Newsletter Archives

• Make the most of the snipping tools in Windows

  Posted on February 10, 2025 at 02:45 CST by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 22.06 • 2025-02-10

  WINDOWS 11

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  When you need a record of something you see on screen, Windows has multiple tools — plus ways to get images you saved on other devices, too.

  As usual with Windows, there isn’t just one way to snip, clip, or capture a screenshot of part of your screen. There’s a handful of options in Windows 10 and a more powerful new tool just for Windows 11.

  Windows 10 comes with an update of the Windows 7 Snipping Tool. You can open that from the Start menu, but it’s very basic and has a broken link to Paint 3D.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (22.06.0, 2025-02-10).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Windows 11 Edge, Newsletters, OneNote, Screen capture, Snipping Tool, Windows 10, Windows 11

• The state of OneNote in 2024

  Posted on December 16, 2024 at 02:42 CST by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  Next year the OneNote for Windows 10 app reaches end of life. It’s time to check in on how much progress the desktop OneNote version has made in the last 12 months.

  My oldest notes in OneNote are just over 21 years old, starting from a meeting with Microsoft in July 2003 about the shared source initiative that let OEMs look at the Windows codebase. I still use the software in very much the same way today. I take notes in meetings and interviews, I clip in interesting and useful information, and I search for something I remember saving.

  I have OneNote open all the time on my laptop. (It’s also installed on both my phones, one Android and one iPhone.) Although the interface has changed, the core features are much the same as they were five years ago. Like a swan, that slow glide disguises an enormous amount of effort under the surface. But apart from keeping up with Office and Windows 11, how did Microsoft do on delivering the new features it said OneNote was going to get this year?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.51.0, 2024-12-16).

  OneNote Microsoft Office, Newsletters, OneNote, OneNote for Windows 10, Teams

• User interface annoyances

  Posted on September 9, 2024 at 02:43 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  WINDOWS 11

  

  By Will Fastie

  The user interface for Windows 11 is changing almost monthly, and sometimes even more quickly.

  It’s not clear why, nor are the benefits of the changes explained. Many of the changes arrive silently and are noticed only when something doesn’t work as expected.

  Here are a few of my personal aggravations.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.37.0, 2024-09-09).

  Windows 11 Excel, File Explorer, Newsletters, Office 365, OneNote, Outlook, User Interface, Windows 11, Windows Lock Screen, Word

• Save time with AutoCorrect!

  Posted on March 4, 2024 at 02:43 CST by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  OFFICE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  You can make AutoCorrect more useful by adding your own corrections and copying those to wherever you need them.

  Whenever you mistype one of several dozen commonly misspelled words while using Word and other Office apps (and even the Office Web apps), Office automatically corrects your spelling.

  Fortunately, AutoCorrect is a lot less aggressive than in the early days of Word, when a major investment bank famously found itself referred to in correspondence as “Goddamn Sachs.” And unlike smartphones, where you must rely upon spotting and then reversing embarrassing automatic text corrections before you send the message, Office gives you complete control over what gets corrected.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.10.0, 2024-03-04).

  Office AutoCorrect, MS Office AutoCorrect, Newsletters, Office, OneNote, Proofing, Spellcheck, Word

• The state of OneNote in 2023

  Posted on December 26, 2023 at 02:44 CST by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  Progress on the unified Windows version of OneNote has delivered only a handful of new features this year, but the foundations might finally be finished.

  2024 will mark five years since Microsoft restarted work on the desktop Windows client and three years since it decided to cherry-pick some favorite OneNote features for Windows 10 before it reaches end of life in October 2025. Software development always takes longer than expected, especially with the impact of a global pandemic, so I want to look back at the progress OneNote has made in 2023 and then see where Microsoft has been focusing its investments.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.52.0, 2023-12-26).

  OneNote Copilot, Fluid, Loop components, Newsletters, OneNote, OneNote 2016, OneNote 365, OneNote for Windows, User Interface

• Moving from Evernote to OneNote

  Posted on September 11, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  Microsoft no longer has a tool to help you move from Evernote to OneNote, but there are two utilities that can make it less painful.

