Advertisement Evernote no longer rules the roost of note taking apps. Microsoft recently announced OneNote would be more free than ever before. Let us show you what this means in terms of features and functionality., a lot of people — including myself — ditched whatever note-taking app they were using and flocked over to experience what Microsoft had to offer. Most liked what they saw and never looked back. The best thing about OneNote is that it’s packed full of features. And while alternatives like Evernote can say the same, only OneNote offers everything for free, and these features are its bread and butter. (Unless you’re on the OneNote is a free and cross-platform note-taking app for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
Our short guide summarizes everything you must know. Forget about your Microsoft hatred and try OneNote with us today., which needs to catch up.) But let’s look past the well-known aspects of OneNote — Is making a to-do list on your to-do list? Set it up in OneNote to make getting things done as straightforward as possible. — and check out some of the deeper features you may have missed.
If you aren’t on OneNote yet, these may just convince you to make the jump. Quick Notes OneNote is already pretty good when it comes to taking impromptu notes. At most, you just have to pick a notebook, pick a section, and create a new page using the provided button. But if you just need to jot a throwaway note, you should turn to the Quick Notes feature. Quick Notes are like Post-It Notes: they’re separate, minimal note windows that act independently from the main OneNote window.
PLEASE return the ability to move the navigation tabs to the top of the screen. On my Surface Go, trying to use OneNote in profile is difficult to say the least given that half of the screen is tabs, unless they're hidden, which reduces my ability to quickly switch between pages and sections. Join Nick Brazzi for an in-depth discussion in this video Set up the interface on OneNote for Mac and Windows, part of OneNote for Team Collaboration. And I can flip through these different tabs and I can look at the various notebooks that I have in this account. So I'll click on this arrow in the top left corner, and I'm back to the.
They don’t belong to any particular notebook either. Instead, they just sit in a collection of Quick Notes, though you can move them if you want.
You can launch a new Quick Note even when OneNote is closed using the Windows + N keyboard shortcut. If you need to launch additional ones, use the Windows + Alt + N keyboard shortcut. Page Templates Another one of those Microsoft OneNote is just as good as Evernote. OneNote is the digital equivalent of a binder, giving you more organizational control. We show you effective note-taking tweaks you'll love. in OneNote is the Page Template. To understand why Page Templates are so awesome, let’s look at examples of when they’d come in handy.
![Mac Mac](https://cdn1.tekrevue.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/onenote-mac-new-window.jpg)
Maybe you’re the minute taker for your office meetings and you have a certain way you like to take those minutes. Or maybe you’re in a physics class and you like to organize your notes into text-based and equations-based. Or maybe you have a certain kind of checklist that you use for recurring project milestones.
Instead of recreating the layouts of those notes every time, you can set up a Page Template that you can invoke when creating new notes, which can save you a lot of time and energy. Check out our OneNote is a great way to keep your thoughts organized, and templates can make that process even easier. Learn how to use, edit and create your own templates with this guide. for more details. Custom Tags OneNote’s system of organization is already really good with its notebook/section/page approach to notes, but you can get even more granularity by using tags. Tags are good for relating notes that exist across different sections or notebooks. For example, I have a recipe notebook with a section for Lunches and a section for Dinner.
I also have tags for Chicken, Beef, Pork, and Vegetarian which I can apply to notes in both Lunch and Dinner sections — and these tags come in handy when I need to search. OneNote comes with a bunch of default tags (e.g.
Important, To-Do, etc.) but you can create as many Custom Tags as you want. Make good use of this because it’s a lot more handy than you might first expect. Internal Links Another fantastic organizational feature of OneNote is the ability to create Internal Links, or clickable links that take you to other notebooks, sections, and pages. The larger your notebooks and the more notes you have, the more useful this feature becomes.
To create a link, just right-click on any tab — whether notebook, section, or page — and select the Copy Link option. Now all you have to do is paste it somewhere (we recommend typing out a phrase and converting it into a link afterwards).
But if you want to link a page, there’s an easier way. Just type , the name of the page verbatim, and then.
This will automatically convert it into an internal page link. Ever wanted OneNote to be more like a wiki?
There you go! Quick Access Toolbar At the very top of the OneNote window along the title bar, if you look to the left, you’ll see a handful of shortcut buttons. These make up the Quick Access Toolbar, and the best part is that you can customize which buttons show up on it.
What can you add to it? Pretty much any action that you can make in OneNote. Everything from tagging notes to inserting meeting details, from changing font sizes to clearing all formatting.
Seriously, it’s that useful. If there are any actions that you frequently perform in OneNote, make your life easier by If you aren't using the Quick Access Toolbar in OneNote, you should! It can really speed up your workflow if you have a lot of highly repeated actions.
You won’t regret it. Docked Note-Taking If there’s one thing that OneNote offers that alternatives like Evernote don’t, it’s the Docked Note-Taking feature. In short, you can dock OneNote to any side of the screen, which prevents all other windows from overlapping with it.
