Microsoft OneNote 2003 [Old Version]

Ordering notes within a section is as easy as it should be, but why did Microsoft make it hard to organize across sections and even harder to organize across folders? You can transfer a note from one section to another, but you cannot transfer it to a specific location within the section in a single operation. To transfer between folders, you have to use ordinary drag and drop. Software is supposed to make these processes easy, not complicate them with an anachronistic imagry of paper sections.

Organizing and reorganizing is of the essence for notetaking, and the Office suite, of which OneNote is part, has a multi-clipboard. Why did Microsoft omit giving OneNote access to the Office clipboard, when OneNote is the Office product that needs it most. The functionality is already present in Office; Microsoft had to go out of its way to omit this functionality for OneNote.

The saving grace of OneNote is that the underlying technology is very powerful. It gives you the ability to take notes by various means and to put them anywhere you want on the page. The core technology is powerful, but the feature set MS has chosen to develop lacks a rational foundation and appears impulsive.


Simpleminded approach to notetaking   May 29, 2004
7 out of 10 found this review helpful

MS OneNote 2003 program is not completely ready for use on the tablet. Even though
the Journal notetaking software that comes with Windows XP Tablet Edition is simple, it
is better than OneNote. OneNote tries to organize notes through a series of vertical and
horizontal tabs, which would be a great idea if it didn't get in the way. Instead of helping,
these tabs actually make notes difficult to retrieve. Also, while tabs may be useful for
traditional notebooks, the usefulness of tabs does not carryover to the tablet. It was
simpleminded of Microsoft's OneNote product managers to carryover traditional
notebook features to the tablet.