What a day of news on the OneNote front so fasten your seatbelt and follow along.
When Mary Jo Foley and Tom Warren reported last week that Microsoft would be providing a free version of their OneNote program for Mac and Windows it was pretty much a given to happen since they have great sources for their information.
Well today the OneNote team at Microsoft confirmed those reports with a litany of new posts over at the Official Office Blog.
Here is a quick run-down of the announcements:
Mac users have made it loud and clear that you want the first class note-taking experience of OneNote on your Macs. Okay, we got the message. Rocking worlds and making lives complete is a pretty high bar, and we’re sorry we missed your afternoon deadline, but we’ve been working away, and we’re excited to bring it to you today. And if you’re a Mac user who didn’t already know about OneNote, check out Introducing OneNote for Mac or just get started now by downloading OneNote for Mac from the Mac App Store to see what your fellow Mac users are so excited about.
Similar to other Office for Mac applications, OneNote for Mac has the Ribbon user interface with a variety of options for formatting and styling your notes. Your notes can be styled however you like. You can choose that special font and color you like to use for your notes, or emphasize important content with bold, underline or highlights.
Today we announced three major OneNote developments, including the OneNote Clipper, the easiest way to save anything on the web to OneNote with just one click. Think of it as your camera for the web, snapshotting any webpage you see directly into OneNote.
Email to OneNote is a great way to forward receipts, travel itineraries or documents that you want to keep track of from your mailbox. If you’re on the run and want to send yourself a quick to do, it’s hard to get faster than writing up a quick mail. Or, if you’re in an app, and want to remember what you’re seeing, you can do so quickly by sharing via email.
Office Lens is an app that’s like having a scanner in your pocket. You can use it to take pictures of things like business cards, restaurant menus, notes on whiteboards or blackboards — anything you want to keep on hand. But unlike loose sticky notes, business cards or sketches on lunch napkins, you won’t lose track of your ideas when you capture them with Office Lens. Even things like children’s artwork is fair game. Snap a picture of that one-of-a-kind card your child made and it’ll be at your fingertips whenever you’d like to see it.
I wonder what the free version for the PC means for the OneNote Modern App in the Windows Store? It has continued to be updated fairly regularly but the features have always lagged behind the desktop version that came with Microsoft Office. I wonder if it will be updated now to match those features or still be a rudimentary version to retain the ability to be a Share Charms target?
Whichever way that goes today has been a great day for the OneNote Team – congrats on all the new offerings for a great app/program.
