Inserting Notes

Each new page you add to a notebook section is ready to go as a blank slate for your notes, doodles, tasks, and more. Adding notes to a notebook may be the feature you use the most. This section explains how OneNote trumps sticky notes in helping you capture key thoughts.

Plain notes

You can add a note anywhere on a page in OneNote. You’re not bound by the tradition of starting at the top and working down to the bottom. Just click anywhere on the page, type the note text (Figure 38-7), and click outside the note when you’ve finished. You can press Enter as needed within a note, and pressing Tab after you enter at least one character of text creates table cells within the note. You also can click back on the note to place the insertion point within it to make changes to the note at any time.

Tagged notes

Tagging a note assigns a category and icon to the note, such as the To Do tag, Important tag, Question tag, Phone number tag, or Idea tag. The tag icon appears beside the note so that you can determine what kind of information a note contains just by scanning the page. You also can view tagged notes by group, as described later in this chapter.

You can choose Insert Tag or click the Tag This Note button and its drop-down list on the Standard toolbar to assign a tag to a note. You can assign a tag when you create a note or at any later time. To assign the tag when you create the note, click in the page to position the insertion point where you want the note to appear. Choose Insert Tag and then click the desired tag type in the submenu. Or, click the drop-down list arrow for the Tag This Note button and then click the desired tag type in the list. A note container with the tag icon appears. Type your note text and then click away to finish.

To assign a tag to an existing note, click the note to display its note container. Then choose Insert Tag and click the tag type. Or, click the drop-down list arrow for the Tag This Note button, click the desired tag type in the list (Figure 38-8), and then click outside the note.

Extra writing space

Even though you certainly can make room for more information by creating a new page in a section, you also have the option of extending the space available in a page so that it can accommodate more notes or larger items. To add more writing space, choose Insert Extra Writing Space. Drag down the page until the down-arrow pointer changes from a single arrow to a layered arrow. Then click. OneNote adds more space on the page. If you scroll back up without adding anything to the new space, the extra space disappears.