Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Productivity Tip for OneNote Users – To Do Items are Magical!

So if you’ve not realized it yet, my blog posts are a bit, well, all over the place.  I am actually posting this to both my tech blog AND my “Crafty Diva” blog because it’s so universally handy – IMHO. Today I am talking about Office OneNote because I couldn’t do my job (or organize some of my personal life) effectively without it.

Are you still using Notepad (the app), or physical notepads, or emails, or 15 other tools to take meeting notes, manage lists, organize events? Stop it! Stop it right now!  Well, if you cannot afford Office then I get it, keep using what you’re using, but if you DO have Office already be sure to check out OneNote. There are some amazing features in there that I couldn’t live without, today I’ll be talking about just one of them. Here is a little preview of what mine looks like.

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I have many Notebooks to separate the various things I need to keep track of, and many sections within those notebooks to further categorize all the things I need to keep track of. This may not seem like an impressive amount of Notebooks, but for client privacy’s sake, there are half a dozen notebooks and about 300 sections hidden in this view. I take a LOT of notes Smile  I generally end up with pages upon pages of notes like this per client that I work with, and most pages contain images of whiteboards (who needs a SmartBoard when you have a Smartphone), embedded power point presentations or Visio diagrams, links, email addresses, etc. And what is awesome is with a couple of clicks I can easily fire off the page or entire Notebook to someone else email or even have it automatically sync to a SharePoint site so I can access it from any PC as well as share it with others.

You might already know about this feature I am about to get all hot and bothered about, but I have been using OneNote for almost 10 years and I forget about it constantly – the “To Do” feature.  To Do is the focus of today because it is seriously one of my most beloved features in OneNote. You might notice that at the bottom of my page of notes above, I have a couple of To Dos for things I owe back to the customer. I often have HUGE lists of these, and if I have several meetings a day it can easily turn into a list spread across multiple sections and Notebooks! Before I followed the RTFM rule I used to preface those lists with “To Do” and then search for “To Do” to recall them to view and verify I had done it all.  If I had paid attention, I might have noticed a handy little button in the ribbon called “To Do” with a check box next to it.  How embarrassing for me.  Anytime you click that button it puts a clickable checkbox next to a To Do item that you can check in on later to verify it was done. Now you might be thinking, what good is that if I have to go back to all of my previous sections and LOOK to see if they are done? HA, me too once, and then I right-clicked a To Do item and noticed an interesting option. “Find tags”…brilliant! Sadly, when I first started using OneNote back in 2004 I totally knew about it, and just forgot at some point… I rediscovered it lately and head a ::face palm:: moment.

 

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This brings up a VERY handy little toolbar that lists all of the To Do items in your OneNote file, filtered by scope, state, etc.  Check it out, all the way to the right I can now see all of the To Do tasks, and right now it is scoped to just this section and shows ALL tasks:

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But wait…. there’s more! Check out what happens when I change the filter to the entire Notebook, and then group by section. I know, awesome right?

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Notice the checkbox that can also filter out anything that has been checked, cause believe me, if I do this for my entire OneNote file there are thousands of To Do’s mostly checked. (I did work as an evangelist covering 3 stated for Microsoft for almost 6 years after all).

Here’s where I really blow your mind. Seriously, you might want to sit down. Wait you probably ARE sitting down. Whatever. What OneNote cannot do is remind you to DO those things. But Outlook can. But I am not a huge fan of having to do double entry. And then I noticed I didn’t have to. Again, just now noticed it, oy. If you are setup with Outlook, you can pretty easily get some nice integration there.  And by “nice” I mean AWESOME. Up in the ribbon bar you might notice this little cluster of goodness:

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With a simple click you can also convert a OneNote To Do into an Outlook Task, and, AND you select when the task is due (today, tomorrow, next week, custom) as well as mark it complete when you are done!! 

