Nota Bene: The OneNote Blog : Downloads & Updates

Now available: An updated 64-bit print driver for OneNote 2007

Michael C. Oldenburg — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 07:00:00 GMT

If you're using the released version of OneNote 2007 on a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 or Windows Vista, I'm happy to share the good news that Microsoft Program Manager David Rasmussen has released an update to his 64-bit Windows print driver for OneNote 2007. Read my full blog post for a list of new features and a link to the download....(read more)

Download the Office 2010 Beta!

Michael C. Oldenburg — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:00:00 GMT

The wait is over! This morning at the 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft formally announced the public availability of the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, which includes OneNote 2010. Read my full blog post for the direct download link and then read up on some important file format considerations in OneNote 2010 Beta before you begin using the new version on your computer....(read more)

Download more free OneNote calendars for 2009 (and 2010)

Michael C. Oldenburg — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Back in January of this year, I provided shortcuts to the newest calendar templates for your OneNote 2007 notebooks. Since then, the Templates team at Office Online has been busy creating more free templates for you to download — including a full spectrum of customizable 2009 calendars and even a couple of early designs for next year. Check out this blog post for direct links to these free downloads....(read more)

A “Send to OneNote 2007” print driver solution for 64-bit Windows

Michael C. Oldenburg — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 17:30:00 GMT

Hands down, the “Send to OneNote 2007” print driver feature has become one of OneNote’s most popular features. It works as an extension to the printing system built into Windows, allowing you to send information from your computer applications directly to the pages of your OneNote notebooks. In addition to saving a ton of paper, you can do many convenient things with this option. Think of it as a “reverse import,” with more control over how you can send stuff into OneNote. Once you start to appreciate this feature, you’ll never want to give it up. But what can you do when you’re running OneNote 2007 on a 64-bit version of Windows? Up until now, the print driver only worked on 32-bit versions. OneNote Principal Group Program Manager David Rasmussen has developed a solution to the conundrum. Read my full blog post for information on how to verify your edition of Windows, where to get David’s solution, and to learn more about the history of the 32-bit/64-bit print driver issue....(read more)

Download free 2009 calendar templates (or make your own!)

Michael C. Oldenburg — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Happy New Year, everyone!

As any seasoned user of OneNote 2007 will tell you, the beauty of OneNote is the ability to keep everything together in one place. Calendars are no exception, whether you keep them with you for quick lookups or you link dates and events to specific pages in your notebook.

The Office Online Templates team has been hard at work to make the latest OneNote calendar templates for 2009 available, the first few of which you can now download for free:

2009 full-year calendar
2009 monthly calendar
2009 daily calendar (January)
2009 daily calendar (February)
2009 daily calendar (March)
2009 daily calendar (April)
2009 daily calendar (May)
2009 daily calendar (June)
View all available OneNote templates (by category)
The remaining months for the daily calendars will be posted soon.
Check the full templates catalog each month to see what’s new!

Pre-designed page templates such as these calendars can save you lots of time, but remember that you're not forced to use any templates exactly as they are. If a particular template doesn't quite suit your needs, download it as a starting point, and then change the colors, fonts, and any other formatting to match your preferences. You can then save your changes as a new template and apply it to new pages in your notebook. You can even share your designs with other people.

To learn how to do this, watch our new video:

Watch now: Take the work out of note-taking with OneNote templates!

Aside from single page OneNote templates, you can also create section templates (a template of a section containing one or more pages) and notebook templates (a template of a notebook containing one or more sections) in OneNote. To do this, click the Save As command when you're all done with your design work, and then choose the “OneNote Single File Package (*.onepkg)” option as the file type.

Be sure to select the appropriate Page Range before saving the package (choose Current Section to save your selection as a section template or choose Current Notebook to save your selection as a notebook template).

The OneNote package file format lets you distribute selected notes to other OneNote users, but you can also use this feature to install your template creations on multiple computers, or to share your template designs with your friends, family, co-workers, or classmates. All a recipient has to do is double-click the OneNote package file to install the template it contains onto their own computer.

If you've personally created some useful OneNote templates that you'd like to share with other readers, feel free to post a link to your download location as a comment!

It's that time of year again...

Michael C. Oldenburg — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 03:00:00 GMT

This month’s collection of tips on the Microsoft At Work Web site (shown below) gives a shout-out to one of my previous blog posts, in which I shared some tips about using OneNote for holiday and event planning.

