Others say...

"Good product, but typical 80/20 mentality of Microsoft"
This is a definitely a Microsoft product -- good and bad. It has enough features in it that makes it worth the purchase, but Microsoft definitely did not take the time to get out all of the kinks.

On the good side, if you are in a situation where you need to write a lot of notes (aka very small documents) and want a way to organize them beyond the file/folder organization of the standard operating system, then this is a great product. I am personally using this to organize my notes for my son's homeschooling.

On the other hand, as with any Microsoft product, there are many areas where the features are lacking.

Stationary / Templates
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There is no way to organize your templates. They are automatically added to the first "template section" and there is no way to rename or organize them into other sections -- logically. You can open the templates as OneNote files and move stationary pages from one section to another -- which is a major pain. The sections are also not presented in any logical order. They are not alphabetical, they are not by date, and they are not by size. The only logic that I found was that the personal ones are displayed first and then the system ones. So if you only have one personal stationary section, at least you know your personal stationary templates will be added there.

Publishing
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If you have plain text notes, this feature works fine. But if you have ANY type of formatting, (eg. using a tab to create columns) the formatting is completly lost when you try to publish. This is true for ALL publishing types (MS Word, Mail, and HTML).

Send To OneNote from IE
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First, the icon is missing in IE. You just see a blank area and when you move your mouse over it you see the "One Note" tool text. Second, you have no control of where the notes are sent. They are sent to a section labeled "Web Clippings". That is not too bad, because you can just move the pages to another section. Third, you have to select text to send. You can't just send a whole page.

Tables
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I agree with the other reviewers. Although you can create some type of formatting with columns, it would have been nice to be able to have grid lines. I make very very large lists. My longest list so far has been 180 items. It would be nice to be able to have some type of gridlines to help keep the table lined up.

Ruler background
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The ruler background is based on standard paper rulers (wide, college ruled, grid, etc.) There should really be a ruler paper for typed text. Have the lines based on the text (single line of text, double line of text, triple line of text -- or what would work best for me is every 5 or 10 lines. This would make not having tables less important, because I would be able to line things up based on the page rulers.

Overall
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I personally found this product to be worth the money when compared to what else in the market. Although, if I was a student on a fixed budget, I might feel diferently. Although, if I was a student, as apposed to an administrator / teacher my needs in the product would be different.

I reviewed PHPBB, PHPNuke, and PHPNuke derivatives. For the needs that I have, Microsoft One Note, met them the best. Although, not being able to publish is going to be a major drawback for me. I hope that either Microsoft or somebody in the opensource community takes to initiative to solve this problem.

"it looks appealing at first but....."
I have been mad about the onenote 2003 as most of the people are. The initial days with it were great, a new software with a new look and a new concept. But as the days progressed with it and the honeymoon period was over, I observed certain serious limitations in it- which i think will be developed in the new versions.


1.it is not certainly that intuitive that it seems to be.
It is seriously handicapped by the lack of treelike structure that one finds in treepad software that makes every page you created appear on the left side of the screen, in a heirarchial structure. This structure makes it very easy to navigate through the entire note book in just a click. where as in the onenote this structure is present in an drop down menu like thing which is embarassing to use as time goes by (which i would like to give one word - primitive).each time one has to point an arrow on it and click it and the menu drops and click on the + signs to see whats in the folder and u find only sections in it and there are no pages seen in that structure. and you have to know some how, which topics are in which section and in which page and its a great demand on the mind. And when you leave that heirarchial structure it is gone and again you have to repeat the entrie procedure. it gets on the nerves especially when your notes grows and when you have to suddenly view some page in some other section or folder.


2. With this onenote can you guess how many note books you can create? take a wild guess!!!! YOU would be utterly disappointed to know that the answer is 1 only ONE note book can be created with it. {for comparison and to tell you that there are better softwares - treepad is excellent in this feature you can create any number of notebooks any where on your system unlike onenote where you have to create the sections only in the default folder -in my documents it provides when it is first installed and the organization of each note book is preserved where ever you open that notes,}


3. take this scenario:- you have to reformat your system, or open the notes in some other system. the clumsient part of the picture now surfaces. when you copy and paste a new sections Onenote opens it through a shortcut but not directly. the heirarchy in the onenote is maintained only for the only one notebook that it creates when it is first installed. when you reformat your system or transfer sections of some other system those sections are seen as aliens by the Onenote and the only way to navigate through them is through the windows browser. its really awkward.


many of the features are good to brilliant. But these are mostly superficial features that you can get on without, or find alternatives. But it is some what crippled when the above features are considered which take away the userfriendly tag of Microsoft corporation from this product. especially when there are a few other softwares that have the above features, that are either free or less cheap. you can try treepad business edition if you can afford some bucks. or treepad lite or keynote softwares these are for free. they dont have some of the fancy things of onenote like note flags... But are much more intuitive and userfriendly.

Onenote is not the ultimate note taking software as it is portraited. It has to travel still further before one can place it there.

"Good in a weak category"
I have long been searching for a good digital notebook. I think this does that basic job. It's pretty to easy to store your thought in a hierarchical structure. It's pretty easy to transfer copies of your work from other application in either text format or otherwise. Bottom line, it's a good recorder. My criticism isn't it doesn't help your organize or structure your work. It's a quality recorder of, but not a great enhancer of, your thought process.

"OneNote 2003 now has a Service Pack 2"
Some of the reviews listed various complaints about the software. Some of those complaints may have been solved with the release of Microsoft's Service Packs 1 & 2.

Microsoft knowledgebase article ID: 887619

"Very good, documentation lacking! :-("
I find that Microsoft one note 2003 is an excellent program. I just bought it & I already love it, after using it for only 1 1/2 days I worked on it almost all day yesterday and it has already drastically changed the way I work and increased my efficiency/organization

Now to the criticism! My one really big frustration/an annoyance is the lack of documentation (no manual) I have a lot of questions I'm pretty sure/almost certain that the program will allow me to do certain specific things that I want to do. For example have multiple "notebooks" but I cannot figure out how nor can I find any mention update in the adequate online help. :-( another thing I would like to do is to rename the stupid title "My Notebook" to a more meaningful name for myself. I should explain here that I want to use the software for two very different purposes, at least two very different purposes 1 organize the vast amounts of research notes I have writing my first whodunit. :-) 2 I am a professional Web developer and I want to use it to organize all the various bits of information associated with my multiple Web development projects. Ideally having one" notebook" for each project.

I find myself forest to purchase multiple overpriced third-party documentation manuals. This is something I hate to do and feel that I he should not have to

I should note here that even with my criticisms I really wanted to give the program 3 1/2 stars instead of three stars :-)