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And yes, it “just works” and updates Outlook immediately.  I checked, cause I was dubious, immediately syncs to Outlook. Mind = BLOWN.  The other two buttons are ones I use CONSTANTLY too. Email, you can guess what that does…  And the meeting button, I just noticed this TODAY. Good lord would this have been handy when I was at Microsoft sometimes having as many as 7 meetings a day.  It was there, I just didn’t see it. Hiding there, all secret up there in the toolbar. Pssht.  Anyway, this does what I have been doing manually for 5 years, like an idiot.  It imports the data about the meeting from your Outlook calendar and into the notes. No more “what were these notes for again?” BOOM!

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One last thing.  Another things I just noticed today which is what prompted me to cross-post to my crafty blog. You can customize lists with specific icons and actions. Just look at this list, take into account the fact that you can create custom ones, and then go create some lists. To Do lists, book-to-read lists, movies-to-see lists, craft supply lists, lists of awesome RSS feeds to go follow, WHATEVER!

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That is my lesson for today. Hope you got something out of it, and I plan to blog about a few other OneNote features that are incredibly handy, even if you don’t take notes for a living. Did I mention I do TFS implementations and software delivery process consulting for a living? I use to sling code too, it was handy then as well. And yes, I couldn’t live (happily and productively) without OneNote.

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Part 2: The Plan

So, in case you skipped part 1, here is all you need to know about where your heroine left off in her quest for a great craft space to share with her friends – the previously semi-finished attic has been obliterated with the help of my wonderful husband and my good friend Dinah:

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I haven’t worked out every detail of how it will be finished but we have a good starting point. We tore down the originally planned knee walls and remaining walls and ceilings from the “nanny suite” at the top of the stairs. To give credit where it is due, my husband recruited a few of his buddies to finish off that part of the dirty job.  Originally we were planning to keep that little room, mostly because it has gorgeous old hardwood floors and a great old door. We quickly realized how cool the room would look if we completely opened it up, and knew it had to go. Well, we kept the floors, and all the wood trim, but lost the walls and ceiling. I love how huge and bright the attic space looks when we opened up the other part of the attic! An old slanted chimney (don’t worry, that’s the design) that I plan to white wash divides the floor into 2 sections, one of which will be a home office and storage closet, the other side will be the awesome-cool-huge-bright craft space ::cue angelic music and heavenly light:: Also, it’s going to be roughly 20 x 24 so almost500 square feet, WOWZA. This is a VERY crude sketch, but might give a good overall idea of how it might be laid out:

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I wish I could take credit for the plan, but my husband is awesome and brilliant and suggested a decent amount of it. Originally I figured on having lots of shelves and workspace down the sides of the attic, so really not too far from the original layout except a bit wider and eventually we would replace all the free-standing shelves with lots of custom built-ins. It occurred to me that a) I’d prefer to have my craft things closer at hand and I tend to work near the window in the center of the room. b) it might make sense to design the room to have multiple purposes and NOT restrict use of all the walls to storage. So, after some brainstorming and daydreaming on Pinterest and ThisOldHouse.com, I had it!

Imagine, if you will, floor to ceiling built-ins along the window wall. There will be a window bench in the center where someone could sit and read and take in some sunshine and fresh air. The bench would have drawers underneath custom sized for wrapping paper rolls, and all of my gift-wrap accoutrements. Around the nook and up to the peak there will be shelves, LOTS of shelves, ALL OF THE SHELVES. They would be large and open so that I could see all of my various craft supplies at a glance. Since there will be a super cool triangular shaped area over the nook that no one can reach, I’ll also have a library ladder that spans the shelves – THAT was David’s idea, I so love my husband. These 2 pictures are a decent approximation of the arrangement of shelves and how the bench seat will look (in place of the window in the first picture).

