Setting up a OneNote, any beginners advice?

[shenanigans]

After watching Leo's video on building a Digital Common place book, I've decided to buy a small Galaxy Book 3 360 with windows capability to run Microsoft OneNote with local storage. My main strategy for OneNote's organizational structure is to rewatch Leo's note-taking video and copy-paste all the major structures and categories shown in the video, as well as incorporating any important useful or new logging categories since the video was released. 

I intend to use this OneNote for decades into the future and am planning to get multiple digital cloud backups, Along with backup hard drives for the OneNote over the years. 

I also want to add Drawing and mind-mapping integration to help take notes where it benefits, along with a large school section to help integrate school subjects with the note database and to help plan and strategize school related tasks/goals.

I figure many of you guys already have years experience with the OneNote software by now, and so I would love to know if you guys have any tips, tricks, general advice, proper-mindsets, expectations, common mistakes, Ect, on setting up and cultivating an incredible OneNote

Edited September 9 by shenanigans

[hyruga]

Buy Microsoft 365.

You get free Microsoft office usage online, free space on email and onedrive. Not free though. 🤣

[Joshe]

My advice, uninstall it. Onenote was the best Leo had a long time ago. Times have changed and now he's boxed in by having his notes locked into that file format.

Look into Obsidian. See my post here:

Notion is better than Onenote but Obsidian is my fav. It's free and lightweight. All your notes are markdown files, which means you can format very easily. Markdown files are just like .txt files but with a .md file extension. You can't get more lightweight and easy to maintain and move than that. 

All sorts of community plugins as well, but I had to make my own color theme because they were all shit. 

It has

• infinite canvas
• Kanban boards 
• Excalidraw 
• Lots more. I recommend download it and explore. EVerything is free but if you want to have cloud access so you can sync your notes from your computer to say, an iPad, that'll cost you $80/year I think, but you don't need this. 

Let me know if you have any questions about it. 

 

Edited September 10 by Joshe

[Ero]

I have tried every knowledge management system imaginable. 700+ pages of text on paper, over 1300 page- equivalent text in one note, 950+ in notion and I have to agree with @Joshe. Nothing even comes close to Obsidian.

[shenanigans]

Well i'll be damned...

Change of plans i'm working on this!

Have any tips, tricks, or mindsets to get the most out of the software? 

 

 

Edited September 10 by shenanigans

[Jacob Morres]

 

I actually enjoy onenote more personally. I tried notion for a year or so and I actually ended up enjoying onenotes prebuilt structure (whereas notion you kind of need to design you own) and moved everything back a few months ago 

I basically only use it for storage (like notes, insights, resources etc.) though 

Edited September 10 by Jacob Morres

[Ayham]

step 1: uninstall it
step 2: downlaod obsidian

[Michael569]

8 hours ago, Joshe said:

Look into Obsidian. See my post here:

This ^ 

Obsidian or Notion are far far superior to One Note, personally I find Notion exceptional but others prefer Obsidian, they seem similar in how they work although Obsidian has that cool mind map which Notion doesn't and more plugins.

The limitation to customisation you can do in One Note compared to Obsidian/Notion is what pushed me away from MS. It just couldn't do what I needed. 

Edited September 10 by Michael569

[Buck Edwards]

One note is not that great. Look upnote 

[Joshe]

16 hours ago, shenanigans said:

Have any tips, tricks, or mindsets to get the most out of the software? 

@shenanigans It's so customizable that you really have to just go through and familiarize yourself with its features, but here are a few tips you might find useful. Number 1 is a must IMO.  

Aside from that, get good and formatting text with the keyboard. 

I highly recommend the code editor shortcuts so you can better manipulate the text. You can select multiple instances of words, have multiple cursors, delete lines, all sorts of stuff. 

Control + b - bold
Control + i - italic
Wrap any text in "== ==" to highlight. e.g: ==I'm highlighted==
- + space to create a list

Also, go through the "core plugins" and figure out what you don't need and turn everything else on.

Also, for me, the aesthetic is really important. I couldn't get into obsidian until I built a custom theme for it. You can customize the font, colors, everything. 

Edited September 10 by Joshe

[toasty7718]

On 9/9/2024 at 6:41 PM, shenanigans said:

 

After watching Leo's video on building a Digital Common place book, I've decided to buy a small Galaxy Book 3 360 with windows capability to run Microsoft OneNote with local storage. My main strategy for OneNote's organizational structure is to rewatch Leo's note-taking video and copy-paste all the major structures and categories shown in the video, as well as incorporating any important useful or new logging categories since the video was released. 

I intend to use this OneNote for decades into the future and am planning to get multiple digital cloud backups, Along with backup hard drives for the OneNote over the years. 

I also want to add Drawing and mind-mapping integration to help take notes where it benefits, along with a large school section to help integrate school subjects with the note database and to help plan and strategize school related tasks/goals.

I figure many of you guys already have years experience with the OneNote software by now, and so I would love to know if you guys have any tips, tricks, general advice, proper-mindsets, expectations, common mistakes, Ect, on setting up and cultivating an incredible OneNote

 

My only advice:

 

Delete OneNote and download Obsidian

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, toasty7718 said:

Delete OneNote and download Obsidian

[Letho]

@Leo Gura My brain is associational. Others brains are as well. It's other peoples choice if they want to prompt me for more or not. You can choose to do as you wish, I won't mind. I act based on integrity. And you can choose to act on yours, which in this case, includes threats that I thought we were past. I've answered honestly. If I have any request, it is to move forward based on mutual respect. If you choose not to, that is your choice but I thought we were past that. 

[Leo Gura]

@Letho Post in sentences that people can understand.

[Letho]

@Leo Gura Understood. But let it be fully behind us now. It only holds us both back from ourselves otherwise. You have my full positive regard for your work and progress.

[Leo Gura]

@Letho No problem.

[Ramanujan]

On 10/9/2024 at 6:52 AM, Joshe said:

My advice, uninstall it. Onenote was the best Leo had a long time ago. Times have changed and now he's boxed in by having his notes locked into that file format.

Look into Obsidian. See my post here:

Notion is better than Onenote but Obsidian is my fav. It's free and lightweight. All your notes are markdown files, which means you can format very easily. Markdown files are just like .txt files but with a .md file extension. You can't get more lightweight and easy to maintain and move than that. 

All sorts of community plugins as well, but I had to make my own color theme because they were all shit. 

It has

• infinite canvas
• Kanban boards 
• Excalidraw 
• Lots more. I recommend download it and explore. EVerything is free but if you want to have cloud access so you can sync your notes from your computer to say, an iPad, that'll cost you $80/year I think, but you don't need this. 

Let me know if you have any questions about it. 

 

this

[AION]

Obsidian is too gimmicky. If you aren’t Elon Musk type of guy you won’t need it. OneNote will do fine. 
 

I use Obsidian for my IT stuff. For regular stuff OneNote is much more accessible and useful. 

 

Edited September 12 by AION

[Ayham]

Leo is an old school boomer with his onenote   

[Ero]

4 hours ago, AION said:

Obsidian is too gimmicky. If you aren’t Elon Musk type of guy you won’t need it. OneNote will do fine. 
 

I use Obsidian for my IT stuff. For regular stuff OneNote is much more accessible and useful. 

 

Gimmicky how? OneNote doesn’t have more than 3 layers in it’s hierarchy (journal, tab, page), you cannot do relational linking and can’t write Latex/code. If you are a student for example, OneNote simply won’t work for you.