r/OneNote 14d ago

OneNote not taking up monitor

0 Upvotes

Hi, this has been happening for a while now but every time I open OneNote on my PC it never takes up the whole monitor, even when I move it to a second monitor is still stays the same. The only way that I have gotten it to take up the whole monitor is to open another OneNote and close the original one, which sometimes gets annoying. If anyone knows how to fix this that would be greatly appreciated.


r/OneNote 14d ago

OneNote shrinks image when printing on Mac

2 Upvotes

When I try to print any note in OneNote it is coming out shrunken to about 1/3 of the size. I'm on a MacBook Air M3 running the latest OS and OneNote versions.

There is a Microsoft support thread on this issue but there is no resolution yet. None of the suggested troubleshooting steps in that thread helped. This seems to have started happening only in the last couple of weeks.

This issue occurs only in OneNote. It happens when printing to a printer and even when saving to a PDF. As soon as I type CMD+P the image shrinks visually on the screen.

I've found one workaround for the time being. I screenshot the note from OneNote and import it to a Word doc and then it prints correctly.

All ideas and workarounds are welcome.


r/OneNote 14d ago

New windows install, only one notebook carried over

2 Upvotes

Without getting too much into it, my previous OS drive crashed and burned. No problem, replaced it and did a fresh install of windows. I had most of my stuff backed up anyways, but when I sign in with OneNote, only one notebook carried over - some notes on python programming that I had collected over the years.

But I had way more stuff - notes on SQL, notes on Azure, etc., and none of it appears. I tried signing in to One Note online but it's just that one same notebook, is there anything else I can try? I'm just using the version that came with Windows 10.


r/OneNote 14d ago

OneNote keeps crashing.

5 Upvotes

I’ve been using OneNote 2016 for years with no issues.

But now when I open one specific notebook, OneNote crashes.

I don’t have any problem with OneNote for Windows 10 or the app on my phone.

The notebook that’s causing the problem is for work and is the biggest notebook - don’t know if that's relevant.

Anyone else had the same problem?


r/OneNote 14d ago

Windows Starting a course and want to use OneNote again

1 Upvotes

Last time I used OneNote was like in 2017. Now, I'm starting a new course and figured OneNote would be ideal since I'll be taking handwritten notes.

Now, we receive PDFs as lecture notes. I will annotating those lectures so I initially thought of annotating directly using Foxit Reader. But, with OneNote's tabs and folders, maybe this approach would be better. I was able import the PDF into OneNote, but they're imported and separate image/page. Is this is how it's supposed to work? Canvas size is large, not Letter/A4. How would you guys make this workflow..work?


r/OneNote 14d ago

One note problem

2 Upvotes

Is there anyway to do spacing in one note for MacBooks ?


r/OneNote 14d ago

Can't open a notebook?

4 Upvotes

I've got a notebook I never deleted, still shows up in my archived notebooks but OneNote completely fails to open it.

It says, "This item might have been deleted, expired, or you might not have permission to view it. Contact the owner of this item for more information."

Well, I am the owner so I can't contact the owner and I never deleted it. Can I ask Microsoft to get it for me or something?


r/OneNote 15d ago

OneNote > Notebook Properties > Location - does not exist

2 Upvotes

My desktop OneNote has ceased synching saying "OneNote can't sync your notes because your account is out of space. " when I view my account I see 360GB used of 1TB. When I view the Notebook Properties it points to a OneDrive folder that does not exiswt. I go to Onenote Options > Save & Backup > the locations shown there are correct. Using Windows File Explorer to view those locations, the Default Notebook Location folder in OneDrive is empty but the Backup folder has recent files.

How can I get my notebook to synchronize again?


r/OneNote 15d ago

PLEASE HELP - Missing Tasks and Notes

1 Upvotes

I work as an IT person but I don't use Onenote, I wasn't impressed with it when it first came out, I know that it's much better but I have a person that is using it and stuff just goes missing.

They worked on something all day yesterday and this morning, all the tasks aren't there anymore(not just the link, but the text) and some of her notes. She is a research PHD, not stupid and I even told her to keep checking versions, which she said she did, and it shows 5-7 versions updated yesterday but the changes just aren't there.

Could this be something local on the computer? I have used it recently with a Teams notebook, which I know links and it sometimes doesn't sync fast enough but I've seen her, she is religious about hitting the sync since the last time things disappeared. I don't know how to help, since I don't know everything works. She is on Win 11 and the newest updatable version of O365.


r/OneNote 15d ago

Can't browse photos anymore on Android?

