The Colloseum in Rome

Rome, the Eternal City!  I studied Latin for five grueling years, but somehow never managed to visit the Etruscan peninsula. After pining away for a couple decades, I convinced my wife and friends to make a trek to Italia.

With so many fellow travelers, we need an easy way to plan our trip.  Sure we could use email, but it doesn't let us collect and refine our ideas in one place.

 

That's where OneNote on SkyDrive is super-handy. Everybody can contribute their thoughts, even if they don't have OneNote installed on their computer, and can collaborate on various devices--mobile phones, tablets, or PCs. That means we can plan our vacation anywhere.

Create a OneNote notebook on SkyDrive

As the organizer of the trip, it's my job to create our notebook. I browse to SkyDrive and sign in to my SkyDrive account.


Note: You must have a Windows Live ID to log into SkyDrive. If you don't yet have a Live ID, click on the highlighted button above to create one.

After I'm logged in, I create a OneNote notebook by clicking the OneNote icon.


 

After I click the icon, a box opens where I enter a name for the notebook--"Rome At Last."  Then, as the de-facto tour-guide, or as I soon realize, the editor of a travel book on Rome that will rival Lonely Planet's, I need to create sections and add pages so our crew can wrangle over which restaurant offers the best pasta primavera. All I need to do is click the Insert tab, then click New Page or New Section.for the trip.



 

After adding a new section, I can change the page name by simply typing a name at the top of the page. 

Share a notebook on SkyDrive

Now it's time to let the others take their turns as authors. I click the File tab, and then click the Share button.


 

All I need to do next is enter my friends email, then check the Recipients can edit and Require everyone who accesses this to sign in (this is the most secure route). Then click Send, and my friends will receive an email with a link to the OneNote notebook.


See who wrote what in a notebook

My friends can now add their wish lists--with pictures--to the notebook. And, if any of us want to know who found the ancient ruins Lonely Planet left out, we can see their name by clicking the Show Authors button in either the Editing View or Reading View tab.

 

 

We trade ideas back and forth until we've settled on our itinerary--definitely see the Coliseum but skip the Roman Holiday walking tour. If one afternoon we decide to go separate ways, we can access our personal travel guide on all our devices. Given our thorough (or is that compulsive) planning, we know in the end that we'll be able to proclaim we experienced the best Rome has to offer-from soup to nuts ab ovo usque ad mala!

Note: This post covers OneNote on SkyDrive, which is a web version of the OneNote desktop application. The desktop version has lots more features, including adding audio and video, customizing the  look, attaching files to pages, and many more. You can upload a desktop OneNote notebook to SkyDrive and share it as a web version (other people don't need OneNote installed).