Course Instructor: Ms.

Summera Malik Federal Urdu University Islamabad

Office Notes
What are Office Notes
Notes are the electronic equivalent of paper sticky notes. Use notes to jot down questions, ideas,
reminders, and anything you would write on paper. You can leave notes open on the screen while
you work. This is convenient when you are using notes for saving information that you might
need later, such as directions or text you want to reuse in other items or documents.

How to Write Office Notes

Office notes are another form of internal communication popular within business organizations. Office
notes are put up by sections, departments or units to the higher authorities, head of the unit, department or
institution.
Office notes are put up for ‘consideration and orders’ or for ‘information’ where there are specific
delegated powers for various sanctions, incurring of financial expenditure, changes in placements and
assignments.
Office notes incorporating all relevant details and seeking such sanctions are put up to the appropriate
sanctioning authority. Such sanctions, through office notes, constitute a record of due permissions
obtained before duly communicating or acting on them.
Office notes are put up to the president, general manager, executive director, managing director or
chairman, as the case may be. Alternatively, they may be put up to the Executive Committee, the General
Managers’ Committee, the Management Committee, Audit Committee and the Board of Directors as
well.
Some organizations also have some specific functional committees like the Legal Committee, Premises
Committee, Credit Committee, Promotions Committee, Procedures and Systems Committee to whom
office notes seeking deliberation and orders or reporting developments are put up.
Although there may or may not be any specific written instructions on the drafting of office notes or the
details to be furnished therein, in practice, one can observe a well-established and widely followed
method in putting up such notes.
Sometimes, the size and colour of the paper, the nature of typing (single space or double space), the
authority who should sign and time schedule for submission are clearly stated. Office notes often refer to
policy guidelines or important sanctions and generally pass through various tiers and incorporate views or
comments of different functionaries.
Whenever inputs are sought from different departments such as legal, personnel and inspection, their
views are incorporated in the office notes as well. Office notes are prepared and filed in serial order and
serve as authoritative documents confirming sanctions or orders.
While in some cases copies of the office notes are dispatched to the implementing units, in other cases the
gist of the order or observations made by the authority concerned on the note are conveyed to the
implementation levels.

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 Course Instructor: Ms. Summera Malik Federal Urdu University Islamabad

Preparation of office notes too calls for relevant skills, as all relevant facts and figures will have to be
furnished sequentially. Wherever necessary, other related matters and previous decisions will have to be
cited for reference.
The actual recommendation has to be clearly stated. In the end, the specific decision or instruction sought,
or development being reported, has to be clearly mentioned.
Unless the office note itself is clear, the observations or orders thereon may also become vague and
unimplementable.
This will create uncertainty at various levels and may necessitate the putting up of the note once again
with additions and modifications. It is necessary, therefore, that the office notes prepared cover all
relevant information and facilitate consequent decision making and orders by the authority concerned.

Passive- Aggressive Notes

What is the best way to get at your annoying office colleague? A passive-aggressive note, of course!
After all, as anybody who's ever read Sun Tzu's The Art of War will know, the best way to deal with
somebody stealing your sandwiches or leaving loaves of bread in the toilet (seriously) is to leave them a
snarky and anonymous note expressing your displeasure. Problem solved...right? Well, not quite. Sparks
turn into flames and notes turn into a war, with these passive-aggressive quotes.
Anyway, if you are looking for a spiteful way to stop the office food thief - here are some passive-
aggressive examples for your disposal. Just be careful to find your match in this manner of solving a
dispute - otherwise, you might be the one who got passive-aggressive.

Create a note
You can create a note from any Outlook folder.

1. In Notes, on the Home tab, in the New group, click New Note.

Keyboard shortcut    To create a note, press CTRL+SHIFT+N.

2. Type the text of the note. The note saves automatically.

3. To close the note, click the note icon   in the upper-left corner of the note window, and then
click Close.

You can leave the note open while you work, and drag it to any location on your screen for easier
viewing.

To read or change a note, in the Notes folder, double-click the note to open it. You
can customize notes to make it easier to find and organize them.

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Course Instructor: Ms. Summera Malik Federal Urdu University Islamabad

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