I know many of you have been using OneNote from Microsoft since it was first released. In the event that you haven't yet, I highly recommend that you try it out. In my opinion it is the most innovative program Microsoft has produced to date. Essentially, it's a digital notebook. It has many advanced features that help you write and keep track of your notes. You can add tabs, pages, and sections to organize your information and produce outlines from your notes. You can type text from the keyboard, of course, but you can also use handwriting and even draw sketches. This is where having a Tablet PC comes in handy (although you can use a graphics tablet if you have one although you do not get ink-to-text conversion as you do on a Tablet PC).

OneNote also allows you to add video notes, pictures, meeting data from Outlook, clippings from other applications or the web, and much more. It allows voice recordings to be created and saved right alongside your notes. If you do, OneNote will highlight each note you've taken as the audio is played back so you can see what you were writing at the time a particular statement was made or question asked.

You can also import other Office documents, save pages as Word documents or as web pages, jot down addresses and save to Outlook. It is the most versatile tool for notes I have ever used. I don't yet have a Tablet PC, but OneNote's benefits are well worth it on my laptop. You can download a free trial or test-drive OneNote online by clicking here. For anyone who doesn't already use it, I think you'll find it to be a great time-saving tool.

I always wanted to be able to get driving directions from within Outlook (2000, 2002, 2003), and was somewhat upset that there didn't seem to be a way to do it except cut & paste and using online maps. Well, a while back, I saw a funny icon in the contact view. This is the view you see once you click on a contact's name and their entire profile comes up. This icon is a little yellow road sign with a black directional arrow on it. I'll bet you know where this is going. You're right, it links directly to MSN maps and gives you a great map of almost any address, provided the address is actually entered into the address field. Even if the address is not correct, it will ask you for clarification and give several choices. I can't tell you how much time this has saved me. Boy, I feel dumb for not noticing it there before. Check it out.  

Do you ever get too much email? You're laughing right? All of us get too much email. I work with several people who get so much mail they can't keep up unless they go through it all weekend. It's a growing problem that needs to be addressed. The convergence of many new communication services is helping with this problem, but not until there is widespread use will it really show its advantages. It typically takes longer for enterprises to adopt emerging technologies than the consumer market where adoption has, in fact, already started.

Companies have many more issues to deal with when it comes to using IM, Voice over IP, video conferencing and web-meetings including security and misuse. As collaborative tools advance and become commonplace in every area of our lives, corporations will find ways of dealing with the challenges and ensure that the benefits far outweigh the cost.

A tool developed by Microsoft Research will help us cope with too much email until the unified communications front gets here. It's called "Social Network and Relationship Finder" or SNARF. Way cool acronym, don't you think? Basically this tool will sort and group your Outlook messages based on any number of metrics you choose. It has a lot of promise, including ways to rate message importance. The tool is available for download, but, as are all of the offerings from MSR, is still in the experimental stages. It runs on Outlook 2002 or 2003 and hasn't yet been tested on Exchange or MAPI servers, hotmail, etc. It does NOT work with Outlook Express. It is pretty cool.

You have no doubt seen the Microsoft Office 2003 ads featuring dinosaur heads on people. They are a little creepy. In a way they are interesting however, and get an interesting point across. Many businesses are working in a bygone era. At least we do at my day job. Not that we do things particularly wrong, it's just that the technology has grown up so fast and we haven't adopted it yet. I think we should; we would do business so much better, and so much more efficiently.

I really don't know why we haven't. I guess it's hard to coordinate such a massive change to a new system. It may be more that people don't handle major change well, which is understandable. I still remember our move to Outlook a few years ago, and that was painful enough. I understand liking what is familiar to you, however if taking a little time to learn and use a new system could (if the system is designed well) help you get out of work earlier, or allow you to share the workload more evenly.

In the case of Office 2003, I think this is particularly true. Click here for a no-download Test Drive of Office 2003. It has so many features and new programs that make business just plain work better. I think the coming version of Office will continue this upward trend of working smarter.

I know we will forever squabble over whether XML or OpenDocument format is the best way to go, but from a business standpoint it really is about what works. The formats aren't so important. Businesses want results the easiest way possible.

If you use Outlook 2003 you have most likely setup a signature already, however if you haven't here's how:

1. Once you have Outlook open, click on Tools, and then click on Options.

2. Click on the third tab "Mail Format"

3. Click "Signatures" to edit or add a new signature.

4. Once a signature is created you can click on edit to make changes.

5. Once in edit mode, click on "Advanced Edit" to open Word. This will allow you to edit your signature in HTML format.

6. You can also add a picture from within Word, such as a business logo or icon that makes your signature unique to you. Don't forget to use a smaller image, as this will increase your email message's size if it's a large image.

7. Remember to click save on the File menu, and then click Exit, also on the file menu.

8. Outlook may ask you if you want to save it. Click OK.

If you have any tips and tricks that you want to share with our readers, Outlook or otherwise, please post a comment below. Thanks!

Microsoft Office 2003 includes an excellent, but little-known utility called Microsoft Document Imaging. This tool allows you to recognize text from TIF image files. Document Imaging actually does a much better job of recognizing text than some other OCR (optical character recognition) programs out there. I was pleasantly surprised with the results. Also included is Microsoft Document Scanning, which scans documents to TIF images. If you do a complete install of Office 2003, these tools are installed by default. If you didn't install them along with Office, you can find these two utilities and plenty more on your installation CD. Just select a Custom Install and review your options.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates is in a funny video with the star of Napoleon Dynamite, Jon Heder. The video is somewhat of an advertisement for Microsoft's Office Suite (meaning 2003). The video features Mr. Gates and "Napoleon" as roommates in college, they work on computers together at a local company, fight about whose reflexes are better, and even wear some sweet suits. It is a light-hearted video about how you should not fall asleep at your desk, and how new software can make all the difference. Microsoft fans will love this rare clip, trust me it's worth the watch, the only thing is, the audio isn't the greatest quality. The video was originally shown at a developer's conference. Enjoy!

Have you ever wanted to be able to write a letter in your own handwriting and use Word to edit it at the same time? Now you can do both. Microsoft has a link on their website that will allow you to turn your handwriting into a font via a third party service. The service is fairly inexpensive and simple. You can install this font on your computer and use it to write letters in your own handwriting, without having to sacrifice the powerful editing features in Word. Hey, I have just solved the problem of SPAM emails! If you make everyone who sends emails do it in their own handwriting, then you could catch people by using handwriting, so why have the authorities not thought of this? Perhaps I should think about that one for a while before alerting the FBI.