It’s useful because you can jot down notes while reading a PDF file or watching a video in another window without having to flip back and forth over and over. When used well, docking is one feature that can Choosing between OneNote and Evernote can be tough, but here's one feature that may sway you towards one side for good. And to make it even easier to use, don’t forget to use the Ctrl + Alt + D keyboard shortcut to toggle the dock. In fact, while you’re at it, catch up on these If you're new to OneNote, these shortcuts may boost your productivity, so learn them sooner rather than later! to really boost your productivity up a notch. Version History The final feature worth highlighting is the ability to view any note’s entire Version History. Indeed, every time you make changes to a note and save it, OneNote keeps track of the previous versions instead of completely overriding them. Under the History tab in the Ribbon, you can use the Recent Edits menu to select a certain time period and see all of the changes made during that time.
Unfortunately, this option only goes as far back as six months. Or you could use the Page Versions menu to look at every single past version of the current page. Version histories take up data space, though, so OneNote allows you to delete any of them.
You can also disable Page Versions on a per-notebook basis. Which OneNote Feature Is Best? These features are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Do you feel the need for an offline organization tool that also exists on the web? Surprisingly, Microsoft has come up with the perfect solution - OneNote.
In fact, OneNote can be useful for so many things, including OneNote is the ideal collaboration tool for managing simple projects in small teams. And it's completely free. See how OneNote can help your projects take off! and OneNote is one of Microsoft's most underrated apps. It's available on almost every platform and can do many tricks you wouldn't expect from a note keeping app. That being said, we recognize that OneNote isn’t perfect for everybody.
Check out our Evernote and OneNote are amazing note-taking apps. It's hard to pick between the two. We compared everything from interface to note organization to help you choose. What works best for you? to see which one is right for you.
Either way, use the one that’s most effective for you. Do you think these features are useful?
Which one do you like best? Are there any others that we missed? Share with us in the comments below! We’d love to hear from you. Explore more about:,.
Page tabs are the labels that appear along the right edge of the page. They belong inside of sections. As you switch from section to section, you'll see all the page tabs pertaining to that section change to display the ones associated with the current section. This is where your notes and other content lives. You can add a new page by clicking the New Page button that appears above the page tabs.
If you prefer to use the keyboard, you can press to create a new page. Subpages, (also known as grouped pages), are the page tabs that appear slightly indented, such as 'Passwords' in this picture. This provides a way to further organize your pages. The slight indentation indicates that they belong to a group of pages with the main page as its 'parent page'. You can put any notes or content onto a subpage just like you can on a main page.
To create a new subpage beneath the current one, simply click the small arrow next to the New Page button - and select New Subpage. You can also right-click any page and select New Subpage to create a new one immediately beneath it.
Or for you keyboard lovers out there, you can press. One of the most compelling things about a page in OneNote is the versatility in which it can store your stuff. You can put just about every kind of content you can imagine on the page surface.
It can handle, text, ink, drawings, pictures, audio, video, tables, documents and files of every kind. What's more, you don't have to do anything special for OneNote to handle any of these things.
It just knows how to deal with them. Content added to a page appears inside a container, known as an outline. The outline contains a handle along the top to show that you can grab it and move it around. Each note inside the outline is known as an element.
Each element has a small grab handle that appears to the side to show that it can be repositioned inside the outline. You can also use the grab handle to drag content outside the outline if you desire. The outline border and the element grab handle only appear if your mouse is hovering over them. To some people this is a nuisance, because these things are constantly flashing as your mouse moves across the page. If you want to reduce the amount the visual 'noise' on the page, you can hide the outline borders.
To do this, click Tools - Options - Display - remove the checkmark from ' Show note containers on pages'. Tips:. For left-handed users, the page tabs and scroll bar can be displayed along the left side instead of the right, click Tools - Options - Display - place a checkmark in ' Page tabs appear on the left' and ' Vertical scroll bar appears on the left'.
This makes it easier to navigate your pages when using a pen. When a new page is created, the page tab's name appears as 'Untitled Page'.
However, after you add a title to your page, the page tab adopts it as its new name. Even if you don't explicitly give it a title, the page tab name will adopt the first few words of any text or ink that it sees on the page. You can change a series of existing main pages into grouped pages by first selecting the range of pages, (this is done by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on each additional page) - then right-click the selection - choose Group Pages. This causes the first page in the selected range to become the main page and all subsequent pages in the selected range to become subpages. You can also change all subpages within a group to be main pages by right-clicking the page group - and selecting Ungroup Pages. You can adjust the properties of a page by right-clicking the page tab - and pressing Page Setup.
This is where you can specify the paper size, margins, rule lines, and more. You can even set your page surface to be a certain color. Pages come with a page title at the top. This is a special container that floats above the page surface and is reserved for text and ink only. All other content will be stored on the page surface. Immediately beneath the page title you will see the creation date and time. You can easily change the date and time by clicking on them.
Once you do so a small control will appear to the side, click on it to select the desired date or time. You can also turn off the page title. To do so, right-click the page tab - select Page Setup - remove the checkmark from the ' Show page title' checkbox. Note, however, that doing so will permanently remove the page title and any content that appears in it. If you decide later to turn the title back on, just follow the same steps. If you are using a Tablet PC, you may have noticed that every time you create a new page it displays rule lines.
To most people this serves as a guide to writing in a straight line. In addition, it gives you the experience of writing on a real paper notebook. Some people would prefer not to have rule lines on every new page. To disable this feature click Tools - Options - Display - remove the checkmark from ' Create all new pages with rule lines'.