Well I know I usually blog more about Microsoft Datacenter and Cloud stuff, especially Hyper-V and System Center, but I am a huge fan of Microsoft’s Office Suite. I live in Outlook and Microsoft OneNote. I organize my private life, my work, and university notes in OneNote.
I get often asked by customers or friends about how I work and how I get things done. In this case, I always show them OneNote, which is maybe one of the best keep secrets inside Microsoft. This post shows you why OneNote is awesome and shows you some of the hidden features you didn’t know about.
If you have more hidden features, leave a comment on the post.
OneNote Dock to Desktop
With the Dock to Desktop feature, you can keep your notes visible by anchoring a OneNote window to the side of your desktop. Your notes will stay on top of your desktop while you are working in other programs.
Linked Note taking
While you are using the Dock to Desktop mode, you can enable Linked Note Taking. This will automatically create a link to the page or office document you have open while you have taken note. This is perfect, while I wrote a whitepaper for university and I had to do a lot of research I used this feature. While I was writing the document, I had to mention the sources as footnotes, and sometimes it’s hard to find the source of something you have found on the internet. With linked notes, I only had to check my nodes, and all the sources and references were linked.
Visio Integration
A lot of other Microsoft products to integrate into OneNote. One of them is Visio if you have Visio installed on our computer you can add an existing Visio diagram to your notes. You can also directly create a new Visio diagram from OneNote and add it to your notes.
Audio and Video Recording
You can do audio and video recording of classes, meetings or sessions with OneNote. Or you could take some great audio notes. The great thing if you record a class or session, OneNote does link the notes you have taken during the recording to the specific time. So if you read your notes, you can quickly jump to the position of the recording when you took the note.
Links inside your notes
A great thing to work with your notes is also to link specific words and notes to websites, files, or other OneNote pages. This makes finding stuff very easy and straightforward, especially if you share notes with others.
Automatically adding the Source Link
If you are copy-pasting something for a website into your OneNote, it does automatically add the source link to your note. If you are looking for the source, you can find it very quickly.
Using a stylus to take notes
Taking notes using the keyboard works great, but sometimes taking notes with a pen is much more comfortable, especially when you add drawings to your notes. But make sure you get a good stylus. A lot of tablets out there like the iPad do only support capacitive inputs like your fingers, to some vendors created capacitive pens which are simulating a finger. But there is another much better solution for this called digitizer pens like the Surface Pro has got one. The advantage of this technology is that the display can detect the pen input as different input. Which means that the screen can turn off the capacitive input during the note-taking, so you can put our hand down on the display while writing, or you can make use of different pressure inputs and an eraser at the top of the pen. The downside of this, not only do you have to have the writing pen, but also the display of the device itself has to support the special pen. So if you want to take notes with a pen, I highly recommend you to buy a tablet with a digitizer pen.
Outlook Integration
As already mentioned, OneNote does integrate into a lot of other Microsoft products. Of course, it also integrates perfectly in Microsoft Outlook. You can not only send email to your OneNote notes, but you can also directly create meeting notes from Outlook appointments. This adds automatically the subject, date, location, the participants, and a link to the Outlook item. You can start directly from your Outlook calendar, or you can start from OneNote where you can scan for your appointments in Outlook.
Use touch mode on your OneNote Desktop App
If you are using the OneNote Desktop app on your Windows tablet, make sure you enable Touch mode, which makes the OneNote application and other Office apps more touch friendly.
Change the background of your notes
If you are using a stylus, it can be hard to write on a blank white paper. OneNote allows you to change the “background” of your paper, which makes it much easier to write and draw on. You can choose between different styles, like rule lines or grid lines.
Pin your favorite pens to the top
Another cool OneNote feature if you are using a stylus is to pin your favorite pens to the top. If you are taking notes, you sometimes have to change from your highlighter pen to your drawing pen and maybe even different colors. This can take some time if you have to do this over the menu. But you can also pin your favorite pens to the top of the window, which makes it a lot faster and easier to switch between the different pens.
Ink to Text
If you are taking notes with a stylus, you can convert your notes to computer text with a simple click on the Ink to Text button. This will use some OCR technology to recognize your handwriting and convert it to text.
Math input
For my friends in chemical engineering, this is for you. If you have to do a lot of math, this is great for you. With the Ink to Math converter can you write your formula and this will convert it. You also write the math down and convert it afterward.
