Top 20 Microsoft OneNote Tips and Tricks | How to use OneNote effectively & be more organized

These tips will help you learn how to use Microsoft OneNote, and include Taking audio notes with OneNote, OneNote and Outlook integration, OneNote meeting notes, OneNote Immersive Reader, Microsoft Teams and OneNote, and lots more. Many of these tips will work for OneNote 2019, OneNote 2016, and even OneNote 2013. And be sure to stick around to the end of the video for a cool bonus tip!

📝 Table of contents
0:00 Introduction
0:25 Insert Audio with time stamps
1:41 Copy text from picture
2:37 Print to OneNote
4:28 Set Picture to Background
5:30 Outlook Meeting Details
6:23 Email a page
6:56 Immersive Reader
8:42 Dictation
9:25 Put page tabs on the left side
10:14 Tags and Custom Tags
11:49 Page Versions and Deleted Items
15:27 Copy links to Pages/Sections/Notebooks
16:40 Full screen mode
17:28 Password Protect a OneNote Section
17:58 Collapse outline
18:46 Page colors, Section colors, Notebook colors
19:29 Top OneNote keyboard shortcuts
20:29 Outlook mail and calendar integration
21:38 Section Groups
22:56 BONUS: Wiki-link forward creation (link to pages)

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[DENE]

This is incredibly helpful! I use OneNote religiously to take notes during meetings and prep for 1:1s. I really appreciate the tips and will be sure to try them out.

[justinerdmier]

Super amazing! I love how far OneNote has come. I used OneNote as part of Office 365 2016 my junior and senior years of high school. The features made it super easy to synch with my teachers and fellow students with whom I studied.

Thank you!

[rookyking]

Thank you Mike! I was wanting to make more use of one note and this video definitely helped... importing meeting details, making notes and then mailing them back out is a game changer!

[ManasMadrecha]

It would be great to have Ctrl + D feature to select/edit multiple same words at the same time, like I use while writing markdown in VS code. Already, some features like Alt + Shift + arrow keys are implemented and that's so cool 😋

[crystalkimcuong]

Thank you ! This video is really helpful😀. I would love to see the adding layers feature with hide /unhide options Onenote . For example: a professor give the students a math problem to solve (layer 1), then giving the student the answers (revealing layer 2 on top). This will save time especially in homework reviews. My professor in economics class uses L lecturenote app instead of onenote because of this. Note capture feature which can be play as video or gif formats is also a good solution.

[mercuryelite]

Somehow you managed to finish the entire video without once cracking up on the Office Space references. Or maybe you needed multiple tries to get it done!! Great video!

[CEOBootCamp]

Great Stuff. I've been a desktop OneNote user for years. Moving the page tabs to the left and pinning the notebooks so I can see the section groups is AMAZING.
I would love it if the links to pages were easier to use in non-microsoft application. If I look at the text of a link it's really clunky.

[ImprovementGang]

My favorite shortcut is for the style for the text: ctr + alt + 1 is going to be Header 1, ctr + alt + 2 is for header 2, and so on. It is really good for taking notes and quickly formating them.

[draganamarevic]

I love the audio recording, dictation for meetings and the translation feature. AMAZING. CONGRATULATIONS! 😍🎉👏

[lynarvizu]

Came for the tutorial, stayed for the Office Space references.
But honestly, this is super helpful, well paced, and easy to follow along.

[dirkvdp]

Best onenote tips I came across since a long time, and have seen many. Splendid tutorial ...kudos Mike!

[harmonygibbs]

I cannot tell you enough how thankful I am for this video. This has made beginning to use the tool SO much easier.

[antemilardovic]

Great and informative as always, thanks Mike! What I still don't understand is why there are two desktop versions of OneNote. I like the layout of OneNote for Windows 10 better, but it's missing "Email page" and as far as I can tell although some of the features of the other version's History tab can be found elsewhere, there is no way to go to "Next Unread" (which is great for me as a teacher)....

[jdwtube]

That last bonus tip was great, thanks for the very informative video.

[overtechnc]

Thanks a lot for all these tips :)

I gotta say...I'm always amazed by the fact that MS can provide so many useful tools and upgrade them regularly...while leaving big bugs and other issues unsolved xD That's weird :)

[hinakingravi]

This is badass. I literally used the tip for copying text from picture just now and it saved me so much time instead of manually typing everything out. This is an extremely helpful video, thank you!

[kekistanimemelord]

Mike, Thank you for making such an amazing and insightful video on OneNote! I am very new to OneNote, and to be honest I felt like a fish out of water at first. But after watching the video, I learned some quality of life improving tips and tricks that will save me much time trying to stay organized.

My favorite tips so far from the video was the Wiki-Link forward creation and the Microsoft Teams integration (especially because my job utilizes Teams to a maddening degree), being able to incorporate OneNote into it is a complete gamechanger for me!

Again, I cant Thank you enough!

[kristenedmonds]

OneNote has come a long way since the late 2000's.

I would like to see more options for customized formatting and more control over documents like I have in Word. It would be nice to have the ability to pick custom colours for highlighters and create my own tag icons. For school use, it would also be awesome to have the ability to insert reference lists, enter citations and creating SmartArt diagrams/charts for lecture notes. Essentially, more characteristics of Word integrated into the OneNote program would make this the best Microsoft program ever made.

I love the feature of copying text from picture. Eagerly waiting for the update for OneNote desktop. Thank you for the hard work and innovative ideas!

[ezbrightside]

This video is AMAZING! I'm in OneNote frequently, and had no idea some of these features existed!! So helpful, will definitely be utilizing and sharing with colleagues.

[savanahr.]

Love the Office Space reference! Thanks, this was very helpful.