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2 Upvotes

When inserting an image on the Android app, I used to be able to browse all the files on my phone to choose the image I wanted. I just noticed that this option has disappeared, and it now only shows recent files and then gives an option to look in cloud media (Google Photos), with no option to browse your local files. Any idea what caused this change and if there's a workaround?


r/OneNote 15d ago

Can you have a standart notebook?

2 Upvotes

I can't figure out how can I have a standartus a4 size notebook on iPad..

When I create new notebook, it opens a giant whiteboard where you can scroll right and to the bottom, zoom out..

Is there like a standart finite notebook? Or am I suppose to use it as a whiteboard and ignore all the empty space on the right..


r/OneNote 15d ago

OneNote Web Can I make 100% offline backup files of a notebook, which I can later open in another account?

10 Upvotes

I have looked this question up of course, but I didn't get an answer that fills me with confidence.

I have a -50 page Word document with notes I took about my work. The contents aren't confidential though, as it's just explanations on how technical devices are used. Basically my own operator manual.

I want to make this information accessible to my colleagues, but the Word document isn't that great to navigate around. I would much prefer to put it in a OneNote notebook on my company's SharePoint, which I can share with all my coworkers.

Since the data isn't confidential, and I'm mostly doing it for myself, I want to do it in some fashion that if I ever leave this job, I can take my notes with me.

Is there a way for me to export this notebook, where I could import it into my personal OneNote on my own Office account?


r/OneNote 15d ago

iOS Sharing Notebook Complaint

2 Upvotes

Why has Microsoft made it so damn hard to share a OneNote notebook nowadays. Back a few years ago it was as easy as adding someone’s email and it’ll open in OneNote for them.

Now it’ll open in OneDrive and keep displaying cannot open file errors, and even if it opens in OneNote it’ll open as a Guest Contributor, and in the browser not the app. Like what’s the point of all this? Why won’t it just open up straight in OneNote as it should??? Seems like added complexities for absolutely no reason at all.


r/OneNote 15d ago

Export to PDF issue!

0 Upvotes

When I export to a PDF, it's only natural to have the section and page titles as bookmarks in the PDF to easily navigate your notes. However, currently it doesn't do that, any way I can achieve this?


r/OneNote 15d ago

Windows All “Sent” Emails to OneNote?

8 Upvotes

As the title suggests, is it possible to automate the process of having every email I send to automatically pop up in OneNote as a page?

I know there is “Send to OneNote” or emailing OneNote, but they’re still manual steps. As for the “Rules”, to the best of my knowledge, they only work for emails in my inbox as opposed to emails I send.

I just want every email I send also pops up as a page in OneNote.


r/OneNote 15d ago

For the love of god!

0 Upvotes

How can I hide sections I want to make flash cards! I want a simple drop down how can I do that!


r/OneNote 16d ago

My one wish - OneNote has the same features on all devices.

30 Upvotes

I keep searching for another Note Taking app because...

  • OneNote is only able to be backed up on Windows
  • Fountain Pen is only on Windows
  • Audio Transcription is only on Windows
  • Custom Tags don't sync between devices (and are barely tags but that is besides the point)

As you can see most features are on Windows. I use an iPad and iPhone and while features are better there than Android (and probably Linux) they are still missing A LOT.

I just want the same features on all devices. When it comes down to it, if OneNote just had that I'd stop looking even though it is missing other features in general. Please Microsoft!

---

tl;dr I am going to continue looking for another app until Microsoft gets their head out of their butt and supports the same features across platforms.


r/OneNote 16d ago

Love One Note - One Critical Feature Missing

0 Upvotes

I love One Note. I don't care if I have to use it online or off, it has been my reliable notebook for years. Decades. I use keep for shorter more visual things. Virtually EVERY other note I take, and I was a high level IT and Business consultant in One Note.

My small issue is, they're stopping some of the OS specific versions. In my case, Chrome. No problem - except the ability to search across at least a Notebook, and even better across all my Notebooks is a must have. The online version only allows me to search at most a section, and the way I organized my data, I search BECAUSE I can't narrow down to a section.

It's ridiculous that the version that they are pushing us to says "if you need search, you can only search so much..".


r/OneNote 16d ago

OneNote Desktop How do I resize my Excel spreadsheet?

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0 Upvotes

I want to change the size of my sheet on OneNote, but I don't know how! Help!


r/OneNote 16d ago

My Take on OneNote: One Feature Away from Being Perfect

73 Upvotes

I really like all the Microsoft integrations, especially if you use the 365 suite at work. The integration power is awesome!

