# OneNote a GMs holy grail :) (In case youve never used MS OneNote)



## Jurble (Oct 3, 2008)

Hey guys,
i posted this over on the d20Radio forums regarding my SWSE game. I am so impressed with OneNote (both as a student and as a GM/DM) so i figured id pass this on for all the GMs out there using Word and folders to organise their games. This is a fantastic resource, so spreading the word 

Anyway, ive just gone back to studying this year and a friend of mine introduced me to Microsoft OneNote, which is in my opinion the BEST piece of software microsoft has ever sold. OneNote is fantastic for GMs to keep their games organised, have easy access to resources etc. Thought id get anyone who doesnt know about it onto it because my life is in OneNote, SWSE campaign, and all my study notes/lecture slides etc 

So first off, as an organisation tool you can see in the first screenie, my "Game" section. On the left are notebooks (I have an SWSE campaign notebook) and within it I have sections (top). Each section has pages(right). In the game notebook i keep basic records of what happened in that session, XP, plan new sessions and since my game is run using fantasy grounds (An online tabletop program) i put in screenshots of my game and the chatlog so I can look stuff up.

On that note, once youve run OneNote before on your computer, you can hit *Windows button & S* and your screen greys out giving you a selector pointer. select a box on the screen and OneNote automatically screen clips whatever is in that box straight into itself, so thats how i take screenies of the game (or pics off the net, little tidbits i find on forums which might be useful later etc). Macs have a nice feature like that but windows is poorly lacking it. Its like an improve printscreen 







Since im kinda new to the system ive used that to create a little notebook of basic rules and such for the game, using screenshots out of the sourcebooks. For little things its alot faster ie. clicking on my building encounters/XP tab than looking it up in the rulebook 






Onenote also has a printer driver, so you can print a page directly into onenote. (doesnt work in 64bit windows as i sadly discovered) Useful for forum posts you think might be useful later (when you can just screenclip the useful bits) or as I use it, alot of the Wizards release extra content (creating encounters, the new starships/stations blog etc). Also MS released an update for office letting you create PDFs out of pages. Quick as anything you can convert a Onenote page (or word etc.) into a PDF and send/email it out  Even though i dont use it im pretty sure it syncs up with Outlook too.






Last pic in this example, you can place entire files into onenote and access them later, either printed or actually as a file to be opened later. I use this for some of the great generators people have made in Excel, for character creation etc. just putting the file into my notebook in case i want to use it later.






Thats the basics of onenote. If you have MS Office 2007, you have OneNote already. When you open it for the first time it has a notebook on using OneNote which is really easy to follow and get a handle on the program. Its pretty intuitive. Its great for random notes, planning sessions, record keeping and in my case, putting every single little thng relating to my studies in  

*Other Useful Features*

Its got a built in searching feature which even picks up the text in images and makes them searchable! (Also lets you record and SEARCH through audio, tagging audio timepoints to notes you make which the recording is running!) Great for keeping track of things. 
You can also hyperlink between pages, interlinking resources related to each other (i use this more for my study stuff than SWSE but it is a nice feature)
if you use a tablet PC/convertible tablet, OneNote is your best friend, supporting inking which is great for note taking over PDFs etc. 

In terms of SWSE stuff from the screenies you can get an idea of how i use onenote sections in my SWSE notebook:

*Ideas:* random stuff i find on forums, ideas, stat blocks etc.
*DoD Adventure:* I printed some of the DoD adventures into mine to use them for my game. funnily im using them less than i expected 
*Gameplay:* A page for each session, and subpages for things like planning, XP, chatlogs etc
*SWSE:* Rules, bits out of the books and useful resources (the starship sheets, ruels stuff i might need in a hurry
*Records:* Planets the chars have been, what happened there, chracters they've run into, what happened etc. Good way of keeping track of the universe 
*HNN Updates:* My game has a forum where we organise sessions, chat about the game etc. I have a forum on there specifically devoted to news posts by the Holonet News Network, where the players get updates they would normally find on computer terminals. since my game is just post Order-66 these give abit of a universe feel to the game, as HNN goes from a pro-republic independant news service to the Emperors state controlled propaganda system  I write up those updates in OneNote then post them on forums (writing thigns for the first time on forums has never really treated me well!)