Get OneNote for free on all your devices
One of the most important things about a note taking application is to have your notes everywhere available. Microsoft does offer several OneNote apps for different platforms such as a Windows Desktop Application, Windows Store, Windows Phone, Apple iPad, iPhone, and an Android app. With this and SkyDrive you can access your notes on any device at any time.
Store your notebooks on OneDrive
To have your notes available anywhere and anytime you can store your notebooks on your Microsoft OneDrive. This will allow you to sync all your notes across all your devices. And you can also access your notes directly from a web browser.
Share your notebook with others
If you are working on a group project and want to share some notes, OneNote lets you do this. You can share your Notebook directly from OneNote or on a SharePoint site. So all your team members have access to it and can work on it at the same time.
Use OneNote.com to access and edit your notes online
You can access and edit your OneNote notebooks by using Office Online or OneNote.com. This allows you not only to view your notes, but you can also create new notes and edit existing notes directly from your web browser.
OneNote Windows Store App
Microsoft does not only offer an OneNote Desktop Application, but Microsoft also provides a Windows Store app for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, which is not only more touch-friendly, the app also offers some unique features. One of the great features in the OneNote Windows Store app is the possibility to take pictures of documents or whiteboards, and OneNote does automatically resize it and format it, so it looks like a simple note inside OneNote, and not just a picture.
Screen Clipping
If you want to take a screenshot or just a simple snapshot of a part of your screen, you can use the screen clipping tool to take a snapshot of your desktop. You can simply press “Windows + S” in Windows 8 and Windows 7 and “Windows + Shift + S” in Windows 8.1 to get the screen clipping tool where ever you are. After you have taken the snapshot, you can insert it into a note page or copy past it into Word or another application.
Create Subpages
To organize yourself in OneNote, you can create different notebooks, sections, and pages. A thing a lot of people don’t know is that you can also create subpages by moving pages to the right.
Print to OneNote
At university, we get a lot of documents, and most of the presentation in PDF file format. Well, I don’t like to take my notes directly inside the PDF files because of most of the time, it is very limited. I also want to have a centralized notebook for all my notes. To get PDF and other documents such as Word or PowerPoint into OneNote, you can use the Print to OneNote feature. If you install OneNote on your computer a new “Send to OneNote” printer shows up which let you print documents to OneNote.
This allows you now to take notes directly on the slides or pages and for example, use the highlighter to mark important spots.
Text recognition
OneNote has a build in OCR software which allows you to convert text from pictures into text. This also works if you Print a PDF into OneNote with the “Print to OneNote” function.
Make Image text searchable
The OCR technology build into OneNote does not only allow you to copy text from pictures, but it also allows you to make Images searchable. You can find text content on pictures via the search function.
Search Text in Audio and Videos
This is one of the features which is hidden, and not a lot of people know about. You can not only search text in pictures, but OneNote also allows you to search for words inside audio and video recordings. This is great if you have a lot of audio recordings from classes, sessions or meetings, and you are looking for a specific discussion.
Take Quick notes with the Send to OneNote feature
With the Send to OneNote function, you can quickly add notes without having to open the OneNote application itself. By using the “Windows + N” keyboard shortcut or the Windows Tray Icon.
Send Websites to OneNote
Something often happens to me is that I am surfing through the web looking for something, but I find some other exciting pages which I don’t have time for to read it right now, but I would love to read them later. If I don’t bookmark the page I forget about it, so OneNote has a neat feature where I can send websites directly to OneNote. This makes it later easy to find via the OneNote search function. I also recommend creating some inbox notebook or section where you can send a website to, so you don’t have to organize them later, and you can focus on what you are looking for.
Create To-do lists
You can use OneNote to create a simple To-do list. This is helpful in meetings and other appointments where you take notes. And with the link features you can also link To-Dos to other items, such as additional notes, websites or documents.
Create Outlook Tasks / To-do’s
You can create Outlook Tasks or Outlook Todos directly from OneNote. Or you can link Tasks in Outlook to OneNote notebooks.
Use Shortcuts
OneNote offers a massive list of keyboard shortcuts, so you can quickly add and edit things. It also allows you to navigate through your notes quickly. Some of the shortcuts are system-wide shortcuts such as “Windows + N” or “Windows + Shift + S” and others are just shortcuts inside OneNote.
Use Tags for Important Items
You can use tags for essential items inside your notes. This is not just a simple icon inside your note, and it also helps you to organize and find your items inside OneNote.
Send Your Notes per Email
You can not only share your OneNote notebook via OneDrive or SharePoint, but you can also send notes via mail.
