Outlook 2010 and OneNote 2010 Integration: Part 2—Meetings and Tasks

Recently, in part 1 of this article, “Outlook 2010 and OneNote 2010 Integration: Part 1–Email Messages,” InstantDoc ID 125720, I reviewed how to save an email message to a OneNote document. I also launched a new email message from OneNote sending the contents of a OneNote page as part of the message body. However, the integration between Outlook and OneNote isn’t limited to email content. OneNote can also store and serve calendar items and can store and serve Outlook tasks.

Import Meeting Information into OneNote

If you maintain a OneNote Notebook for a specific project, you can easily import meeting information into a page in OneNote from Outlook. For example, I have Notebooks created for different versions of Outlook and within the Outlook 2010 Notebook, I have sections for Meetings and Tasks, each with separate pages covering OneNote integration. Within Outlook I have a Monday morning meeting to train the Executive staff on OneNote.

If you use OneNote as an all-purpose, free-form note-taking application you can import certain content from Outlook content with just a few clicks. OneNote can pull meeting information from Outlook and apply it to the current page. To do this, within OneNote select the Home tab to reveal the Office Ribbon. Then click the Meeting Details icon in the Outlook section of the Ribbon. This will query Outlook to retrieve meetings scheduled for the current day. If you aren’t logged into Outlook at the time, you’ll be prompted to do so. I did find that the prompt didn’t come to the front of the open Windows so the prompt might not be obvious at times. Also, OneNote doesn’t stay authenticated to Outlook. If you try to import information from another meeting, and you’re not logged into Outlook, you might have to authenticate to Outlook for each meeting you want to import.

Figure 1 shows the drop-down list for my example with three meetings for the day. When I select the desired meeting, OneNote imports four things—Meeting Name, Location, Attendees, and the Message Body of the meeting when it was created in Outlook. OneNote appends this to the content of the current page and places the cursor under the heading of Notes ready for the user to type notes on the meeting. If you have an item selected within OneNote as you select the meeting, the meeting details will merge with that OneNote item. Figure 2 shows the meeting details with notes already present because the typed notes were highlighted within OneNote when the meeting was imported. Also, if the meeting you are looking for resides on a different day, you can use the drop-down menu to “Choose a Meeting from another day…” Figure 3 shows the calendar interface for that option. You can also submit content of a meeting form to OneNote from Outlook. Within a new meeting window in Outlook you can click the OneNote icon in the Office Ribbon. You will be prompted for a OneNote location to save the information. OneNote will save the Meeting Subject, Date and Location, Attendees, and the Message body of the Meeting request.

Importing Tasks from OneNote 2010 into Outlook 2010

Tasks can be easily created within OneNote and appear within Outlook. While this idea improves my potential use of OneNote, I am a little disappointed at the presentation of the tasks generated within Outlook. I’ll show you what I mean.

While on a OneNote page, the user can select Home to reveal the Office Ribbon, and then Outlook Tasks in the Outlook section. This will expose a drop-down menu identifying different urgencies for a new task. In Figure 4, I selected a task due today. This selection created the familiar Outlook task flag within the OneNote page. Figure 5 shows the text for the task I typed next to the flag as “Print Out Session Notes for Attendees.” After hitting Enter, this sentence becomes the name of the Task, which, if authenticated to Outlook, automatically appears in the Tasks and To Do List in Outlook. Figure 6 shows the new Task item generated in Outlook.

The actual task is created with a link back to the OneNote notebook, with a reference to the specific page within it. If the details of the task were generated within OneNote, they will not be immediately available within Outlook. The user will have to click the attachment in the task entitled “Link to Task in OneNote.one,” which contains the link to the task location, whether saved in SharePoint, a web share location, or a file location. This example has the OneNote notebook located on the same workstation as Outlook and the link to the file appears as follows:

onenote:///\W7HPUsersWilliamDocumentsOneNote%20NotebooksOutlook%202010Tasks.one#section-id=\{F47E832D-DF55-4AEC-882C-2095D97F739C\}&page-id=\{F1ED4ABB-3859-41EF-964C-1230D998439E\}&object-id=\{F1E890B6-2693-4C89-8C75-69846AF39CF1\}&25

One of the Outlook Task options in OneNote is to create a custom task. This will open the standard New Task window in Outlook just as though you selected the option from within Outlook. Additionally, the Outlook Tasks menu lets you delete a task from OneNote, which will also remove it from Outlook. Finally, the Outlook Tasks drop-down menu is also available through the context menu when you right-click within the body of a OneNote page.

Overall, this integration is beneficial for those who have taken the time to experience OneNote. I find it a helpful resource for storing things. The integration between Outlook and OneNote adds some value to both applications.