Being a student especially, OneNote is the best thing thats happened to me. As happened when my friend introduced me to it, i passed it onto a friend when we started studying this year and he too has his entire life in it now  hehe. Not saying its for everyone (im sure there are people out there who love their own ways of organising campaign stuff) but i figure as long as people are aware of their options, thats the most important thing!

Hope this is helpful for someone


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## Aus_Snow (Oct 3, 2008)

Hm. Doesn't look too shabby, actually. Thanks for the demonstration/explanation.


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## Henrix (Oct 3, 2008)

It does look rather similar to Evernote, which I've been using on and off for a while.

[Edit] It doesn't seem to be free any longer. Or rather, it seems to be free for the first 40MB each 30 days. That'll probably suffice for me.


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## Baumi (Oct 3, 2008)

Wasn't there a One-Note threat a week ago?

Anyway, I totally agree with the OP ... ONENOTE Rocks! 

I used Myinfo for several years (another fine Noteprogram) but changed to OneNote because of these unique features:

-) Write wherever you want. You really use it like a normal Notebook, where you write some notes left, right, middle, etc. and with that program you can later just drag the notes around, merge them, split them, etc.

-) Intelligent Save. You don't have to care for saving the document EVAR (there isn't even a save button). If you lost your connection to the Notebook (Network, USB, etc) then you can still access and write in it and next time you connect it will synchronize line for line (you can write in the same side from different sources and it will merge them).

-) Tablet PC Support. I love to print out a fillable Character sheet to OneNote (become a background for a note) and then make notes on it with my tablet-pc at playtime (different colour, easy to delete the new notes without changing the Sheet itself).


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## Keefe the Thief (Oct 3, 2008)

Yeah, my thread, though i hope it wasn´t a threat. 

I´m the resident Onenote lover here. Of course, it has some limits. For instance you CANNOT change the keybindings which has driven me to frustrating bouts of anger. And the layout options are pretty limited. Otherwise it´s a godsend for any DM.


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## Plane Sailing (Oct 3, 2008)

I wonder how many people remember Penpoint from 1991?

It was a fantastic, ground-breaking OS for pen computers, which fundamentally changed a whole range of computer tropes. Some of it can be seen on this video on youtube.

[ame=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS5zVuTvvXk]YouTube - PenPoint Demo 2 for ATT[/ame]

And before anyone says "wow, that looks rubbish", remember that the desktop computer market was windows 3.1 (Windows 95 was still years away). Penpoint had workable recognition back on a 20Mhz 386 processor (I know - I had one!)

For those who prefer to read rather than watch a video, salient points are available here http://www.guidebookgallery.org/books/thepowerofpenpoint/chapter2 

OneNote grabs a number of the essential ideas from PenPoint and implements them as a windows app (as opposed to the whole operating system). It does a good job (as Jurble illustrates), but part of me wishes, really wishes, that Penpoint had been able to make it as a product and OS. We would have had kick-ass pen computers for quite a while now if it had!

Cheers


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## Baumi (Oct 3, 2008)

Plane Sailing .. I think you got something mixed up, in the year 2001 we already got WinXP and Win95 was 6 years past that.. 

But anyway it does seem impressive and I think that palm/pocket pcs today can still use some inspiration from this.


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## Plane Sailing (Oct 3, 2008)

Baumi said:


> Plane Sailing .. I think you got something mixed up, in the year 2001...




Yep, meant to write 1991 but it came out as 2001 for some reason!

Fixed now.

Cheers


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## El Mahdi (Oct 4, 2008)

Plane Sailing said:


> Yep, meant to write 1991 but it came out as 2001 for some reason!
> 
> Fixed now.
> 
> Cheers




_Reversed_ Y2K bug?


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## Vicente (Oct 6, 2008)

I love OneNote too. Specially with a TabletPC, it's just like having an infinite notebook 

And one comment, on Windows Vista you have a tool called "Snipping Tool" to take clips of certain parts of the screen.


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## Zustiur (Oct 11, 2008)

I just started entering information for my next campaign into onenote.
I've been looking for something this useful, and was expecting to make it myself. Now I don't have to because something far better exists!
I can't help wondering if there's an SRD in this format somewhere already... anyone?


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## Kristian Serrano (Oct 11, 2008)

Neat trick in OneNote: Type an equation with an equal sign at the end and press enter.