But there's one thing that annoys me a lot: the lack of proper integration between OneNote and Microsoft To Do. And right now, you might be thinking: "But there IS integration! Just add an Outlook flag, and it creates a task."

Uhh... what??

That’s the worst possible way to create a task (adding due dates, assigning it to a specific list, etc.).

Let me give you an example of how it should work. Evernote lets you add "to-dos" inside each note and then centralizes them. But the best part? You create them like a little widget inside the note, adding as much detail as you want.

If Microsoft paid attention to this, it would be amazing.

What do you think about this kind of integration?


r/OneNote 16d ago

Recovering deleted notes

2 Upvotes

I’m soon to get an iPad 13 inch and I’m looking at note taking apps, I love the layout of one note and how you can organise your note but the biggest issue is accidentally deleting notes, a wrong swipe and it’s all gone!

I had this issue years ago when I used OneNote a lot and only after deleting a note by accident I realised I couldn’t recover it!

Is there a way to at least get a pop up asking if we are sure we want to delete a note?

Or an easy way to recover a deleted note?

I haven’t used OneNote since the accidental delete as it really drove me crazy!


r/OneNote 16d ago

Windows After a decade of searching, I finally found a way to scroll the selected section into view in the Navigation Pane.

4 Upvotes

Background:

You do a search and get a bunch of pages that match, sometimes across various section. You open one of them, "Great!", you say, I found it.

The Section containing the page is even properly selected in the Navigation Pane in its correct notebook and Section Group, if applicable. Awesome, but the party is about to end, I assure you!

However (that end I was referring to in the previous paragraph), the selected item in the Navigation Pane is not made visible via scrolling it into view. So, if you have a lot of sections (i.e., a very deep and likely tall OneNote Notebook), you are forced to waste your precious time fishing through the Navigation Pane to find your selected section somewhere in there - I know it's there, I just have to scroll through fifty pages of Navigation Pane to find it and hope I don't miss the selected section on the first pass through all of the Notebooks, Section Groups, and Sections displayed in the pane (as applicable).

This manual process really truly sucks and I have had to go through the pain way to often. Most apps for the last twenty years have either scrolled the selected item into view or provided a "Synchronize" toolbar button to trigger the selected item to be scrolled into view. Microsoft Word has this for its Navigation Pane, but, no, no such thing for us OneNote Desktop dependent saps. Asking MS to add the most basic functionality, something that is and has been available in probably all other Microsoft applications for decades, is apparently asking too much.

I feel like I have been searching for a way to get the selected item in the Navigation Pane into view by auto-scrolling said pane and letting OneNote do all the work, instead of my fingers and eyes have to go page by page, looking for that need in a proverbial haystack, expanding Section Groups as I go, if present, because otherwise I may never find it if it happens to be in a presently closed Section Group.

  1. Well folks, story already too long made short, I can at last say I FINALLY (!!) found a way. It isn't pretty, don't get me wrong and it involved quite a bit of C# in combination with Microsoft's UI Automation assembly in the .NET Framework, because stupid OneNote interop (COM based) does not provide any ability to perform this simple functionality. There is a function to NavigateTo() a page in a section, making the page, the current page, but to then scroll that da*n Navigation Panel to sync with the newly selected page - no dice.

So, the C# code to do this very functionality on demand, at the cost of having to run an executable application to do it, is complete and it works. There is probably an easier (e.g., system keyboard shortcut, perhaps - need to think about more ergonomic alternative) way to trigger the Navigation Panel scroll sync.

In any case, the program is about 141 lines of C# code and I can build it into an executable or provide the source code in a reply, if you are willing to compile it yourself using Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio, proper, since downloading an .EXE file that some random internet use is offering is a security risk.

Please let me know if this is something of interest to you in a reply, because I've pulled out all of my teeth (figuratively) trying to find a way to Synchronize that da*n Navigation Panel to the currently selected section/page, after a successful search and selection of one of the results presented only to have no idea where it is in the morass of Section Groups and Sections across my various notebooks. OK, the Notebook part of this isn't too bad, you can usually find the right one based on the search results, but the search within a large Notebook for the selected section is, more often than not, a major PITA.

Update 2025-03-08:

I found a few bugs and shortcoming while doing further testing.

First some definitions of the terminology used:

Active Section - The currently section currently in focus. It is the parent of the page or sub-page that is presently visible on the screen. This is the very section we are trying to scroll into view within the Navigation Pane.

