Read about the basics, on becoming more structured with OneNote and Getting Things Done (GTD), in my first article and download the OneNote Template I created and refer to in this article. In the article you will find links to all my “collect to OneNote” posts as well. If you find this article helpful, let me know on Twitter or as a comment. Check out my OneNote LifeHacks YouTube series

Using mobile to collect thoughts, whiteboards and slides from seminars to OneNote is key for finding them again and working structured with OneNote

Collection is key

When succeeding with OneNote being structured with tasks and information, collecting the information and tasks in the same place is key. Everything you collect from email, meetings, workshops, thoughts, Pictures and everything else must go in to the collection tab in OneNote. Here is how I collect from my mobile device

#1 Point your OneNote mobile quick notes to your collection section

In OneNote Mobile I set my quick notes to send to my collection section in OneNote, to make sure I do not get another place to look for the stuff I collect. After that, I process it and distribute it as described in my GTD and OneNote article. This works from all mobile platforms and the example is from Android where you can quickly capture using the OneNote Badge

To select the default section, navigate to you collection section, hold until you get the menu, and select default

#2 Capture Whiteboards and presentations directly to OneNote using Office Lens

Office Lens is really great for capturing whiteboards from workshops and taking pictures of slides at seminars. Office Lens will clean up the picture and align it correct if you are taking a picture at an angle.

You can now connect Office Lens to your school or work account in Office 365 as well as your private Outlook.com account. Heres is how you capture to the collection section in OneNote. Read more about Office Lens here

 

#3 Use IFTTT to send all your Twitter likes to OneNote

While this is not really a mobile trick, it is worth mentioning here and it works from any platform. You can like a tweet and it will get sent to your collections section in OneNote. I get most of my professional updates from Twitter and find articles I want to save or read later. Collecting them to OneNote makes sure I can process them for reading later or having content for future blogposts.

Here is the If This Then That rule. There is one caveat, it only supports OneNote stored in your private Outlook.com account, which means you need to either store your collection OneNote there or your entire GTD OneNote.

To use it, register to IFTTT and use my published rule, or create one yourself, find it here

Thanks to @OneNoteEDU for creating this nice gif for my blogpost

References

• Check out how I work with OneNote and GTD
• About OneNote, about GTD, about the Pomodoro Technique