Ever wanted a simple To Do system? Well, look no further than OneNote. Fortunately, OneNote provides some built-in templates and options to effectively manage To Do items.

Use an Existing Template

1. Create a new section called To Do's
2. Set the default template in that section to one of the pre-existing OneNote To Do templates
1. Click the drop down in New Page to More Template Choices
2. Expand the Planners tree
3. Choose one of the three template choices to see what they look like
4. Then set the option at the bottom of the template pane to Set the Default Template For New Pages in the Current Section to the template you like. The planner templates are at the bottom of the list.
3. Get creative and design your own template

Create an On-The-Fly To Do List

1. Start a new note
2. Turn on the Tags Toolbar ( View / Tags toolbar ). A Tag drop down choice is also on the main toolbar to select from.
3. Either click the check marked To Do tag or do a Ctrl 1, then start typing.
4. Press the Enter key, do a Ctrl 1 and type the next To Do item.
5. Check them off as you finish them.
6. The bottom of the toolbar contains some more To Do items, like Discuss, Call Back, etc.
7. To tag some ink as a To Do item, ink your To Do, select it, then click on the corresponding Tag from the tool bar.
8. Experiment with Tags - they are your friend in OneNote.

Since the existing templates and the on-the-fly list uses the To Do tag, you can click on the Show All Tagged Notes from the Tag dropdown menu to see a subset of all your To Do's across all of your notes ( including other Tags), and further filter the list by telling selecting "Show Only Uncheck Items".

We'll tackle synchronizing Outlook Tasks and OneNote To Do items from Outlook in another How-To.

Now that I'm done with this article, I can mark it off my To Do list!