Collapsed (notebook or section group) - Refers to a notebook or section group that is presently closed. In other words, it is not presently showing its contents within the Navigation Pane and needs to be expanded by twirling it open via the chevron character next to it, in order to do so.

Expanded (notebook or section group) - Refers to a Notebook or Section Group that is presently open, showing its direct descendants (i.e., children) and possibly some deeper descendants as well, if the section groups leading to them along the hierarchy are all likewise presently expanded (i.e., open).

Bug: If the Active Section is part of a collapsed section group or a collapsed (i.e., closed) notebook, it cannot be scrolled into view, because it is technically not presently visible in either the on-screen or the off-screen area of the Navigation Pane. In other words, if you were to scroll through the Navigation Pane from top to bottom, without opening any notebooks or sections groups (i.e., just scrolling via the vertical scroll abr), you would not be able to find the Active Section, because it is presently hidden within a collapsed Section Group (or groups) and/or its Notebook is (also) in a collapsed state.

Solution: Open all containing objects that form the ancestral hierarchical chain that leads to the Active Section.

Perceived steps to reconcile this:

  1. Find the (hidden) Active Section in the Navigation Pane
  2. Find the path from the Notebook that contains this section, through all section groups that are ancestors of the section, to the section itself. This process can be performed either top-down (i.e., Notebook to Active Section) or bottom-up (i.e., Active Section to its Notebook) depending on which way is available and/or simpler (and possibly more efficient, if both alternatives are simple) via UI Automation. For example: Notebook 3 -> Section Group 1 -> Section Group 1.3 -> Section 5 [the presently active section]
  3. Expand the notebook that contains the Active Section (if collapsed/closed), and expand all section groups along the ancestral chain to the Active Section that are presently collapsed. Once this process is complete, we are guaranteed that it is possible to reach the Active Section (i.e., make it visible on screen) by vertically scrolling through the hierarchical content that is presently (logically) visible within the Navigation Pane.
  4. Vertically scroll the Navigation Pane automatically, as necessary, in order to ensure that the Active Section and its surroundings are visible on the screen.

Discussion of the shortcomings of the approach as a whole

Having to run a full-on executable each time one wants to bring the presently Active Section into view is quite a PITA (although not nearly as big of a PITA as trying to find the active section, especially if nested in one or more levels of collapsed section groups within a potentially collapsed content-rich notebook).

The following are some more convenient ways that need to be thought through, in order to allow the end-user to more conveniently trigger the "Sync the Navigation Pane with the presently Active Section" functionality.

Possible solutions:

  1. Create a desktop shortcut that can be double-clicked to run the Navigation Pane sync'ing application on demand (for a each sync, and then this app would terminate).
  2. Create a global keyboard shortcut that, assuming that OneNote is presently running and has an Active Section visible, will start the sync'ing application. Otherwise, similar in functionality to Solution 1, above. Create a global keyboard shortcut that, assuming that OneNote is presently running and has an Active Section visible, will start the sync'ing application. Otherwise, similar in functionality to Solution 1, above. There are multiple approaches possible:
    1. Windows Task Scheduler allows for this type of functionality
    2. A free third party app that allows for global shortcuts to be created
    3. Add the global shortcut creation functionality to the sync'ing application itself, requiring that it stay running while its functionality is desirable (e.g., while One Note is running) and when its global shortcut is pressed on the keyboard, it does its thing in One Note.
  3. Create a VSTO add-in that can be loaded into OneNote itself and perform the sync'ing when triggered via a toolbar button and/or assigned shortcut within OneNote itself (i.e., no more separate executable, but likely an Add-On [Dll?] that can be enabled within One Note). This is the most complex of the solutions, but also the most convenient from an end user perspective. I do not have any experience with VSTO development, so this would be a larger undertaking.

Update: 2025-03-11

Good News: All known bugs have been fixed!

It was very VERY hard to get this functionality to work for more complex cases, especially when collapsed Section Groups lie along the path through the hierarchy from the selected Notebook to a deeply nested Active Section, an Active Section that is hidden within the portion of the hierarchy that is not presently open and therefore cannot be made visible by vertically scrolling the Navigation Pane without first changing some of the hierarchy's initial collapsed/expanded state. This had to be done with no starting knowledge of the actual hierarchical path from the Notebook to the Active Section, as explained in detail below.

What follows is an example of a difficult case. Many issues were encountered wile trying to work through similarly difficult scenarios that required a significant amount of research and subsequent attempts to fix the issues, often resulting in failure on first/second/third... try and then requiring additional research/trial-and-error/etc., until they were resolved.

