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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

I feel that OneNote has some specific key elements like the active "tags". It's also a good idea to integrate part of the document with other sources (like your contacts, or online spreadsheets).

In the past I felt that Google Sites (ex JotSpot) would follow that route but it seems it's now in the limbo.

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I never found a good usecase for onenote's tags - yes, you can mark them as contacts or addresses, and there are handly shortcuts for that - but what is the use? How do you, for example, just view all elements tagged "contacts"? Or even just pages that have those tags? After all is said and done, it is probably easier to just type in the tag name as part of the data and let the search engine handle it.

(EDIT: cancel that, I'm an idiot. I just found a big honking "Find Tags" button right on the main ribbon that I'd completely overlooked before.)

I never understood the appeal of storing the entire freaking notebook in a single file either. When I started using onenote, I used the webcam recording feature as a sort of video diary, and this completely broke down my backup scripts (I put everything on amazon s3, which doesn't support diffs.)

/ end rant

Back to your comment, I don't quite understand what you mean by the online spreadsheet integration. Could you elaborate? I mean, the contacts integration with Outlook is pretty cool, but is virtually useless with anything else in the universe. What is the advantage here?

I use the tags everytime because I feel the freedom to mark bulleted lists with checkboxes.

What I tried to say with integration is that you can read from external sources and put the information in OneNote automatically, you need to build some add-on or connect from a scripting language to do that.

Another great use for the Tags - Summary Pages.

Look at the bottom of the Tags Summary panel when you click on the "Find Tags" button. You should see a "Create Summary Page" option. It's a great way to create summary/wrapup's of meetings and projects.

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