Microsoft OneNote 2010 : Working with Notebooks

11/29/2012 6:36:27 PM

If you’d like a refresher about notebook creation and to see how multiple notebooks show up on the navigation bar, follow these steps to create one more practice notebook.

Creating a New Notebook

To create a new, blank notebook, follow these steps:

1.	In OneNote 2010, click the File tab and then click New.
2.	Under Step 1 (Store Notebook On), click My Computer.
3.	Under Step 2 (Name), type a name for the notebook. For example, you could call this notebook Practice Notebook.
4.	Under Step 3, leave the suggested file path without making any changes.
5.	Click the Create Notebook button near the bottom to finish creating the notebook.

At the top is the sample notebook called “Personal.” This is the notebook containing useful tips that OneNote created after you first installed it. And below that is the new notebook called “Practice Notebook,” which you created in the previous steps (see Figure 1).

Figure 1. OneNote 2010 lets you use multiple notebooks at once. The orange highlight on the left navigation bar indicates which notebook you’re currently working in.

You can change the order of notebook icons on the navigation bar. Although this doesn’t change anything about the notebooks themselves, it can make it a bit easier to keep the notebook you use most often near the top. For example, to move the Practice Notebook to the top of the navigation bar, click its notebook icon and hold the left mouse button while you drag the icon upward, until it has switched positions with the Personal notebook icon.

Before you move on to working with the sections and pages in the notebook you just created, take a moment to learn a couple of additional notebook tasks—closing and deleting notebooks.

With OneNote 2010, manually closing and reopening notebooks between working sessions isn’t necessary.There’s no Save functionality in OneNote because it automatically and continually saves and remembers everything you do. This means that you can safely shut down OneNote at any time without first closing any notebooks that you have open. All of your information will be saved automatically—even across multiple notebooks that may be stored in different locations. Whenever you next start OneNote, all of the notebooks that appeared on your navigation bar will be automatically reopened.

Closing a Notebook

Over time, you might be working with more and more notebooks, and the navigation bar might soon fill up with numerous notebook icons. If you prefer to keep things visually uncluttered, you can choose to temporarily close any notebooks that you’re not actively working with (for example, notebooks for projects that you have completed and won’t be working on in the future).

1.	On the navigation bar, right-click the notebook that you want to close. In this example, right-click the notebook called “Practice Notebook” (see Figure 2). Figure 2. When you right-click a notebook icon on the navigation bar and click the Close this Notebook command, OneNote removes the notebook from view without deleting it.
2.	On the menu that appears, click Close This Notebook. The notebook icon for the Practice Notebook disappears from the navigation bar.

When you close a notebook, it is not deleted. Like closing a book and putting it back on the shelf, the notebook still exists. OneNote simply closes the file and removes the notebook icon from the navigation bar to make room for other notebooks you might actively be working in. To put a notebook back on the navigation bar, simply reopen it.

Opening a Notebook

To reopen the sample notebook again so that it appears on the navigation bar, follow these steps:

1.	On the File tab, click Open.
2.	Click the Open Notebook button.
3.	In the Open Notebook dialog box, navigate to your OneNote Notebooks folder (which is typically located inside of your My Documents or Documents folder).
4.	Double-click the folder called Practice Notebook and then click Open. OneNote immediately loads the sample notebook again and displays the last page you had open at the time when you closed the notebook.

There’s a faster way to reopen notebooks that you have recently closed. On the File tab, click Open and then look for the notebook’s name in the Recently Closed Notebooks list. Clicking a notebook’s name in this list will instantly reopen the notebook and return you to the page you last had open.

Deleting a Notebook

I’m including the following steps only for future reference, as people often wonder about the fact that OneNote does not have a built-in command for deleting notebooks.

When you decide you no longer need a specific notebook (including all of its sections, pages, content, and embedded files), you can delete it. Doing so destroys the notebook, so do this only if you’ve made a confirmed backup copy of the notebook or you’re absolutely certain that the notebook and its contents are no longer needed.

To delete a notebook and its contents, follow these steps:

1.	Open Windows Explorer and navigate to the OneNote Notebooks folder, which is typically located inside of your My Documents (or Documents) folder.
2.	Right-click the folder matching the name of the notebook you want to delete and then click Delete. Once deleted, the notebook is sent to your Recycle Bin. To permanently destroy the notebook, right-click the Recycle Bin icon on your Windows desktop and then click Empty Recycle Bin.

Deleting a notebook from your hard drive, from a Web server, or from a remote or shared location like Windows Live SkyDrive permanently destroys the files. You cannot undo this, and no one will be able to recover these files for you, so be sure you only do this with notebooks you’re certain you will never need again.

Now that you know the basics about notebooks, let’s learn a bit more about what makes up the contents of every notebook.