notebook it just gets archived. You can then create another "@Done" notebook to catch stuff for the next year. If it's not in the "@Done" notebook, then it's still in progress and shouldn't be archived anyway. I like it!

-Carl

[carlc]

While tasks are easily synchronized between Outlook and OneNote, I still didn't find an elegant way to do the same for calendar items.

Nuno - I think there's an easy way to do this... These instructions assume Outlook 2003 but should be similar for Outlook 2007... Right click on the task icon in the list and (with the right mouse button) drag that task onto the calendar icon in the same Outlook window. You should get a pop-up menu. Pick "Copy Here as Appointment with Shortcut". That's it. You now have a calendar appointment with a shortcut back to the original task inside of it.

Hope that helps.

-Carl

[nununo]

Hi Carl,

I'm glad I could help ;)

I'll try to create a calendar item like you say. So what you mean is:

- Generate a task in outlook from OneNote
- Use the Outlook task to create a calendar appointment
- Delete the outlook task

But still in the end I get a one way link, right? There's still no way to go from the OneNote task to the Outlook calendar appointment.

Nuno

[Stodge]

Carl,

In your blog you say you planned to share more of your Autohotkey scripts in the future. Is that going to happen? I'm keen to see your system of logging events with a date stamp in OneNote using a hotkey as it seems a brilliant capture tool for on the fly thoughts.

[carlc]

So what you mean is:

- Generate a task in outlook from OneNote
- Use the Outlook task to create a calendar appointment
- Delete the outlook task

But still in the end I get a one way link, right? There's still no way to go from the OneNote task to the Outlook calendar appointment.

Nuno - I think I missed what you were trying to do... I was describing a way to link an Outlook task to a calendar item (nothing to do with OneNote). So, in that case, you don't want to delete the Outlook task (otherwise the calendar item will link back to nothing).

I think what you really wanted to do was generate a Calendar item directly from OneNote. OneNote 2007 doesn't support this quite as nicely as it does for tasks, but here's how I would do it:


Open OneNote and find the text/line/action
Right click on that line and select "Copy Hyperlink to this Paragraph"
Without leaving OneNote type Alt+Shift+A to open a new appointment
Paste the hyperlink into the body and enter the subject, date, time, etc.
Click "Save and Close" button


Hope that helps.

-Carl

[carlc]

In your blog you say you planned to share more of your Autohotkey scripts in the future. Is that going to happen? I'm keen to see your system of logging events with a date stamp in OneNote using a hotkey as it seems a brilliant capture tool for on the fly thoughts.

Thanks Stodge, I hope to get that posted (http://manage-this.com) in the next week or so. I'll leave a reply here once it's up.

-Carl

[nununo]

Hi Carl,

Yes, that was it. Unfortunately OneNote still doesn't sync decently with calendar items. But your tips (copying the link to page, shortcut to create a calendar item from OneNote) are still quite useful, thanks!

Nuno

[carlc]

In your blog you say you planned to share more of your Autohotkey scripts in the future. Is that going to happen? I'm keen to see your system of logging events with a date stamp in OneNote using a hotkey as it seems a brilliant capture tool for on the fly thoughts.

Stodge - I finally got a chance to post my tool for quickly adding notes to my Daily Record of Events in OneNote. You can download it here. (http://manage-this.com/onenote-droe-autohotkey-tool/) I'm calling this a Beta release : )

Regards,
Carl

[carlc]

I posted a minor update to the DROE Tool. There are three changes in this release:


The download now includes a detailed README file with installation/upgrade instructions, screen shots, and troubleshooting tips.
The check to make sure that the OneNote DROE page successfully opened is now case insensitive, so it’s a bit more forgiving.
Toggling the tray icon now also displays the version information for the tool.


You can download the latest version on the Downloads page (http://manage-this.com/downloads/). Thanks especially to Tripp C. for helping to troubleshoot the previous version.

-Carl

[JackC]

Here's an edited version of a longer message I left on Carl's site which may help people who are having problems with the tag summary in OneNote.
-----
Make sure you add some text when you insert a tag onto a page. Sometimes, I would add just an urgent tag next to some pre-inserted text and wonder why it wouldn’t appear in the summary. A phone icon isn’t enough on it own - add “call Bill” or whatever and then it will pop up in the summary. “Call Bill” will also be the hyperlinked text that can launch the original page.

If you can’t see a particular tag in the summary, remove the tick from “show only unchecked items”. If you use icons without check boxes (like the phone or exclamation mark) they don’t appear unless you uncheck the box.


Hope this helps

Jack

[showells]

I've found that if you untick and the re-tick the “show only unchecked items” that all of the missing tags re-appear in your tag view. You'll need to do this every time that you refresh the view

cheers

Steve

[carlc]

Good catch, thanks Steve!

I guess you would need to un-check, re-check, then uncheck again if you want to refresh and also see tags without check boxes included per Jack's suggestion above?

[carlc]

Here is some additional information... There was a key piece missing from my original instructions (http://manage-this.com/onenote-outlook-gtd-system/), that being the detailed setup screens. I captured the relevant screens and published them along with some notes here:
Setting Up OneNote 2007 for GTD (http://manage-this.com/setting-up-onenote-2007-for-gtd/).

Hope it helps.

-Carl

[rolfessenden]

I use ON for my GTD system, but I sync my notebooks across 3 pcs. Does anyone know how to synchronize tag definitions across all 3 pcs without doing it manually? That is a pain.

[JackC]

I use purpose built syncing software. There are many in the market.

I use Allway Sync a quality freeware app to sync my ON settings on multiple machine.

Jack