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For now we are skipping the grandiose plans for a dormer and skylights, that will come in time. I think taking the walls out will help to scatter light and brighten it up without the extra windows. I’m also choosing light bamboo flooring and paint colors to open up the room.  And since we are trying to be as environmentally friendly as the design (and budget) allows, we figured re-using a lot of the old wood and choosing a sustainable alternative to traditional hardwood were good ways to do that.  We went with the lightest bamboo flooring we could find at Home Depot, and at $1.99 a square foot it wouldn’t break the bank either. It’s also something we can lay down ourselves, since it’s the self sticking “boards” with built-in subfloor.  It’s thin, almost like a linoleum flooring, which means it’s light enough that even us gals can schlep boxes of it up to the attic AND it can be trimmed with a simple utility knife too!  From what I could find it is also durable and easy to clean, BONUS!

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For colors, I’ve been in love with this Martha Stewart color for over a year now, it’s called Haystack and I think is the perfect creamy yellow to inspire me to be creative Smile 

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I noticed just the other day that they even have a suggested accent color on the back of the swatch. It is a nice creamy not-quite-white color as trim and shelving colors as well. With the bamboo flooring, I think the room will be significantly brighter than it was before.

Haven’t fully decided on furniture, but I don’t intend to buy a bunch of new fancy, stuff.  After all we are cutting, painting, glittering, etc. on it.  Then, as we were moving things around in the attic to make room for new flooring, I had a great idea! Well, one my husband had mentioned and I hadn’t seriously considered yet.  The gorgeous old door from the nanny suite area to the old craft room would make a GREAT work-station.  And it would be a darn shame to toss it in the basement and forget about it.  Since we no longer need it, I figure my husband can make a clear, craft-friendly top for it and mount it on legs as my new craft table.    Then the old folding tables can be added to the pool of open craft table space for any friends who want to drop by and work up there with me Smile Check out the door, it’s beautiful!

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I also love how it will allow me to retain some of the attic’s original charm, without the horrible purple walls and cheap trim. Eventually I’m hoping my husband can also build me custom bases for my work table that have built in shelves for day-to-day craft supplies.  In the meantime, I think the Ikea saw-horse style legs will work great.

So that’s it for now.  There is certainly more to the plan than this, but I’ll share as we learn more. 

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Attic Rehab Part 1: The Gut

It didn’t start as a total gut rehab, but when does it? At some point in late September before this all started, the phrase “about 2 weeks” was bandied about. 2 weeks of mess and chaos is too many for me, but I figured I’d survive. I’m sure my husband doesn’t remember saying 2 weeks, perhaps I really did imagine it was supposed to be that quick, but for now it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, even if it was 3 weeks, or 2 months, that was September and it’s oh, about 4 months later, and counting. Well, let’s back up a bit before I move on.

At some point in early September we had an energy audit company come out and look at the house. We had gotten tired of $400+ gas bills when our house was never over 70 degrees even in the dead of winter. Turns out, we had no insulation, anywhere, none, ZERO. Something like 82% of the heat in our house was escaping through the roof and walls. E-I-G-H-T-Y-T-W-O. It’s supposed to be something like 30% or less. Much of it went right through the roof, and up there was my favorite room in the house, my craft attic. So at that point I looked at my gorgeous (cough, cough) lavender walls, adhesive glow in the dark stars on the purple ceiling, cheap trim that hid bad drywall seams and awful, painted linoleum flooring and decided it was time for a change. If we had to tear out the walls to properly add insulation anyway, we might as well gut it and upgrade my craft space.  Here it is in all its glory in case you forgot, not too shabby!

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It was a fairly large craft room at 14 x 24, but hey, figured I could tweak the floor plan and break 500 sq. ft. in my new and improved craft room! I don’t need anything too extravagant, but fresh paint and some new lights would be really nice. He he, what a fool I was for almost settling for that.

You’ve probably seen this post, the one where I showed off the before and after pictures of the initial gut job. Figured paying a friend to do it would be cheaper and less worrisome than paying strangers and it was. It was quite a mess, but we figured once the insulation was done, we could clear out the debris, put up new drywall and I’d be up and scrap-booking again in no time. We could slowly finish the craft room around me, and deal with new flooring, painting, etc. at a later date as we found time and money to do so. I just wanted back in there by Christmas so I could attempt to make some presents.