Export Your Notes
You can export your notes to other documents such as PDF files or Word documents.
Search
If OneNote because one of your most important tools, and you store most of your documents and information in it, finding things is critical. You can organize your notes into different notebooks, Sections groups, sections, and pages, but still, it can be hard to find. That is why OneNote has a great search function built in.
Password Protect Your Notes
OneNote is not the place to store your critical information, but still, sometimes you want to make sure not everyone can quickly access some information on your notebooks. OneNote allows you to Password protect your sections.
Insert spaces between notes
If you take notes during a meeting or a class, it often happens to me that I don’t have enough space between different things or I would like to add something between them. With the insert Space option, you can make space between your notes very quickly.
Share a Notebook via Lync
If you are working with Microsoft Lync, you can share your OneNote notebooks directly in a conversation or Conference call.
Do Math in OneNote
OneNote does recognize different times of text, so if you try to do some math OneNote will automatically help you and calculate stuff.
Equations – Doing even more Math
OneNote cannot only help you by doing simple calculations, but it also does help you with equations.
Add Photos to your notes
If you have installed OneNote on your phone, you can add photos to your pages.
Advanced Search
I already mentioned that finding things is vital and that OneNote has great search integration. With History, you can not only search for notes and text you are looking for, but you can also search for authors or recent edits. This makes especially sense if you work with a team on the same OneNote notebook.
Open multiple OneNote Windows
Something a lot of people don’t know is that you can have various OneNote windows open at the same time. This is helpful if you want to copy past or compare something.
Use your Windows Phone Start Screen to pin OneNote Live Tiles
In Windows Phone 7, Microsoft introduced the concept of Live Tiles. With OneNote on your Windows Phone, you can make use of this by adding the “New Note” button to the start screen to quickly create new notes. You can also pin existing notes such as shopping lists, electronic flight tickets, or hotel reservations to your start screen so you can quickly access them.
Use Tables to organize things
Sometimes it is just easier to organize things in tables. OneNote helps you to do this very easily and quickly. Not only can you create a new table from the menu. If you type something and press TAB OneNote will automatically create a table for you.
Excel Integration
OneNote does not only integrate with Outlook, Word, or PowerPoint, and it also integrates with Excel to help you calculate or create charts.
Take notes on PowerPoint slides
With the send to OneNote integration, you can also take notes on PowerPoint slides.
Taking Voice notes with Windows Phone
With Windows Phone, you can create new voice notes directly from by pressing the Windows button. After that voice recognition does start and if you say “Note Your note text” Windows Phone will automatically create you a new OneNote note. Which does not only save the audio file; it does also save your notes in words. So if you are waking up in the middle of the night and you remember that you have to buy more whiskey, use the voice recognition feature of Windows Phone, and you can go back to sleep. Thanks to one of the commenters on my blog which remembered me of this cool feature.
OneNote for Mac
Microsoft also released a free OneNote version for Mac OS X. This makes your notes available on a vast number of devices. You can get OneNote for Mac from onenote.com
Clip the web right to OneNote
With the OneNote Web Clipper, you can clip anything from news articles to blog posts to recipes in just one click. Your clips are automatically captured in OneNote, so you have them all in one place. You don’t need to install any software you have to create a bookmark so that you can use this feature on any device.
Send notes per email to OneNote
With the new web features, Microsoft offers you can also send your notes directly via email to your notebook. Send emails to [email protected] and Microsoft will put them into your laptop.
Office Lens
Office Lens trims, enhances and makes pictures of whiteboards and docs readable, and saves them to OneNote. Office Lens is like having a scanner in your pocket. Never miss notes on whiteboards or blackboards. Always find relevant documents or business cards. Don’t lose receipts or stray sticky notes again.
Surface Pro 3 OneNote integration
Microsoft just announced the Surface Pro 3 with a new digitizer pen. This time Microsoft did some enhanced OneNote integration. With the new Surface Pen, you can not only write on your Surface Pro 3 like it would be to write on paper. The new pen comes with a new button, which could be called the OneNote button. If your Surface Pro 3 is locked and you have to quickly the note, you can press the button, and this will open a new note or page in OneNote. If you press the button twice, OneNote will capture the screen and create a new note with the image.
Create Notes on your Windows Phone with Cortana
With Windows Phone 8.1 Microsoft introduced the new digital assistant called Cortana. Cortana allows you to do a bunch of new stuff. Especially the voice control feature is excellent. Cortana allows you to take notes and insert them directly to OneNote.
