OneNote tip- sharing your notes with non-OneNote users
It’s no secret that I live in OneNote. I take a lot of handwritten notes every day but I also use OneNote as an information repository. I routinely collect all documents I receive that are pertinent to a particular project and I put them into OneNote. I do this mainly by printing them using the OneNote virtual printer which works well with the Word, Excel, PDF, screen shots and Project documents I receive. They are captured into OneNote in a form that lets me ink right on top of them should I have a need to do so. Paper documents I receive I scan into OneNote which works the same way.
Occasionally I need to share a page or two of my notes with colleagues who do not have OneNote and the best way to do so happens to be the easiest. One of the first things I did after installing Office 2007 was to get the add-in that adds PDF output capability to all the Office programs. I use this all the time to distribute Word or Excel documents that I don’t want altered, plus it has the benefit of providing the document in the universal PDF format. It’s a must-have plugin for Office. When I need to send a page or two of my OneNote notes I save it to PDF from right inside OneNote and send that. This has the benefit of saving an exact copy of my note page, whether it’s handwritten, scanned information, or a document I have printed to OneNote. It works very well, is extremely quick, and since it’s a PDF I don’t have to worry whether the recipient can handle it or not. Great solution to a need that couldn’t be easier.
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Wish MS release a free OneNote viewer like they have for Powerpoint or Word.
James – Another option (which I think you guys have mentioned in the past) is PDF995, an application that adds a PDF printer to your printers and lets you print any document to a PDF. They also have a couple of other apps, for editing and managing PDFs, but I haven’t tried them.
You can download for free, if you can handle the pop-up, or you can register for $10.
Great tip. If you reach to transfer data from the Macbook to OneNote I will worship you :P
What I’ve read on one of the OneNote team blogs regarding a viewer is, they haven’t bothered to try and create one as they say you can download the trial version and then just use it as a viewer after the trial is over. Now I don’t know if you’ll have to put up with a nag screen then or not, but it would be one way to view them.
It’s not to unreasonably priced either. It retails for $99.99 but you can probably find it cheaper. There’s a Home and Student Edition, that if you qualify for it, I noticed that Best Buy has it for $64.99. Finally, if you’re in school check to see if they have a student purchase program as Academic pricing for it is around $50.
Oh and one other point. Don’t think of OneNote as a TabletPC program. I was using OneNote daily for over a year on my laptop and desktop prior to getting my TabletPC. Don’t get me wrong, using it on a Tablet really spoils you, but it’s a great program on a non-Tablet system as well.
I wish there was a way to fix how pixelated the handwritten parts look in PDF form. I keep looking for an alternative way to send my homework from my computer to the school’s computer (which does NOT have OneNote)and I keep getting this ugly pixelated image.
I like OneNote and the PDF addin export at least exports an entire notebook but why is much of the typed text unreadable on a PPC [WM5]? OneNote mobile is totally worthless imo as there is no way to view desktop notebooks on the PPC but only to create a few new notes that you can later integrate into the desktop and then not see them on the PPC. If the PDF addin could allow better text viewing on the PPC w/ a scheduled export then at least I could see the notebooks on the PPC which is critical for my notes.