First major hurdle: Turns out 100 year old prairie houses require far more complicated insulation than we could do ourselves. The husband did some research and found a local company to handle some bids. The company we chose to do the insulation had been recommended, were less expensive than a few others we considered, and we had a budget to consider so we took a chance. This was before Thanksgiving. 6 weeks later they were still tap-dancing around getting us scheduled and now we were looking at early January, I was concerned. It was only a 2 day job, so there was that, but the week of January 9th was the soonest they could fit us in. ARRRGGGHH! I decided after Christmas to stop being upset about it since it wouldn't make it be finished any sooner.  I then postponed my craft-room-reconstruction-sabbatical for a bit so that it would coincide with it actually being ready for me to work on. I’ve tried to take the new approach of “it’s about the journey and not the destination” about a lot of things, and it has certainly been helping my outlook.

We bought the house knowing its age would complicate everything and OH BOY has it. Second hurdle: We needed a special, very expensive type of insulation, which needed deeper eaves so we had to bring in carpenters for that. Thankfully the management company we hired to watch over the insulation company was able to find used foam insulation boards that were still very much usable and much less expensive. Yay for something positive! It more than covered the additional cost of having the management company to begin with. Then the pour-in insulation density required was an issue. Third hurdle: Their trial-run blew out several sections of the plaster wall in one of the closets, and they had to stop and change to a lower density insulation.

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No more blow-outs, but at this point I think we were at day 3 or 4 (of the 2 days project). Not to mention they didn’t bid wall repairs, so now we have to add some major plaster replacement to our repair list. GAH! At least it was fixed bid, so we got a seriously good price and every extra hour they had to work because of their miscalculations came out of THEIR pocket. The management company re-inspected things constantly to make sure it was done right, which made me feel better, but also meant some rework and extra time on the back-end. In total it was 8 working days spread over 4 weeks, and on Feb 1st it was finally done. Yeah, almost 4 months later.  We are much warmer, and hopefully my gas bill will be nice and low next month, but I still as yet had no craft room…  Instead I had this:

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Now, once I embraced the idea of just going with the flow, I started making big plans to assuage my anxiety, BIG plans! I certainly had enough time while the room was getting done <insert mad cackling here>. It might not be completely finished until Summer (when you see my plans you will understand why), but it should be at least usable again by the end of February. No pics of the grand plans to share yet, as most of it is in a scrapbook with ideas torn out of magazines, but we decided to go with a VERY open floor plan. I’ll actually post again soon with more details on how we hope the attic will look when we are finished…

I started a 2 week, unpaid sabbatical Monday, the idea being that a LOT of the bigger jobs can get started and possibly finished when I have long, uninterrupted days to work on them.  When I go back to work on the 19th, I can knock out some of the small finishing stuff in small bites while during the day someone else works on it for me. You’ll soon learn why I love my friend Dinah so much.  My husband has been amazing throughout the process, doing all of the electrical himself as well as helping me along the way with advice, ideas, and a steady supply of tools. I have also hired a very good friend (Dinah) to help me, since a) I can’t do a lot of it without a second pair of hands, and b) she has more experience with stuff like mudding walls, painting, light construction, etc. I figure between the two of us, we can probably knock out clearing the attic, putting down the snap-together bamboo flooring, and patching the 70 holes left in every room of the house from the insulation job before I go back to work. Holes might not be doing the situation justice, here you go, feast your eyes on this and imagine them in EVERY ROOM OF YOUR HOUSE and keep in mind loose cotton fiber insulation is constantly seeping out of them and landing on every surface:

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Serenity now!! 

Then hopefully by the time the flooring gets laid, my husband and I can get drywall up soon after that. This has already been an epic post, so I’ll leave the details of what we plan to do next to another one… but here is a preview of the progress we’ve made in the past 2 days alone:

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