Collecting recipes in OneNote
OneNote is a great place to catalog your recipes. And now adding them to OneNote is a piece of cake (pun intended) with the OneNote web clipper or the email clipper ([email protected]). When you use the OneNote web clipper or email clipper to clip a recipe, we’ll simplify the page down to just the steps, ingredients, and critical pieces of information you need most, giving your recipes a more straightforward, cleaner format in OneNote. This feature works on many of the top recipe websites in the U.S., and we’ll expand the number of sites it covers in the future. Current locations include AllRecipes.com, FoodNetwork.com, and Food.com, and many more.
Publish note to blog
You can directly publish your notes to a blog post, directly within OneNote. This will connect to your blog and publish your post.
OneNote Online co-authoring
With OneNote, you can work together with others on the same notes at the same time. I used this feature to collaborate with co-workers, friends, and students from the university. Microsoft recently updated the OneNote Online co-authoring experience on OneNote.com with a People Presence feature which shows you who is working on the notebook and in which note. Microsoft also improved the sync process, which means edits are nearly in real-time.
Translation with OneNote
OneNote does not only allow you to make ink to text, but it also allows you to translate text from one language to another one using Bing translation in the back-end.
Create notes with the Microsoft Band
If you are using the Microsoft Band together with a Windows Phone running 8.1, you can directly create notes in OneNote via Cortana.
OneNote WordPress Plugin
Microsoft announced some new OneNote integration partners and one of them is a new WordPress plugin which allows you to publish OneNote pages to WordPress blog posts.
Windows 10 Quick Note
With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft added a cool new button to the Windows 10 Action Center, which allows you to create a new note quickly. Just press on the Action Center, and you will find a new button called Note. Pressing the Note button will open up OneNote with a new blank page, so you can quickly take a note.
Windows 10 Edge Browser Web Note
If you are running Windows 10, you have the new Microsoft Webbrowser called Edge. This modern browser is not only crazy fast and adds a lot of new features as well as some common web standards, but it also has a feature called Web Note. This allows you to take a snapshot of a website and write on it. After you are done with that, you can share the note using OneNote or Mail it.
I hope I have shown you something’s you didn’t know about OneNote. If you think there is something cool missing, leave a comment and tell me why you think OneNote is awesome.
Tags: Android, Apple, bing, Cortana, Edge, Evernote, iOS, Mac, Microsoft, Microsoft Band, Microsoft Edge, note, Notes, Office, Office 2013, Office Lens, Office Online, OneDrive, OneNote, Online, OS X, Skydrive, Snagit, Surface, Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, Web Note, Windows, Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windowsphone, Work Last modified: June 17, 2019
Tom, this is a nice post – thx. My favorite part: “Add Photos to your notes”, hehe. Cheers, Al
Great article. Learned a couple of handy new things. Thanks a lot.
Using Windows phone speech recognition you can say: “Note: Something……” and it will record this Audio and automatically put it into OneNote as Audio recording for later reference…
This is a great one I forgot about :) I will add this one to the list :)
I’m a big fan of OneNote and have used it for a few years. Your post had a lot of great tips and features I didn’t know about. Thanks!
Hi!. Try to send this page into OneNote…. I’ve got only pictures without text ))
Well thats a issue with may page. There is text but I think it is just really small :) Do a CTRL + A in OneNote and changce the font size to ten :) You should get the text.
Great post! I hadn’t even realized the hotfix for the Win 8.1 Win+S hotkey conflict had been pushed out via Click2Run until I read this. So much time saved now I don’t have to use Snipping Tool.
Thomas!
Danke für diesen ausführlichen Post, der wird sofort in meine Best-Of Liste aufgenommen! Ich finde OneNote genila und kann mir meinen Lehrer-Job schon gar nicht mehr ohne vorstellen. Würde mich freuen, wenn wir näher in Kontakt bleiben könnten und usn austauschen könnten.
Danke, ich hab mir gerade dein Video angeschaut. Wirklich grossartig, ich wäre froh hätte ich solche Lehrer in Mathe gehabt.
Hallo Thomas,
vielen Dank für diesen Blog-Eintrag. Ich war ja vorher schon ein OneNote-Fan, aber jetzt liebe ich es noch mehr. Da waren echt ein paar praktische Tipps dabei.