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## Ranger REG (Oct 12, 2008)

Jurble said:


> Hope this is helpful for someone



Dude, if you can write a multiple-part how-to article series on using MS OneNote as Game Aid tool -- either for _Dragon_ or Johnn Four's e-zine _Roleplaying Game Tips Weekly_ -- I'd be friggin ecstatic.


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## Amazing Triangle (Oct 15, 2008)

I love One Note.  It is so easy that if you spend maybe 5 minutes you have the basics down.  I created encounters and linked the monster to its stat block on another page.  I also hand drew a map or two (they aren't perfect but they don't need to be perfect)


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## Ranger REG (Oct 15, 2008)

Amazing Triangle said:


> I love One Note.  It is so easy that if you spend maybe 5 minutes you have the basics down.



Okay, so what's the basics?


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## Kristian Serrano (Oct 15, 2008)

Ranger REG said:


> Okay, so what's the basics?




Download the 60-day trial and find out.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/default.aspx


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## Baumi (Oct 15, 2008)

It's really easy to learn, just take at the look at the included Guide it shows you the basics (and tricks) better than we will be able to do here. 

If you just installed it then the Guide is already open (as Notebook), if you closed it then you should find it under "My Documents\OneNote Notebooks\OneNote 2007 Guide".


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## KerlanRayne (Oct 24, 2008)

For I long time I used a simpler program called Keynote. It's free but no longer being developed. The only reason I moved away from it is because it's doesn't handle tables very well. Now I use My Notes Keeper. I find One Note kind of large and unwieldy. The two I have used are simpler, smaller, ans still very useful. I have a TON of game related stuff in there and it's very easy to organize.


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## ssampier (Oct 24, 2008)

Looks interesting. I am guessing OneNote is sold separately from Office Bundles like Visio is now?


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## Kristian Serrano (Oct 24, 2008)

ssampier said:


> Looks interesting. I am guessing OneNote is sold separately from Office Bundles like Visio is now?



It depends on the Office suite. It's included with Home and Student (The cheapest suite) and Ultimate (the most expensive).


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## ssampier (Oct 25, 2008)

amaril said:


> It depends on the Office suite. It's included with Home and Student (The cheapest suite) and Ultimate (the most expensive).




I have Office Pro Plus 2007 at work; darn.


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## Kristian Serrano (Oct 25, 2008)

ssampier said:


> I have Office Pro Plus 2007 at work; darn.




Check it anyway just in case. I think I've seen some enterprise/academic licenses for Office 2007 Pro Plus include OneNote.


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## maransreth (Oct 25, 2008)

Office 07 Enterprise definitely has it included as part of the suite.


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## Baumi (Oct 27, 2008)

While it is included in the Office Suite, it is also available as a standalone product...

Amazon.com: onenote


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## Oompa (Nov 9, 2008)

Anyone have an good one note character sheet template? I would wish i could edit the PDF or Excel i let it show up as an print.. but i want to edit things..


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## Ebonyr (Nov 28, 2008)

Thanks for everyone for bring MS OneNote to my and others attention. I had the chance to get a copy last week and I love it. It makes storing notes a breeze and you can search too!


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## tomtill (Dec 21, 2008)

For MacOSX users, my highest recommendation for this type of software is Circus Ponies' Notebook. The app has been around for years, first on NeXT then on MacOSX. It is very stable, solid programming. I have used it for everything from gaming notes to biomedical research.

It uses a Notebook analogy, with chapters, pages, tabs, collapsing outlines. It auto-indexes, links, and has full text formatting, drawing tools and sound recording. It stores any kind of file, including applications, by simple drag and drop. You can optionally have it store a link or a copy of the actual file within it's file package (which can also be opened by the Finder). All files can be launched by double-clicking within Notebook. Graphics can optionally be displayed as a graphic or a file icon. It is quick view and spotlight aware, even pdfs within the file package are indexed in spotlight.

There are at least 3 similar programs on the mac, but this is the one I've like best for its clean but powerful interface.  Last I checked, it's $49.95 ($29.95 academic) but you will use this app for many types of research/organization tasks. There's a free trial---check it out at Circus Ponies - Organization for a Creative Mind


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## bigwillt (Dec 24, 2008)

Hey, 

Thanks to everyone who posted and especially Jurble for his in depth look at using OneNote to organize campaigns. I went out and bought Office 2007 Student and Home just for it.

Thanks again.


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