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Create Your Own StationeryWhy create or adapt your own stationery pages?As you work more and more with OneNote, you are going to find that there is a stationery page that almost meets your needs, but doesn't quite. Each of those cases started with an existing page, adapted it, and saved it for re-use. Another reason is that you need to create a page that collects just the information you need. One of the frequent posters on the OneNote newsgroup is an auditor. He has created several standardized stationery pages that are basically the forms he needs to complete during an audit. A third reason for creating a new piece of stationery is that you have a graphic you use as a page background. It is targeted for a specific audience and there isn't any stationery out there yet for them. A fourth reason is that you may have content you want to share that extends OneNote's capabilities. A good example of this usage is the shapes pages that I shared in week one. These pages are available as a stationery set from several sites across the web (including my own). They are used to make it easier to create shape based notes. Now that you know why, we are going to step through how to create pages. Because it is easier, we will be stepping through adapting an existing page. Adapting an existing pageNeed to move an existing stationery page from one section to another? Use this same process! At first glance, it would seem that adapting an existing stationery page is just a matter of creating a new page based on the existing page, adapting it to your needs and saving it as stationery. And this works. It just puts the page in a place you may not want it: My Stationery. If you store all of your stationery in My Stationery, that folder will quickly become an unwieldy list of unconnected stationery pages. We already have one of those: it's called the decorative category. Instead, as you create stationery pages, you are going to put them in their own section and store that section with the other stationery sections. Since that is the case, it is best to start the adaptation for the source instead of from a copy. To do this, we need to open the section that has your stationery page in it. Using File--> Open--> Section, navigate to the folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033\ONENOTE\Stationery. Select the section that contains the stationery you are going to adapt. Don't open it yet! Since you don't want to risk messing up the original stationery pages, you need to make a copy of the section and work from the copy. (To copy and paste from the Open dialog, right click the section you want to copy and select copy. Click off the file name, right click, and select paste. Change the name to MyWhatever.one. Open that file.) Now that you have the copy open, select the page you want to work with. Make a copy of it and give it the new name. The next step is to make the adaptations you want to make. Keep in mind that if you want to change the graphics, you will probably need to bring them off the background before you change them. Once you have made your changes, you can close the section. Since OneNote has saved your changes for you, all is good. The final step is to use Windows Explorer to remove the original version of the section and rename your file to the original name. Next time you open the category from inside OneNote. You should see the section. (There is a caveat, but we will get to it during the example.) Example: Adapt Simple To Do ListMake a copy of the Planners.One file. Open the copy and create a copy of the "Simple To Do List" page. Rename the page by to Sorted To Do List. This is going to be our new stationery page. Narrow the to-do list that is there to about half its width. Move it and the tip down about two inches. Add a new note holder above the list and title the list "Uncompleted Items". To the right of the existing to-do list, create a note holder that titles the area "Completed Items". Add a tip on the page that reads "When items are marked complete, drag them from the left column to the right column, then check the box." (I put mine in the title area, you can put yours anywhere.) Next, select the to-do list and change it from regular to-do boxes to one of the other check boxes. In order to remove the flags, you will need to either delete all the blank lines or right click each line and select "Remove Flag". Same goes for re-applying the flags: You need to do it one line at a time. The final adaptations are to change the color scheme. First step in doing this is to change the graphic on the page to something else. Then, change the page and title area colors to match your color scheme. The top of my final page looks like this:
Okay, changes are complete. Time to save the file back. Only problem is that the name of the stationery hasn't been changed. We need to jump through a small hoop to change the name. First, bring up the Stationery task pane. While viewing your stationery page, click the "Save current page as stationery" link at the bottom of the task pane. This will place a copy of the stationery page into your "My Stationery" category. While still viewing the section that is the copy of the stationery section, create a new page from your new stationery. When it is created, delete your original. Now, the section contains your new stationery with the correct name. Once that hoop has been jumped through, save and close the section. Once you have verified that both the new category and the new page shows up in the Stationery task pane, you can leave OneNote and delete the original one. Final step: Delete the copy of your stationery page from My Stationery. To do this, right click the stationery name and select delete from the menu. Building stationery from scratchCreating a page from scratch follows the same process. The only differences are: Want to know more about OneNote?This article is excerpted from my Eclectic Academy OneNote class. To learn more or to enroll, check out the EA site!
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