Eine Frage hätte, nachdem ich etwas rumprobiert/recherchiert habe:
Ist es richtig, dass man für das “Send to/Print to”-Feature einen MAPI-fähigen Mail-Client (–> Outlook) brauch? Ich habe hier nur Thunderbird und bei mir will das nicht klappen. Er “druckt” zwar das Dokument, aber der Prozess bleibt dann einfach bei ca. 90% stehen und das war es dann.
Viele Grüße,
Florian Frank
Hmm selber keine Ahnung, da ich Outlook benutze. Aber ich gehe nicht davon aus, da OneNote ja auch bei Office Home & Stundent Editon dabei ist, welches aber kein Outlook beinhaltet.
I’m also a huge fan of onenote! Use it to sync with my girlfriend on multiple phone’s/computers!
I don’t know if you have heard of the “Onetastic” plugin for onenote (http://www.omeratay.com/onetastic/), but it makes it even better!
I’m relatively new to One Note, but your post was very helpful. I’m hoping to insert a PDF link to a specific page in the pdf in my notebook (when I insert the pdf, you only go to page 1 of the document when you open — I’d like to be able to click the PDF link on my Notebook page and immediately go to, say, page 6 of the pdf when it opens so reader does not have to scroll down to the cited page), any tips?
Thanks!
Great article – I’m a long time user and learned some things I didn’t know.
Linking notes is giving me grief at the moment, which is how I stumbled on this post. I wonder if you have ever encountered this? My old linked notes open within OneNote, but any new links I copy want to open the link on OneDrive, which is not how I want them to function. OneDrive is backup or need to access something on a friends computer only (and even in the latter then I would use the app).
The old links are formatted onenote:NotebookNamePageName-gobbledygook
The new ones are formatted https://onedrive.live.com/edit.aspx/Documents/NotebookNamegobledygook
I’m acquiring them in the same manner as before, by right clicking the page tab in the sidebar and choosing “Copy link to page”. This is happening in long existing notebooks and newly created ones alike. It is driving me crazy, to say the least. I haven’t had a project that required note linking in several months, so I have no way of pinpointing exactly when this started. All notebooks have been cloud saved since purchasing Office 2010 as well, it was my primary reason for upgrading.
forgot my password on onenote. is there any way i can retrieve those passwords?
anyway thanks for the tips.. been using this since 2010. no doubt about its usefulness.
Fantastic article! I started using OneNote several months ago, and love it. You article has taught me several new things, so I thank you.
Any insight as to why Microsoft doesn’t market this wonderful program more? I’m sure more people would use it if they were aware of its existence and usefulness.
I also forgot a really important password. Anyone know if there is any way to get into a password protected section?
I am stumped, used this everyday, several times a day. Came back from a weeks vacation, was convinced I know my password and can’t get in. I am desperate for help!
thanks
How to use Links for Paragraphs within the notebook on , OneNote WebApp…???
Not sure if you can do this in the Webapp
Can you search for text within documents/files that you upload to OneNote? For instance, if I upload a PDF or PowerPoint can I search for text that is in those files? Or do the files have to be attached as an Insert Printout?
Hi, thanks for this detailed feature list for OneNote.
Of course, OneNote is fantastic.
One cool thing that is definitely missing though is the ability to do Search and Replace.
Last night I had to change a name that occurred 50+ times across many pages in OneNote. What a pain doing it manually.
Why would Microsoft put in all of the bells and whistles that you mention above but choose to leave out such basic but important functionality?
Jim
Anything I hand-write directly on my tablet to OneNote is searchable, but what about the paper versions.
Is there a way to scan the old fashion “pen on paper” pages into OneNote and make them searchable as well?
Every time I write with a pen directly in OneNote I can search the handwritten notes but how do I do that with the paper?
You can use a Onetastic plugin to find and replace content in OneNote. Lots of other cool macro functions on that site too.
We like it in NSA :)
Tom,
Great blog!
I’m using this blog as an introduction to my teammates to get them to start using OneNote ! (Seems the worst thing about OneNote is getting people to use it).
Some features I was not aware of, and would use immediately:
Share a Notebook via Lync
Clip the web right to OneNote
Office Lens
OneNote Online co-authoring
Some comments:
from: Tom
what: Insert spaces between notes
Not obvious (to me anyway), that same tool is used to “remove” space between notes. Drag up instead of down (and scrolling your mouse at the same time makes it faster)
from: mendel
what: Onetastic
Onetastic is fantastic … search and replace (with context) and much more!
from: Jim
what: Search and Replace
See Onetastic http://www.omeratay.com/onetastic/ as mendel noted above!
from: Monte
what: scanned item text searchable
OneNote performs text recognition for scanned (or any) pictures. The quality needs to be good enough for the OCR to read.
