Inserting Excel Spreadsheet Components

No program in Microsoft Office has more flexibility and functionality for mathematical operations than Microsoft Excel. If you need to actually perform and display the results of calculations in your note pages, you should consider entering the equations in Microsoft Excel and then inserting the Excel spreadsheet component into OneNote. For example, you can use an Excel template to calculate a car loan and its payments, as shown in Figure 22.8.

Figure 22.8. You can use an Excel template to calculate auto loan payments.

When you paste content as a picture in OneNote, the picture won't be pasted in a note container unless your cursor was already positioned in a note container before you chose Paste from the Edit menu.

To insert this table into OneNote, use the mouse or Tablet PC pen to select the cells to insert. Choose Copy from the Edit menu to copy the cells to the Office clipboard.

Switch to OneNote and click in a note page to create a new note container (or click within an existing note container). Choose Paste from the Edit menu to insert the data. You can use the Paste Options Smart Tag to control how the information is pasted into OneNote. The default option is to keep source formatting, as shown in Figure 22.9. While this produces text you can edit, it eliminates the cell gridlines that help keep the information readable.

Figure 22.9. Pasting information from Excel can produce differing results.

You don't have to insert your equation as a picture; however, often this produces a cleaner-looking object.

If you choose Paste as Picture from the Paste Options Smart Tag, as shown in Figure 22.10, you'll retain all of the gridlines and formatting from Excel, but you won't be able to edit the information later.

Figure 22.10. Pasting Excel information as a picture retains all formatting.

For more information about importing information from other programs into OneNote, see "Importing Information from Other Applications," Chapter 21.

The Absolute Minimum

In this chapter you learned how to enter mathematical equations in OneNote. Although you can't perform calculations directly in OneNote, you can use several different tools to approximate these functions. You learned

• How to use symbols in OneNote to insert mathematical symbols into your notes

• How to use Microsoft Word's Equation Editor to create mathematical operations in Word that you can copy and paste into OneNote

• How to insert Microsoft Excel spreadsheet components into your OneNote pages

In the next chapter you'll learn how to share your notes with others through the use of a network share or Windows SharePoint services.