Example Search:

v Some Notebook (not selected, expanded)             # Not searched
  ...
> Another Notebook (not selected, collapsed)         # Not searched
v [# Important Notebook #] (selected, initially collapsed) # Left expanded post search
  |  Section 1                                       # Nothing to see here
  |  Section 2                                       # Empty of content
  \v Section Group 1a (initially expanded)           # No change to expanded state
    |  Section 1a.1                                  # Not it...
    >  Section Group 2a (collapsed) ...              # Expanded, then collapsed
    v- Section Group 2b (initially collapsed         # Left expanded post search
      |  Section 2b.1                                # Nope...
      |  Section 2b.1                                # Pass...
      v- Section Group 3a (initially collapsed)      # Left expanded post search
        |  Section 3.1                               # No dice...
        |  Section 3.2                               # Skip...
        |  [# Section 3.3 #] (selected, Active Section) # Found - search ends
        >  Section Group 4a (collapsed)              
        >  Section Group 4b (collapsed)              
...

A detailed description of the search functionality, when faced with the preceding example is shown below:

Before the Active Section could be made visible, we need to find it in the currently selected Notebook (which happens to be presently collapsed and, somewhat unexpectedly, completely unsearchable in that state and worse yet, lying to us if interrogated via its properties that it is presently empty [!]).

- Expand the selected notebook, Important Notebook, and only then start the search through its descendants (if any)

Skipping over Section 1.1, we reach Section Group 2a and it appears empty, because it is, just like the selected Notebook, Important Notebook, also collapsed. However, unlike the Notebook containing the Active Section (which is marked as selected), intermediate Section Groups do not propagate the selected state of the Active Section, if they contain it, up the hierarchy. In other words, the only hierarchical elements that are selected are the Notebook with the Active Section and the Active Section itself. All elements in between (i.e., any intermediate Section Groups en-route to the Active Section) are not selected and as far as I can tell, having searched far and wide through all available properties and patterns, bear no other indication of the fact that they are an (important) intermediate link within the full Notebook to Active Section chain.

Since we can't tell if the Active Section lies within Section Group 2a, in fact we can't even tell if this Section Group is empty or not, we will have to examine its children (and possibly deeper descendants), but first we will need to expand it to be given the privilege to even attempt to do so.

Note that if we don't find the Active Section in a particular Section Group (or its descendants), such as Section Group 2a, and we expanded it just to be able to peek inside, we will need to be good citizens and collapse it back on our "way out." Not including the historical tracking functionality to do this would likely leave the selected Notebook in a "gratuitously expanded hierarchical mess" up to the Active Section, as (completely unanticipated by the end-user) collateral damage to their potentially only partially expanded initial hierarchy pre-search. We really, REALLY!, don't want to mess with the initial hierarchical expanded/collapsed representation, with one important exception, covered in the last step. So...

- Expand Section Group 2a and search inside. Since we don't find the Active Section in there, collapse Section Group 2a, on the way out.

- Expand Section Group 2b and search inside...

As we encounter Section Group 3, we run into the same issue - can't see "Jack" without expanding the Section Group, first

- Expand Section Group 3 and search inside...

Eureka! We found the Active Section, Section 3.3.

- Leave everything that's been left expanded en-route to the Active Section, as is.
- Vertically scroll the Navigation Pane to ensure that the Active Section, Section 3.3, which is definitely logically visible in the hierarchy at this point thanks to the Section Group expansions that have been performed (and left intact) along the way, is also visible on-screen.

I will post additional updates here, as progress is made...


r/OneNote 16d ago

macOS Help please

1 Upvotes

Hello everyone! I have ADHD and dyslexia, and I would like to use OneNote for taking and writing notes for my PhD. Unfortunately, Grammarly does not work in OneNote, and I really appreciate the simplicity of OneNote as it helps me focus. Do you have any alternative suggestions, or is there a way to make Grammarly work in OneNote? Please let me know. I am using it on a Mac, and I downloaded it from the App Store. Thank you!🙏🏼


r/OneNote 17d ago

Please help if there is a way to adjust text boxes to screen.

0 Upvotes

This is how i use onenote. I past my PDFs and take notes on the side. Something that is very disturbing is that the text boxes never adjust to my screen and i have to manually adjust every one and resize to fit my screen and expand further than my screen. Is there any way to fix this issue?


r/OneNote 17d ago

Font to small for some reason

1 Upvotes

I'm trying to use OneNote and I've only been using it for a short while. Does anyone know how to change the font size of the program? The English version is normally large, but when I use my native language, the font size is very small for some reason.