May want to validate the feature is ON: File –> Advanced –> Text recognition in pictures :”Disable text recognition in pictures” UN-checked
Hi! I just started using Onenote since I used up the space on Evernote. So does the upload quota reset next month or not? I’ve read that I got 15 gb for free, so when that’s used I have to buy more space? (In Evernote I only get 60 mb space for free and when that’s used, I have to wait till next month to get another 60 mb)
Hello Thomas,
I want to add to the list the following hidden feature in OneNote (creating sub-pages ):
To add a sub-page of the currently selected page, press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N (Windows) or Command-Option-Shift-N (Mac).
Thanks,
Charbel
Great article! I have a question about OneNote. This might be a newbie question but how can you run OneNote in metro-style full-screen and not the desktop version on Windows 8.1? I have an 8-inch Windows 8.1 tablet and I’m dying to use OneNote in metro-style mode. Thank you in advance. Cheers!
Well you have to install the OneNote app from the Windows Store :)
I’ve also just started using OneNote fairly recently and it was mainly to help manage the amount of email I get on various projects. Lots of good tips here and I saved this to my notebook for future reference. One question I have related to searching within OneNote is how to find and email from a certain individual. In Outlook, it is easy to just enter the name in the ‘from’ field; however, the message header is stored as a table in OneNote and it makes this almost impossible. I’ve tried various combinations of search strings with no success since there is no way that I’ve found to look at the consecutive table cells.
I’ve tried to become a fan of OneNote since it first arrived but just can’t. When I use it I end up feeling like my information is scattered all over the place which is detrimental to my productivity. Perhaps because it wasn’t designed as an organization tool but one for information gathering. Who knows. As a developer it’s probably just that my mind works in too linear of a fashion. Any suggestions or tips on how you organize your notebooks would be helpful.
I can’t believe it. I really can’t believe it.
I’ve been waiting for over 2 decades for Microsoft to get off its fat, lazy axx and make OneNote into a real application instead of a complete waste of time.
At long last, my dream has come true–but I don’t know whether to be grateful or annoyed that it took them 20 fxxxing years to do it.
I used “Clip to OneNote” to clip this blog post :)
Hi,
The article above is really useful – I don’t use ON much, as I didn’t know it could do so much.
One thing I do use it for though is screenshots, of ten to give instructions to users about how to do a particular task.
When I do this, I annotate the screenshot with comments, or circle a particular link or button.
I then try and copy it into a Word document or email, and find I’ve copied the image, but not the annotations.
My only workaround so far is to do another screenshot of the finished image and use that, but that’s a really crap solution.
Surely, I’m missing something, and there is an easy way to copy all the layers?
Any ideas anyone?
Hi, I saw your post and was hoping it solved my issue. I did know that the quick note that opens using [MS symbol]+N was a onenote page, and that the title needs to be unhidden, but I was hoping that you had found a way to set the formatting for these quick notes so they automatically open with the formatting you like (i.e. with title unhidden, etc.) Did you ever discover a way to do this?
Otherwise, I absolutely love onenote and use it throughout the day at work. One other issue I run into is printing from a Word, Excel or PP document into Onenote 2010. Simply put, it just doesn’t seem to work. (I select onenote as the printer, but nothing prints). I really like having the docs print out fully in one note so that I can mark them up easily on my phone, tablet etc. They way I get around this is by turning them into pdfs and printing them to onenote from acrobat. Are there any settings changes etc. that could make these print directly?
Thanks,
Jordan
I run both Windows and Mac’s. I love it on my iPad and really wish stylus support would get added. Haven’t had to use the clunky ‘rubber nub’ stylus on my iPad for quite some time now as there are a number of smart stylus like the Adonis Jot Touch Bluetooth. I don’t know how they got the small tip to work, but it works great for me. Unfortunately I have to take notes in another app such as Zoomnotes etc, and then copy them over to one note. Fingers crossed they’ll add support on the iPad as well :)
I love OneNote and started using it around 2008.
Almost for documentation stuff.
But since then I miss the possibility to group pictures and text.
re-editing pages can be very painful if you have to drag and drop every piece manually. :(
Excellent article! I’ve been a OneNote evangelist for many years, and you showed me a thing or two. OneNote is truly unique among Office programs. It seems to spread organically via word-of-mouth through most organizations where I’ve worked. Colleagues will see me using and ask about it. In many cases, they don’t even know they have it installed. Now that OneNote is free and works on any platform, it’s really a no-brainer for anyone who takes notes.
