Security Features in Microsoft OneNote 2010 : Keeping Private Notes Private (part 4) - Setting Password-Protection Preferences

Setting Password-Protection Preferences

OneNote will maintain the sections protected resolved during up to 10 minutes from inactivity after you entered the correct password. If this period of time proves too long or too short to adapt to your needs, you can change this arrangement into making what follows:

1.	Click the File tab and then click Options.
2.	On the left side of the OneNote Options dialog box that appears, click the Advanced category.
3.	On the right side of the dialog box, scroll down to the Passwords heading (see Figure 7). Figure 7. Under the Passwords heading in the Advanced category of the OneNote Options dialog box, you can change how and when OneNote locks password-protected notebook sections.
4.	Make sure that the check box in front of the first option (“Lock Password Protected Sections After I Have Not Worked in Them for the Following Amount of Time”) is selected, and then click the drop-down menu next to this option to select a security timeout that suits you. You can choose from a minimum of 1 Minute all the way up to 1 Day.

Independent of the first option, you can also tell OneNote to lock protected sections immediately after you click away from them:

Finally, if you use any add-in programs with OneNote 2010 that provide additional functionality, you can tell OneNote to let such programs access your protected notebook sections as long as these are unlocked. To do this, follow these steps:

If you do not use add-in programs with OneNote 2010 or if you do not know even what are they, you can leave the third option chosen, because it is when OneNote is initially installed. Since the authorization is only given to the sections which you opened yourself with a valid password, you do not need to worry about any unauthorized access to your notes.

Whenever you choose to protect sensitive or confidential notes with a password, be aware of the following important information:

If you store extremely confidential information in a notebook, such as trade secrets or mission-critical business plans, it is highly recommended that you first create a new section, password protect it, and only then add the confidential notes to new pages in that section. Protecting a section after it has existed on your computer for a while might leave automatic backups of those sections freely available on your computer.

When protected sections in your notebook are locked, the notes on their pages are not included in the results of any notebook search. This is an intentional security feature to prevent others from seeing your confidential notes without a valid password. However, this also means that you’ll need to remember to first unlock all of your protected sections to include their pages in your notebook searches.

Lastly, if any of the pages in a section that you’re protecting with a password contain one or more audio and/or video recordings, only the notes will be protected. The clips on such pages will not be protected or encrypted. If this concerns you, you should first delete such clips from your notes before password protecting sections containing such pages.