  When OneNote was first introduced back in the days of the original Tablet PC, it wasn’t the only app to help you keep track of your notes. Evernote — originally named for its approach of an endless scrolling piece of digital paper, like a toilet-paper roll or till receipt — launched around the same time.

  In light of the recent layoffs of almost everyone who worked on Evernote after the company was bought by Bending Spoons, that name might now look a little ironic.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.37.0, 2023-09-11).

  OneNote Conversion, Evernote, Newsletters, OneNote

• Block malicious OneNote attachments without blocking your work

  Posted on July 17, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  Making PCs more secure is a continuous cycle of improving security in one area, such as Windows itself, so attackers move on to another avenue of attack.

  They go after PDFs, browsers, and — perennially — Office documents, usually through macros.

  In each case, Microsoft typically creates a fix for the specific attacks first, then a defense against that category of attacks, and then deeper protections that might make more significant changes to the underlying feature used as an attack vector.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.29.0, 2023-07-17).

  OneNote Blocking, Malicious Files, Newsletters, OneNote, Security

• How to get transcripts from Teams to OneNote

  Posted on June 19, 2023 at 02:43 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  If you have meeting recordings from Teams, you can get the text of what everyone said — if you know where to look.

  The Windows version of OneNote has a transcription tool, but I’ve had a lot of problems getting it to work. I often use the Otter.AI service to turn my meetings and interviews into text by propping my phone up on the table or next to my laptop.

  But if you’re using Teams for your meetings, you can usually get a better-quality transcription by doing it inside Teams.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.25.0, 2023-06-19).

  OneNote Microsoft Steam, Newsletters, OneNote, Teams, Transcription

• Longstanding feature requests, and their status

  Posted on May 29, 2023 at 02:44 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  We’ve been waiting a long time for the OneNote features promised in 2019.

  I asked Microsoft to tell us what’s coming when.

  The very first time I heard about OneNote, at a press briefing for Office 2003, I saw how useful it would be — but there were also some things that I thought wouldn’t work. I went over to talk to Microsoft’s Chris Pratley and spent the next 20 minutes trapping him in a corner between the wall and the lunch table, making suggestions and asking for changes, before a PR person tactfully extracted him.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.22.0, 2023-05-29).

  OneNote Features, Newsletters, OneNote, Status, updates

• My favorite OneNote tricks

  Posted on April 24, 2023 at 02:43 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  Once you get all your useful information into OneNote, there are some ways to make things go faster.

  For a long time, one of the most common feature requests for OneNote was already in the product — being able to have more than one window open at once. It just wasn’t easy to find. There are useful tricks like that in OneNote. Here are my favorites.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.17.0, 2023-04-24).

  OneNote Newsletters, OneNote, tips, Tricks, Usability

• What’s wrong with OneNote — and what you can fix

  Posted on March 27, 2023 at 02:43 CDT by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  OneNote is one of my favorite applications — but one that frustrates me far too often.

  It’s not me or you — it’s OneNote. Here’s a quick rundown of the annoying things that are just too hard (or downright impossible) to use, and some tips about how you can make those annoyances less so.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.13.0, 2023-03-27).

  OneNote Newsletters, OneNote, OneNote 2016, OneNote 365, OneNote for Windows 10

• Why sharing in OneNote isn’t easy, and how to fix it

  Posted on February 20, 2023 at 02:42 CST by Mary Branscombe • Comment in the Forums

  ONENOTE

  

  By Mary Branscombe

  It will get simpler eventually, but for now you must plan ahead and double-check which account you’re using.

  OneNote automatically syncs all the notes you create between all the devices you use it on — and those don’t have to be only your own devices. You can share notebooks with other people and — as long as they’re stored somewhere they can connect to — they can see and update the information in OneNote. The same goes for your own multiple Microsoft accounts, such as work and personal; you can get access to your notes from both.

  But there are a few quirks to the way sharing works in OneNote that can trip you up if you’re not clear about how it works. There are also some long-standing frustrations and limitations that we’re still waiting to see fixed.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.08.0, 2023-02-20).

  OneNote Microsoft Account, Newsletters, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, OneNote, sharing
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