If you missed my original blog post, you can still read it here:

Survive the holidays with OneNote 2007
http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_oldenburg/archive/2007/12/16/6686183.aspx

All of the links in the article are still valid (for example, the pointers to the various editions of Microsoft Office that include OneNote). The new 2009 OneNote calendar templates are still being posted on the Office Online Web site, but you can start grabbing the first ones here.

Be sure to check out the Templates site on Office Online for new calendars in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, you can download a ton of other templates there — all free of charge.

To receive free monthly tips and tricks about a variety of Office programs and technologies, including OneNote, consider bookmarking the Microsoft At Work and the Microsoft At Home Web sites. There’s always something new to learn and check out!

Free download: Office 2007 Help updates (including OneNote!)

Michael C. Oldenburg — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:00:00 GMT

When we mention “Help” in the software publishing world, we don't mean technical support or maintenance (that's generally called “Support”). Instead, the collective term “Help” refers to the free published content that ships with most commercial or professional software programs. This content can serve as a reference (like the printed manuals that used to be included in the box) or it can provide training, step-by-step tutorials, and overviews to help you learn a new software program and master its many features over time.

You probably know that pressing F1 in any Office 2007 program opens the Help viewer, which lets you browse that program's Help content by clicking through a Table of Contents or by searching for keywords and feature names. Clicking the appropriate link on the Help menu will do the same thing, although this interface style has gone out of fashion in programs with the new Fluent (a.k.a. Ribbon) interface, such as Word 2007 and Excel 2007.

What you may not have noticed before is that, regardless of the interface, the programs in the Office 2007 suites have two very different Help experiences. When your computer is connected to the Internet, and if you (or your system administrator) have given permission, the Help viewer will fetch and display the most up-to-date and complete content for the Office 2007 Help in each program. This experience is preferred because, in this so-called “connected state,” you're sure to always see the latest and greatest Help content that's available for your program(s). In this scenario, the Help viewer bypasses the Help files that were originally installed with each program because such disk-based content cannot be automatically updated and thus becomes outdated rather quickly.

If you yank the network cable from your computer or otherwise disconnect from the Internet for any reason, the Help viewer reverts to the offline Help files on your hard drive — outdated as they may be. All of the Help and How-to content that has been published since the launch of the product is then no longer fetched from the Office Online Web site. This is problematic when you need to look up procedure steps for a program task or feature and the corresponding Help topic exists only online. For example, imagine you're traveling on business and finishing your big PowerPoint presentation on the plane. Your boss told you to insert an animation or video, but you don't remember how to do this. If a specific article with the solution to your issue was not published as part of the original "offline Help" files on your Office CD or DVD, you'll have to wait until you can next connect to the Web.

Sitting on planes isn't the only situation where offline Help files may suddenly become important. In many companies, employees are not permitted to connect to the Internet for security reasons or due to corporate policies. For these customers, keeping our offline Help files as up-to-date as possible is very important. Larger companies typically have an IT staff that keeps cached versions of new Help content available in-house for searching. But for smaller businesses, no such luxury exists.

Whatever your situation, I recommend grabbing our newest Office 2007 Help updates and installing them on your computer.

If you have configured your version of Windows Update (Windows XP or Windows Vista) to include updates for all Microsoft software, these new offline Help file updates will show up in the “Office 2007” category of your “Recommended” updates (see screenshot). Depending on how your Windows Update is configured, you may already have these updates, or you may need to manually check for them. You may not see exactly the same items on your screen as are shown in this screenshot. The number of Help updates depends on whatever individual Office 2007 programs you have installed (separately or as part of any of the suites).

By the way, if you don't have Office 2007 updates integrated with your version of Windows Update (or if you don't want to for some reason), you can go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=40747 to check for all available Office 2007 updates for your computer. This is the same link that the Office programs go to when you click Check for updates from the Office interface.

Once updated, the offline Help files on your hard drive will contain a new, up-to-the-moment snapshot of the Help libraries which we keep current on the Office Online Web site every month. So, even if you're not planning to ever disconnect from the Internet, offline Help files on your hard drive might just get you out of a bind the next time you find yourself up against a deadline and in need of finding that elusive, secret handshake for mastering a particular task or feature.

To make sure your Office 2007 Help viewer is configured to fetch the latest online content whenever you're connected to the Internet, click the button in the lower right corner of the Help viewer window (in OneNote 2007 or any other Office 2007 program, press F1) and then choose Show content from Office Online from the popup menu. “Connected to Office Online” means that your Office program will automatically include the latest online content in the Help Table of Contents and in the Search results.

By the way, to quickly find all OneNote-specific Help & How-to content that's currently available on Office Online, click the links in the left margin of my blog (under the OneNote Links heading).