Thanks, very interesting article. I can say that Microsoft OneNote offers tons of features and options to take and manage notes. You can utilize its power for your personal and business purposes to live organized. Also I found useful information here: http://ergonotes.com/onenote-windows-app-review/
Thanks I will check on that and add it to the list… thanks :)
I have still not read the whole of the article. but it really seems to be fantastic.
glad you like it
Great overview article – thanks for taking the time to write it.
Great article. I can’t believe I didn’t realise you can get rid of white space in OneNote by dragging up after clicking the “insert space” button. The hassle of getting rid of white space has been bugging me for years!
Glade it helped :)
This is an excellent post and has clearly taken a lot of time and effort. I’m impressed and will make sure I share this with my team at work to elevate OneNote to the next level. Well done Thomas.
This was a super helpful article. The list of options and possibilities that are affiliated with Onenote are HUGE! I especially loved the tip about “Dock To Desktop” when working. It is very helpful and to keep notes side by side when researching for a paper online. Thank you!
Hi! Great post! I like the “linked note taking”, but it only seems to work for websites in Internet Explorer. Any tips on how to enable this for Fireforx or other browsers?
Thanks!
Great Post, You have just mentioned tons of wonderful features dont think you have missed much :-)
Cheers,
Sami
Hi Thomas,
I found your post is very useful as a one looking for effective ways of using OneNote more broadly. There are lots of features some of which I met here. Thanks for the effort you’ve spent.
Cheers,
Ahmet
It appears that I have the full version of MS OneNote (2015 MS OneNote, Version 15.8).
1) When I open the program I do not have all the options you noted above
2) When I try to save a 1 pg document to my desktop (document prev. converted from a .jpg to .pdf) it show up as a 4 pg doc, doc appears as if it was cut in 1/2 (or quarters) vertically? Any opinions or suggestions?
Thank you.
thanks alot.I used your Notes for my project..:-)
Thanks for the comprehensive list. I thought I new lots about OneNote and I learned several new tips.
One thing you didn’t mention that I love is the use of templates for certain section. We use this for weekly reporting and every time we make a new page in a section it comes up with the report template
One feature I have grown to love in the desktop version of OneNote (not yet included in the Windows Store/touch version) is that if I print a PDF file using Send to OneNote, the resulting page in OneNote renders the text using actual fonts rather than simply displaying an image with text. This makes the text much more readable, even if I zoom in to a portion of a page.
That’s a big list but I guess you are being baised. Can you compare these features with Evernote and say OneNote is Aweosme?
Really nice post with most of the features highlighted however these are not all present for the MAC version. I would be keen to see the comparison of One Note with Evernote Premium.
Thanks. Many good pointers. Here is one that may be overlooked but adds productivity especially for small to medium size businesses using 365. Have the site admin set a new project team site. 365 places a OneNote resource as an asset for the site. It is immediately available for internal and external (by invitation) users. Make it a resource when scheduling a Skype4b meeting in Outlook. OneNote opens with a page showing meeting date and scheduled attendees. Everyone can make input notes and postings together realtime. Test it before the meeting by opening the desktop version and the online version concurrently and watch the changes to either. The notebook can continue to be shared and edited by everyone following the meeting or later restricted. Search anything later.
Great! I will add this to the list!
Comprehensive – Excellent article – Thank you
Except that OneNote 2016 is SO BROKEN under Windows 10 in particular, that it is completely impossible to use for hand-written notes.
And, it has several MAJOR shortcoming on very basic stuff compared to other popular apps, like for example Lecture Notes.
I am using OneNote 2013 on Windows 8.1 because it’s the only usable version so far, but the sheer amount of missing features and lack of options is sometimes impressive.
Great Summary, love it
There’s one ‘note’ that you missed; OneTastic (www.omeratay.com/onetastic). It’s a great plug-in for OneNote developed in his spare time by a Microsoft OneNote developer. It adds a lot of functionality that’s missing in OneNote like find and replace, sorting notebooks and pages alphabetically, and many more macros.
Reflecting on two comments above. First, I’m using Windows 10 on several computers and have no troubles at all with OneNote.
Secondly, I also want to endorse OneTastic that Doug mentioned. Particularly useful for me is Calendar, Table of Contents and bread crumbs.
