OneNote Tip: Cornell Stationary

For all those users that use OneNote there are many templates available to download from the Microsoft site. I really enjoy the Cornell note taking method and fell in love with it over break while beta testing for GoBinder. OneNote has a Cornell stationary but the page itself, that is the margin line, does not grow as your notes do. I would often just copy and paste the image to expand my notes but this was just not functional in class. I looked and looked and nowhere could I find a Cornell stationary that would grow with my notes the way I wanted to. To be fair to OneNote though the Cornell stationary is in fact how the note taking method is meant to work, however I would have preferred the stationary to grow just a bit and then add the summary part when I want to. There are many time in class a certain main topic would be about two pages and I would rather have the page grow and then add a big summary at then end than splitting it into two separate pages. Anyways while in class today I discovered this little trick I guess you could say to create my own growing Cornell template. This may be trivial but I figured I would share just in case someone out there is suffering with the same problem.

First create a blank page with the lines you would like to use. For me I prefer the narrow lines which is a stationary that you can download from the OneNote communinty section on the Microsoft page. If you have not downloaded all the different rule line types I suggest you pay a visit and look at all the other cool stationeries they have there as well! I know the first thing I did when I started OneNote with my template is download the narrow lines since the college rule was just too BIG!

After you have selected the paper type of choice write something on the page in the text box. Make sure you can see the outline of the box because you are going to have to be able to select and move it. You can set the shading of the text box in the options section.


After typing select the box and adjust the width of it to the width/size that you would like for cue column (the space to the left of the margin line) I like to make mine about two inches but everyone has their preference.


Now grab the text box, by left clicking on upper portion of the box until you get those movable cross hairs. Now just simply move the box to the left hand of the screen. The screen should automatically expand slowly as you move your box in that direction and as you move left the margin line will stay stationary. You know have your cue column set up.


Now make another text box with your mouse to the right of the line. Adjust it to the appropriate width and this will not be your content section. Add a few spaces and each section and then save it as your stationary and you now have a custom growing Cornell stationary.


The page will still keep all that extra space to the far right of the page that was part of the original stationary but that doesn't really bother me. When I printed my notes it still ignored that space and only kept the parts that I actually had written on.

posted by Jason Dorko at 6:15 PM 0 comments links to this post