Using OneNote: (5) Tagging ToDo, Important, and Question Items

This is the fifth part in my series about using Microsoft’s OneNote tool. I use OneNote every day at work and one of OneNote’s best tricks is being able to tag things as ToDo, Important, or for follow-up (i.e., as a Question).

Any paragraph entered into a OneNote note anywhere can be tagged as a ToDo item, or an Important item, or a Question (to be answered later)—along with a whole slew of other tags that are available, and you can create your own custom defined tags. But for this posting I will simply use the pre-defined tags in OneNote for ToDo, Important, and Question items.

To tag any entry in any OneNote note you simply put the cursor anywhere in the related paragraph and then select ToDo, Important, or Question from the Tags list on the Home menu. Or, as you can see in the screen capture shown at right, you can use the shortcut key sequences Ctrl+1 (for ToDo), Ctrl+2 (for Important), or Ctrl+3 for Question.

When you do this then a little icon will show up to the left of the tagged paragraph as show in the screen grab at left. A box for ToDo items. A star for Important items. A question mark for follow-up items.
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The best bit is how you can then view and monitor these tagged paragraphs. To see all tagged paragraphs you select "Find Tags" in the Tags section on the Home menu.

This then brings up a summary sidebar showing all your tagged items (as shown at right).

By default this sidebar will be shown on the right-hand side of OneNote. You can then link to any of the tagged items listed simply by clicking on the item.

At the bottom of the sidebar there are few options as shown below.

By default tags are shown for the current OneNote notebook. However you can expand or reduce the tag search. It can be expanded to All Notebooks or reduced to sections or just pages.

The “Create Summary Page" option will create a summary OneNote page in the currently selected OneNote Section showing all tagged items shown. An example of this follows. This is a good way to capture weekly history records of items as you progress through them, and, as they are simply in a OneNote note, you can make additional notes about them as you progress them.

You can link to the source items from this page by hovering on the line item and then clicking on the OneNote icon that shows up on the left hand side of the item.

If you want to de-tag any Important or Question item simply go to that item where it occurs and then toggle it off (by selecting Important or Question again, or using Ctrl+2 or Ctrl+3).

Special Handling For ToDo Items

While Important and Question items simply toggle on and off OneNote handles ToDo items a little differently.

Firstly the Tag Search Summary has a check box named "Show only unchecked items" near the top. If you check this then the Tags Summary will only show ToDo items, and will only show unchecked ToDo items.

If you have completed a ToDo item and want to 'check' it done then go to the item in OneNote and tag it again as a ToDo item (or use Ctrl+1). This will cause the item to become 'checked' and a red tick mark will appear in the ToDo item box.

Then if you want to remove a ToDo item from the ToDo tag search you select it again after it has been checked. This will remove the ToDo icon tag from the item.

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And so those are the basics of using OneNote to tag and track ToDo, Important, and Follow-up (Question) items in your notes.

Just another one of the many capabilities of Microsoft’s OneNote.