Canary & Collections

Hi Darryl! Darryl_B 

Just started using collections. I am a biomedical sciences PhD student and I have started trying to use it for organizing my research! I find it very helpful to be able to highlight the take away from a research paper and drag it to the collection I want and have it maintain the link to the paper it was from. Super useful for writing papers in the future and making citations easier.

A few suggestions that I think would make the process easier:

1. The ability to drag text from a PDF. Often the literature I am reading is from a PDF I am reading in browser. However highlighting and dragging from this can't be done right now.

2. The ability to link or merge dragged text/images that come from the same URL. Often I have a few take aways or images I want from a given paper. Right now I am dragging each one over which makes a new section with a link. It would be super useful if somehow by dragging text/images from the same URL led to combining the notes or linking them in some way so I keep them all together and know they are from the same place, without having to look/click the links to each. 

3. In collection snipping tool. The papers I read have integrated figures. It would be awesome if there was a way to use a snipping tool over a figure I want to save which could then be saved the same way as the text and links, with the link to the website it was clipped from. 

Thank you! Awesome feature. 

Darryl_B Hi, Darryl. To give one perhaps silly but real life example, I was looking for different aftershaves, and used OneNote to collect different webpages with aftershaves. Now, I can do this in Collections, which is a much faster drag-and-drop or one-click solution. That's the beauty of Collections, but OneNote allows you to do a lot more, such as adding additional notes, tables, annotations and even drawings, and to contextualize your info by placing it within a page within a notebook. So you could use Collections to easily toss together related info, then send it to OneNote to build on that with more robust tools. However, the challenge is whether the webpages and notes in your Collection would be sent to a single OneNote page or to separate pages. Still, OneNote seems like a more ideal receptacle for this kind of thing than Word.

Darryl_B I want to modify the "title" that gets saved for the web page. Right now, the work around is to add a note right above it. Secondly, having the ability to edit the URL after saving would be great, but lower priority. 

Darryl_B I really like the Collections concept, trying out different things to see where I can fit it into my day. So far, just sending links to Excel doesn't do much for me - I'm not a big Excel user actually. What I'd really love is a send to One Note that would display each entry with the page preview image and text along with the link - would make more sense than just the link text. Right now when I want to save special pages for reference I print to OneNote. Example - I collect different pages that have example of Flow constructs - I'd love to send all of those to a single page in OneNote - it would show me the title of the page, a preview image if possible, preview text.. - like a little table of contents..

Otherwise right now it's only an easier way to do the same thing as a folder in favorites - but easier to get to. In fact, that's one way I'm testing it now - saving different Tech Community posts and blogs instead of in my Favorites.

Hi Darryl, Darryl_B 

Here is a good thread that was started by HotCakeX with lots of good feedback on Collections.

You could do lots of things with Collections. Anything from making up a Christmas shopping list for each person you shop for.  And then share it all through email, OneNote, etc.......  

 For me I will make use of it, by adding all the years of how to's for different work arounds, short cuts and the like for different beta's I'm in and so forth..  Over the years I've got a bit of a collection of information about different software programs and PC hardware configurations and such.  What a great place to have all that info handy.....

There is really no limit to what can be done with this.  Even a home inventory "Collection of all my junk"....  

my20centsworth

Dennis5mile

p.s. you will also find photos of errors while coping items into a collection....

Darryl_B 

Hi Darryl,

It should send to OneNote & E-mail & SM like Twitter.  People like it when things are easy to share be it through and to business channels & contacts or personal friends & family.

Cheers,
Drew