Frank, I couldn’t agree more about the calendar. As an IT consultant I use OneNote daily and the calendar helps so much for status reports and weekly\monthly status reports.
Comprehensive article. Great work.
I’m a big fan of OneNote.
It would be most useful if there were a way to embed/inegrate Google Calendar into OneNote without having to open a separate browser window. Have seen several other website posts of others wanting and have searched for but can’t find anything. This would enhance OneNote greatly beyond being a notetaking tool.
Hi Thomas,
Great post. I’ve recently discovered one note and use it more and more. But I’ve discovered a problem I’d like to solve. I’m creating a guide containing hyperlinks to web pages. The links work fine inside one note and when I export to Word, but when I export to PDF, all of the links are broken. This is with the latest version of Adobe reader and with one note 2016. Apparently this worked in an earlier version of one note. It looks like a bug…
Yep it looks like a bug. there is a uservoice page for onenote, where you can report this! https://onenote.uservoice.com/
I tried iOS version and could not set or view tags of my OneNotes notes. Also I could not set a remainder there. And it is in 21st century!
Hi I don’t want to sent an email to Onenote, just the link to an email. Is there a way to do that?
Well yes with Microsoft Edge you have a share button where you can send a link of a website to anyone
Thomas – If you attach a Word Doc to your OneNote page (not using the “File Printout”) … can you “SEARCH” for text within that “attached” word doc? Or … do you have to use the File Printout (which I understand is like putting a copy of the Word Doc in the OneNote page itself)?
I really want to be able to use the OneNote Search to look thru a group of “Attached Word Doc’s” for various text.
In addition to OneNote audio video conferencing, you may also have a look at R-HUB web video conferencing servers. It provides 6 real time applications in one box you need.
my copy of one note does NOT include most of the menus shown above… and I have a paid version of the software. what the hell? where is ink to text? what in the hell. this is fantastically frustrating, dammit.
Thank you for the comprehensive list. This information needs wider dissemination to an education world that is sinking to its neck in Googlicous software and services. Once an educator uses OneNote with a class for a period of time, it becomes obvious as to its value in teaching and learning.
OneNote is my favourite tool and probably the one application that I use more frequently than any other. Reading this article, I realized that I am probably only using about 1% of the power of OneNote. Thanks for this comprehensive and and extremely powerful article.
Honestly? I have to say that MS seem to specialise in making things difficult. What is the point of software that does everything but you cannot find out how to do it. I put this program on a cell, tablet and a W7 and W10 laptop thinking I could replace Evernote which is so easy it’s like falling off a horse. :-)
I just tried to make a note and a few other simple tasks and I failed entirely. So badly in fact that having decided recently to totally commit myself to all things MS I may now be forced to do a U-turn and become a paid subscriber to Evernote.
I know some people love this program but after revisiting it four times over the last three years I simply cannot see why.
When I first started using computers I recall that an important first aspect of any software choice was a user-friendly interface so that non-computer people could use the program easily. If a computer person cannot use it what hope is there for MS?
Paul,
I’ve trained many people on how to use it. It really needs just a few explanations and you’ll be off and running. In 2 hours you can be an expert. Feel free to contact me at [email protected].
Hi Thomas, your post is amazing, thanks for sharing! I found it while I was writing my blog on my page. I created a link to this site I hope you don’t mind. In case anyone wants to read, this is the link: http://www.sspaeti.com/blog/tools-i-use-onenote-part-ii/
Great article and good points Thomas. One point which is actually not a feature but is the biggest advantage of OneNote, in my opinion, is the structuring and organising easily in OneNote and that at any given time or point.
Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing!
Simon
I really like your article. Each time I come back, I discover new stuff !
By the way, you mentionned wordpress-OneNote integration (through a plug in, or extension) : please note that you can also embed a OneNote page (live !) using an iFrame. Neating explained by Marjolein Hoekstra here (https://twitter.com/OneNoteC/status/891669749465321475)
Please can you tell me if I need all 3 on my phone, Excel,OneNote, and Word. I am not very tec savvy and only use my phone for the basic’s. So what do I need to keep.
Many Thanks
Here’s why it is not awesome:
Try copying anything at all along with the background (as in, you’d like to display a graph to a student).
Can’t be done. You can only do a screenshot.
The only issue I have is exporting PDF and printing, it won’t print or export PDF good way organized pages if you have embedded Pictures figures in it. One way findings app has this good way to collect PDFs Onenote could easily get this feature but they are not doing even after so many feedbacks.