Introduction

There’s one application in Microsoft 365 that probably does not get the merit or attention it should. I’m talking about Microsoft OneNote.

It’s such a handy tool for the busy professional. Using it and knowing the essential ‘how to’ of OneNote’s organisational talents is another way to boost your productivity and efficiency.

OneNote is essentially a digital note-taking app. It’s a way of keeping all your notes, plans, information, research and other resources in one place – ready for when you need any of it.

Microsoft OneNote is versatile, flexible and easy to use. And now it enjoys the advantage of AI-driven support from Copilot, which is integrated into the application.

There is much Copilot can assist you with but you still need to know the OneNote basics to get the most out of the AI – and avoid costly errors.

In this final application-focused article of my Empowering Productivity with Copilot and Microsoft 365 series, let’s look at OneNote.

How Does Copilot in Microsoft OneNote Empower Your Productivity?

Copilot is an AI-powered assistant integrated into the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. In the OneNote application, it can help you organise and work with your notes more efficiently.

And, as logically as you might expect, understanding the essentials of how to use Microsoft OneNote makes it easier to know how to get the best out of Copilot.

Here are some of the ways you can ask Copilot to help your productivity in OneNote.

Create a To Do List

Your working week may involve many conversations and meetings, or a bit of research and planning. It can be a job to stay on top of it all and prioritise each day.

Let’s say you use OneNote to keep track of what was said, action points and follow-up tasks. In OneNote, you can ask Copilot to review the information and create a task list from it.

Need more refinement? Simply prompt Copilot again. For example, ask it to “add the top 3 priorities”. When happy with the list you can copy and paste it into OneNote or any other Microsoft 365 application, ready to work on it.

Summarise Your Notes

You’ve been given a lengthy report, white paper or other large document and asked to produce a summary of the key points. You could do that ‘manually’ yourself but it might take you quite a while and your day is particularly busy.

Ask Copilot to help and save some legwork and time. Copy and paste the report into OneNote then prompt Copilot to create a simple summary, with or without bullet points. You can review, edit and refine to finish the job.

Create New Content

Just as Copilot can help you write and edit in Microsoft Word, it can help you get words on the (screen) page in OneNote. It’s the same principle.

If you’re stuck for what to say, prompt Copilot to create a draft on which you can build. Or ask Copilot to put something ‘new’ together based on content already in your OneNote.

You can use OneNote and Copilot assistance to create content such as presentation outlines, meeting drafts (with agenda, discussion points, key objectives and action points) and reports. Or use the space and AI support for brainstorming ideas.

Design a Plan

What’s coming up in the weeks and months ahead with your business, client or organisation? If there is a project about to start or an event to put together, you can use OneNote with Copilot to design a plan.

Prompt as specifically and clearly as you can. This will help Copilot to put together the ‘bones’ of it, suggest timelines or timetables, and map out the stages and tasks involved before, during and after the event.

Have recurring projects or events? Use your original version as an automated template, saving you time and allowing you to customise the template each time.

Rewrite Notes for Clarity

Whether you write something yourself, are working on existing content (e.g. from OneNote or a document file) or have a Copilot draft, you can get more AI assistance to improve the copy.

You can ask Copilot to edit or rewrite the copy, to help knock it into great shape. A prompt might be “Suggest 3 ways I can rewrite this to be more persuasive.” You can accept or reject suggestions from Copilot. Use it as you need it.

Chat with Copilot (for Support and Feedback)

Copilot is an AI-powered assistant. It’s like having a bright and enthusiastic helper by your side. Copilot is “intelligent” so you can even have a Chat with it in OneNote.

Have a conversation about your notes. Ask Copilot to pick out important details. Ask it questions about your content or task.

You can even ask Copilot to take a look at your ideas and give you feedback, suggestions and more ideas. Great for brainstorming.

Why Knowing the Essentials of Microsoft OneNote Remains Important Today

With full awareness that I may be beginning to sound like a broken record, it’s important you take note of my key takeaway. My key message below is the result of spending day after day exploring Copilot and its capabilities.

Copilot is brilliant. It’s a genuine time-saving tool. But it cannot do everything (and there are some sustainability considerations around how much power AI requires). There’s still knowledge and work you need to do to be the most productive and efficient you can be.

This is true for Copilot in the other key applications in Microsoft 365 – Word , Excel PowerPoint , SharePoint , Outlook and Teams – and it’s also true for Copilot in OneNote.

Copilot is only good as your instructions and the quality (and accuracy) of resources it is asked to draw from. Whatever it produces, it remains your responsibility to check for accuracy and the final publication or outcome.

Make sure you are up to speed with your OneNote knowledge and all things Microsoft 365. Consider investing some time and support with Copilot.

Get help from an experienced Microsoft application trainer to fill in any knowledge ‘gaps’ or pick up skills. I have plenty of courses, manuals, newsletter tips and blogs for you if you want ‘DIY’ learning. And I offer webinars, online workshops and virtual training (1-2-1 and for teams) for more customised and tailored support.

All of which will save you time again and again in your work, organisation, team or career. Summing up, using the essentials of Microsoft 365 and AI-powered Copilot is the way to empower productivity with consistency and confidence.

Until the next time.

Shelley Fishel - The MS Office Maestro

Cohort 2 is here!

After the amazing success of our very first Microsoft 365 Fundamentals with AI and Copilot course, I’m so excited to open the doors again.

The feedback from Cohort 1 was incredible—people loved how practical and hands-on the sessions were, and many said they felt more confident and productive straight away.

If you missed out last time, now’s your chance to join us, learn how to make Copilot work for you, and be part of a friendly, supportive group that’s all about getting results

This course will teach you how to leverage AI tools like Copilot to enhance productivity and efficiency in your daily tasks.

