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Fitting a ‘better’ Cornell page template into OneNote

11 October 2007Posted By: Robert
Posted in: Note-Taking, OneNote

Well my migration over to OneNote is going pretty good. I’ve used it exclusively now in both of the scheduled 3 hour seminars I’ve attended so far, along with numerous other note-taking tasks, and I’ve got to say I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience and that’s without even getting my teeth into, shall we call it, the ‘power features’ of OneNote yet, such as side notes and note flags etc.

Of course a large part of the ‘moving in’ process has involved a ‘custom fitting’ tweak of the interface i.e. re-positioning OneNote’s toolbars, the removal and addition of buttons etc. and a ‘figuring out’ session on how to incorporate my established electronic filing system, but everything has been straightforward and hassle-free.

Probably the biggest ‘moving in’ task that I’ve had to accomplish so far though has been to incorporate a Cornell note-taking template that I’m happy with (more on why I use the Cornell method in 2b of my long overdue ‘Studying in the Humanities’ series). I was actually surprised there wasn’t already a ‘bundled’ Cornell template in OneNote 2007 but, as most of you probably know, there’s one to be easily grabbed from the Office Online website so it’s all good. Well it would have been ‘all good’ if it weren’t for the fact that I’m an incurable fusspot, and therefore not too keen on Microsoft’s offering. Consequently I had to seek out a better solution for myself and this ended up coming eventually from two quarters:

Firstly Rob Bushway has been blogging recently about how he creates genius custom page templates in OneNote and during his commentary he rather helpfully (thanks Rob! :o)) links to an excellent ’step-by-step’ from OneNote’s David Rasmussen on the art of making page templates from background images. “Jackpot!” I thought, “This looks like the perfect fully customised solution. But how can I create the perfect Cornell background image?”

Well the solution to that, and the second part of the puzzle, came courtesy of Ryan Stewart and his amazingly useful Cornell Method PDF Generator. I stumbled upon this FREE online tool and was instantly impressed by just how customisable it was - from being able to specify whether your Cornell style page is lined, gridded or blank to whether you want to include page titles and dates etc. the app covers all needs, and although it is primarily meant for those wishing to create printable PDFs, I saw no reason why it couldn’t be used to form the basis of my page template in OneNote.

Happy with how the page looked in its generated form (after a few experiments), I opened the Cornell PDF page in Acrobat before exporting it as an image file (.png). Then it was just a case of following David’s instructions and producing a OneNote page template using the image file as a background.

So thanks to a tiny bit of ingenuity from me and a lot of genius from people like Ryan and David, I’ve ended up with a Cornell page template that fits the bill perfectly. Sure the whole process to achieve this may have took a bit of time and effort but the end result is that I’ve made a giant step towards making my new inking home as comfortable as possible and that gives me that warm and contented feeling that I often speak about - let the good (inking) times roll!!!

7 Responses to “Fitting a ‘better’ Cornell page template into OneNote”

1. microsoft » Fitting a ‘better’ Cornell page template into OneNote Says:
   October 11th, 2007 at 8:37 pm

   […] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerpt on Microsoft s offering. Consequently I had to seek out a better solution for myself and this ended […]

2. Big Wes Says:
   October 15th, 2007 at 12:01 pm

   Have you ever heard of DIY Planner (www.diyplanner.com)? They have a lot of neat layouts available to download. They even have some templates that can be edited to suit your needs. I’ve made custom project notes and meeting notes pages for OneNote 2007 using their templates (which can be edited with Open Office).

3. ThemePassion - Best stuff about design! » Fitting a ‘better’ Cornell page template into OneNote Says:
   October 28th, 2007 at 10:31 am

   […] desconocido wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptProbably the biggest ‘moving in’ task that I’ve had to acomplish so far though has been to incorporate a Cornell note-taking template that I’m happy with (more on why I use the Cornell method in 2b of my long overdue ‘Studying in the … […]

4. jimmy Says:
   November 10th, 2007 at 2:48 pm

   I tried this tip, but print margins make it difficult to adjust the printing size (have to use auto for nice output). However auto resizing on printing dialog box will resize the whole page, thus wrong dimension.

   Any suggestion ?

5. ambassadorsx » Blog Archive » Fitting a ‘better’ Cornell page template into OneNote Says:
   November 25th, 2007 at 12:59 pm

   […] here Author Brendon Jenkins Comments […]

6. Taking Notes : Ameel’s Career & MBA Exposition (ACME) Says:
   December 19th, 2007 at 8:27 am

   […] don’t follow any specific note-taking system like the Cornell system that the good folk at Student Tablet PC use [1], though that sounds like a really good methodology. Nor is my system as elaborate as Tim […]

7. Random Tangent Says:
   January 14th, 2008 at 4:24 pm

   […] don’t follow any specific note-taking system like the Cornell system that the good folk at Student Tablet PC use [1], though that sounds like a really good methodology. Nor is my system as elaborate as Tim […]

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