When I think of OneNote tags,  the word Invaluable comes to mind.  Why such a strong word you ask?  I think you will agree after you read this entry.

First, a little background.  Since I am an attorney, I can say this with credibility:  we all sometimes drop the ball.  Gasp! The hope is that they are not important things, like statutes of limitations, court deadlines and the like.  For most of us, missed items really aren't these big ticket things.  It is usually the little things like calling someone back or following up on something.  You have to have this background in order to appreciate why I think OneNote Tags are invaluable.

Let's use the "Phone Call" notebook (previous entry) in our example.  Assume you receive a phone message and your assistant logs the call in the notebook for you and marks it with a "to do" tag that shows this as unreturned.  She goes to the tool bar after writing/typing the message and clicks on the tag:



Next, your notebook is updated with the phone message and the "to do" tag is unchecked:



You can then either call the person back and check the box off (by clicking on it) or run a "tags summary" report (use the down arrow next to the tag on your tool bar) and click "show all tagged notes."  This tool is what makes the tags invaluable.  All undone "to do" tags are placed in a summary and you can click on them and you will be taken directly to the undone task, no matter what notebook you are in.  Below is what the tag summary looks like:



Next, from the tag summary portion of your tablet screen, you can check the task off and it will update the task as "done" in your notes or you can click the task in your notes and the summary will be updated.  Once your task has been accomplished, it appears as follows:

So instead of using the "disappearing" phone message approach to keeping track of calls (somehow attorney offices eat those scraps of paper and they disappear), you can use OneNote tags and not drop the ball.  You and your assistant also have a record of the messages that came in and that calls were returned.

Next in the series, I will finish up other ideas on using the Phone Call Notebook to increase your organization and productivity before moving back to other great uses for OneNote tags.