Don’t miss out—sign up today and stay ahead of the curve!

Visit the course page now!

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I have used what I learned to help me be quicker and more efficient when creating new documents, letters and even spreadsheets even though I have not done the Excel part of the course yet – just knowing what Copilot is capable of has enabled this and I am excited to learn more about how I can use it with Excel.  It is also great for helping me find lost information and sources.  It has definitely made a positive impact on my productivity and efficiency, and I hope even more so once I have recapped all the sessions.  I think the overarching benefit of the course is that it allows you to see what Copilot can be used with and how; if you don’t know what it can do, you can’t ask the right questions, now I know how to ask the right questions to get what I need.

I would definitely recommend that all the other EAs do this course – if it is an option for them to do so and they want to!  

Microsoft 365 with Copilot – The Human Advantage

Really clear and inclusive training at a good pace

Microsoft 365 with Copilot – The Human Advantage

Shelley’s teaching style is relaxed but engaging, she’s happy to take questions & go over things more than once and in different ways to help you understand.

If you need to get to grip with CoPilot – whether it’s because you want to or (worse) have to, then I can’t recommend Shelley’s course highly enough. She’s got a new cohort running in January – my advice: Be there or be a right -angled, equal-sided parallelogram!

Colin Foster

Microsoft 365 with Copilot – The Human Advantage

This course has benefitted me enormously in becoming the go to person for all things AI with colleagues, I have a learnt an awful lot in these four sessions with Shelley across Microsoft 365 and can better visualise how to use it on a daily basis.  Shelley uses clear examples on how to incorporate it in your daily work, and not only that but the access to the recordings and the additional documents is invaluable, thank you so much again Shelley!

 Elizabeth Bate  

Microsoft 365 with Copilot – The Human Advantage

Attending the Copilot AI course was a game-changer for my productivity. I learned how to leverage AI to streamline tasks, draft content faster, and make smarter decisions with real-time insights. The course was practical, easy to follow, and immediately applicable to my daily work. Highly recommended for anyone looking to stay ahead in a tech-driven world in the EA world.

Joann Bergstrom

Microsoft 365 with Copilot- The Human Advantage

Shelley provides invaluable insight into leveraging Microsoft products most efficiently and effectively.

Top Time Busting Tips for Microsoft Office – Ginger Aslous

Crammed a lot in today’s session and we all came away having learnt a lot of things! Considering how much time we had, I feel a lot was taken away

Manage your data in Excel – Olivia Nelson Potter Space

Microsoft 365 is the perfect session to get a basic (and more) understanding of Microsoft 365 incl. all apps! Shelley is a great trainer and expert with lots of experience and so much knowledge. I could have listened to all her tips many more hours. With all features out there, Microsoft 365 seems like a wild jungle sometimes but the session helped me getting a few things sorted. I look forward to the next session!

This participant wished to remain anonymous.

Collaboration with Microsoft 365

I always come away from a presentation by Shelley with useful tips to incorporate into my day job – she has a clear & patient presenting style & her content always has some invaluable tips for streamlining and making processes more efficient.

Collaboration with Microsoft 365 – Kate Watson

Shelley is very patient and made me feel comfortable with asking for further clarification. She was very receptive to intermittent questions as well.

This participant wished to remain anonymous.

Collaboration with Microsoft 365

Shelley was very thorough in her explanations and made OneDrive and SharePoint easy to understand – would recommend.

Collaboration with Microsoft 365 – Olivia Tubman

I find Shelley’s training easy to follow and the very best thing is that you can do it all at your own pace and revisit modules if it doesn’t quite sink in the first time round! I have learned so much from her training and continue to do so! She is responsive to my questions and I learn something new with each module. I find Iam hardly ever having to Google or YouTube information now, so it really is saving me time in my work day. Time that can be better used by learning more about the business I operate in!
Thanks Shelley!

Tracey Whitehouse – Executive Assistant

I have been following Shelley on Linkedin for several years, and always loved her hints and tips. In May of this year, I had the opportunity to recommend Shelley as one of our workshop speakers at the annual HMC Heads’ PA Conference in Sheffield.

On receiving the brief Shelley quickly produced content for two IT Microsoft Skills Workshops covering nuggets from Outlook, Word and Excel. Shelley then delivered (virtually) these two fantastic workshops to over 60 PAs at our conference.

From initial enquiry to delivery Shelley is the consummate professional and it was my pleasure to have had the opportunity to engage with her.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Shelley to any individual or group.

Michaela Fletcher – Heads PA

Shelley is THE guru on all things Microsoft.

I love Outlook, use it every day, and think I have a pretty good understanding of it. But every time I attend one of her sessions I learn a lot more. Her knowledge is remarkable. And she delivers her knowledge in a really clear, engaging way.

Thanks Shelley

Kathy Soulsby

I have just spent less than an hour at one of Shelley’s presentations and my mind is truly blown! I thought I was fairly proficient in Outlook, but I had no idea it could do so much more! So many time saving tips and shortcuts to help me – I can’t wait to get stuck in and implement them all! Thank you Shelley – I would highly recommend!

Hayley Rose – Executive Assistant -Dalcour Maclaren

Shelley joined us for the annual HMC Heads’ PAs conference in May 2023, where she delivered two hands-on practical IT skills workshops for over 60 PAs in attendance. Both sessions were warmly received by all participants, and from a personal perspective it was an absolute pleasure for me to work with Shelley both offline in the extensive prep phase ahead of the sessions, and online during the day itself – sharp in subject knowledge, flexible in content delivery and everything executed with a really affable manner and “can-do” approach throughout. I would recommend her services wholeheartedly.

Gareth Johnson – Leader GRE Education

Heads PA Conference