OneNote 2013 For Dummies

Chapter 2

Managing Notes and Configuring OneNote

In This Chapter

Putting your notes in order

Saving your notes with sync

Saving notes as other file types by exporting

Configuring OneNote options

OneNote is similar in many respects to other Office apps, but at the same time, the app is Microsoft’s pet project for pushing the borders of Office and productivity apps in general. As I discuss in Chapter 1, the concept of saving files, for example, has changed dramatically. Additionally, as new as OneNote is in comparison to other apps, Microsoft was able to build it from the ground up without having to worry about legacy features or compatibility with other formats, such as Word needing to be compatible with WordPerfect, Apache OpenOffice, and other word-processing apps. The resulting OneNote interface is much simplified and intuitive, making it easy to make the app behave the way you want it to.

OneNote makes organizing your notes intuitive regardless of whether you store them on your device or in the cloud. In this chapter, I show you how to keep track of your notebooks, sections, and pages, including syncing, exporting, deleting, and changing their file type or location.

Rearranging Notes

Cutting, copying, and pasting files is a key skill to have when dealing with PCs or other devices in general, and with OneNote these processes allow you to easily rearrange and clean up notes.

Notebooks, by their nature, are the top level of notes, and thus you cannot make a copy of a notebook within OneNote itself; you can only cut, copy, and paste sections or pages from one notebook into another notebook. The only place you can make a copy of a notebook is within File Explorer (Windows Explorer in Windows 7 or prior versions) or SkyDrive.

Moving or copying sections or pages

If you find that a section or page either doesn’t fit in its current notebook or section or would also fit in another notebook or section, you can easily move it from or copy it to the desired location. Moving a page results in the page disappearing from its original location; copying a page results in the page being present in both the original and target locations. The following sections show you how to move or copy a section or page.

Moving or copying a page

Moving or copying a page within its own section is as simple as dragging and dropping its item at the right side of the OneNote window to another location, but moving or copying a page to another section or notebook is a bit different. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Right-click or press and hold on a page in the sidebar at the right side of the OneNote window, or Control-click multiple pages if using a keyboard, to move more than one page at a time; then choose Move or Copy.

The Move or Copy Pages window appears, as shown in Figure 2-1.

You can also press Ctrl+Alt+M after selecting a page or pages to summon this window.

2. Click or tap the + symbol next to a notebook’s name and then select the section underneath it to choose the section you want to copy or move the page or pages to.

3. Click or tap either the Move or Copy button.

If you’re moving a page, the page will disappear from the current section, and you’ll have to visit the new location to find it; if you’re copying a page, it will remain where it is and also be available in the notebook section you chose to copy it to.

Figure 2-1: The Move or Copy Pages window.

Moving or copying a section

Just as with pages, you can always move a section within its notebook by simply dragging and dropping it before or after other section tabs, but moving or copying a section to another notebook is a different process. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Right-click or press and hold on a section tab and choose Move or Copy.

The Move or Copy Section window appears; it looks nearly identical to the window in Figure 2-1, aside from the title bar.

2. Click or tap the name of the notebook you want to move or copy the section to.

Click or tap the + symbol next to a notebook’s name and then select a section underneath it to place the new section after the selected one. If you don’t do so, the section will be placed after all existing sections in the notebook.

3. Click or tap either the Move or Copy button.

If you’re moving a section, it will disappear from the current notebook, and you’ll have to visit the new location to find it; if you’re copying a section, it will remain where it is and also be available in the notebook you chose to copy it to.

Merging sections

1. Right-click or press and hold on a section tab and choose Merge into Another Section.

The Merge Section window appears; it looks nearly identical to Figure 2-1, except for the title bar and the Merge button.

2. Click or tap the name of the notebook you want to move or copy the section to.

3. Click or tap the + symbol next to a notebook’s name, select the section underneath it that you want to merge the current section with, and click or tap Merge.

The section disappears from the current notebook; access the section you chose to merge it with to find it.

Renaming Notes

Renaming notebooks, sections, and pages are different processes, with the renaming of notebooks by far being the most unintuitive. Here’s how:

Rename notebooks’ display names. To rename a notebook’s display name in OneNote, right-click or press and hold on the notebook’s name in the upper left of the OneNote 2013 window, choose Properties, type a new name into the Display Name field, and click OK. This only affects the notebook’s display name in OneNote, not the name of the folder.

You can change the location of a notebook using the Change Location button on this window. This is also where you can change the format of the note to the 2007 format.

Rename notebook folders. If you want to rename a notebook’s folder, you have to do so within File Explorer or Windows Explorer. To do so, close OneNote, navigate to the OneNote Notebooks folder in your Documents folder, click or press and hold on the folder of the notebook so that the name becomes highlighted, and overtype the old name with the new one. Then restart OneNote and open the notebook using the File tab’s Open command.

Rename sections or pages. To rename a section or page, right-click or press and hold on the section tab or page item and overtype the existing name; then press Enter. For a page, you can also replace the name by clicking or tapping into the page and typing a new title in the title space at the top of the window.

Deleting Notes or Sections

Deleting notebooks, sections, or pages are different processes, and with notebooks, deleting them depends on whether you’ve saved your files to SkyDrive or to your computer. The following list describes how to delete all of these things.

Delete notebooks on your computer. Deleting notebooks is not intuitive in OneNote at all, because it's not an action even represented on the OneNote 2013 interface. To delete a notebook, you have to delete the folder for it in Windows Explorer and delete the backup for it there as well. On my Windows 8 computer, the backup folder is at C:\Users\James\AppData\Local\Microsoft\OneNote\15.0\Backup. Check the Save & Backup item in OneNote options to change backup options.

Note that you have to have hidden folders viewable (you can change this in File Explorer's Folder Options) to view the AppData folder or anything within it.

Delete notebooks on SkyDrive. Simply log in to your SkyDrive, right-click or press and hold on the notebook, and choose Delete. The file will go to the SkyDrive Recycle Bin and will be deleted after 30 days.

Delete sections. To delete a section, right-click or press and hold on its tab, and choose Delete. The section will go to the notebook’s Recycle Bin, which is discussed in the next section.

Delete note pages. Delete a page by right-clicking or pressing and holding on its name in the pages pane at the right side of the OneNote 2013 interface and choosing Delete. The page will go to the notebook’s Recycle Bin, which is discussed in the next section.

Retrieving Deleted Notes

Deleted sections and note pages go to the Recycle Bin for that particular notebook, which you can access on the History tab. Files are expunged after 60 days, so you have until then to restore them. To restore a section or page, right-click it and use one of the Move, Merge, or Copy items to move it out of the Recycle Bin.

Each notebook has its own Recycle Bin, so if you’re not seeing the item you’re looking for, make sure you’re in the correct notebook.

Viewing Unfiled Notes

When creating notes from a mobile device such as an Android smartphone, the new page will go into Unfiled Notes, which is a section in your Personal (Web) notebook. Visit that section to find those...