Microsoft To Add OneNote To OfficeMicrosoft To Add OneNote To Office

With none other than Bill Gates, the world's richest man, behind the microphone, Microsoft unveiled OneNote, an upcoming application in the Office series that's geared toward taking, organizing, and retrieving notes.

Expected to be released next summer, Microsoft OneNote will capture handwritten and typed notes, then organize them into project folders and tabbed pages. Once it's digital, information in OneNote can be maneuvered to an actual document-making application, such as Word or PowerPoint, via rich copy-and-paste to form the basis for, say, a report or presentation.

"This is a very good application for those who need to juggle multiple areas of responsibility and multiple projects, who need to be able, for instance, to access data from one meeting in the next meeting," said Paul DeGroot, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland, Wash., firm that closely follows Microsoft's technology.

"It looks like a handy way to access that kind of [random] data," said DeGroot. "But it wouldn't replace applications like Word. When it gets time to prepare a formal report, for instance, you'll still need a tool that would create documents."

Although the exact specifications of OneNote, its pricing, or even if it will be bundled with next year's Office (code-named Office 11 at this point) are unknown, Microsoft's made several things clear:

--OneNote's UI uses a paper notebook metaphor, with dividers to segregate projects, sports multiple pages per divider, and relies on "virtual paper" that can be typed, written, or drawn on anywhere.

--Depending on the platform--tablet, notebook, desktop--OneNote allows for handwritten or typed notes, or both. Audio files, such as recorded conference calls, also can be entered into OneNote, as can images captured from sources like the Web or hand-made sketches with a stylus.

--OneNote is aimed at a larger audience than the Tablet PC's "corridor warrior," for Microsoft sees applications ranging from students doing research to businesspeople managing notes taken down at meetings.

--OneNote integrates, in some fashion, with Office applications. From OneNote, for instance, Microsoft said that you'll be able to E-mail your digital notes via Outlook.

Microsoft's current Office lineup of applications lacks a way to store and retrieve random bits of information, said DeGroot, forcing users into dodgy solutions such as depositing notes into Word documents, where they're impossible to intelligently browse and sometimes difficult to find.

"OneNote would be a perfect replacement for that," he said.

But although Microsoft has pulled off the wraps on some aspects of OneNote, questions remain.

"Microsoft hasn't described how the notes will be saved," said DeGroot. "The Notes function in Outlook isn't terribly handy, because it lacks any hierarchical organization. From what I've seen of OneNote, it doesn't provide a deeply hierarchical organization either."

But he applauds Microsoft for making the effort, less-than-perfect that it may be. "Microsoft's starting to work on functionality that's proven very difficult to deliver in the past," DeGroot said. "This is a tough category [to succeed in], but perhaps OneNote will improve in time."