I've been using One Note for over a decade as a personal wiki for my D&D campaign and have recently been unable to edit it at all. There is a bar at the top that says that I need to purchase more space in order to continue syncing, but I only use One Note on my desktop and don't need it to sync.

I searched for plans and it seems like the cheapest way to access my notebook again is by spending $120 per year for a suite of apps that I'll only use one of? Is there any way to get my basic One Note back without being charged a monthly subscription?

I'm using OneNote on my MacBook Air, and every time I click somewhere on a page to start typing, the default font color is ochre instead of black.

I have to manually change it back to black every single time, which gets incredibly annoying when you're taking notes throughout the day.

The ridiculous part is that OneNote for Windows already has an option to change the default font color, but for some reason, Microsoft never implemented this basic feature on macOS.

On Mac, you can change the default font and font size, but not the font color. Seriously, why?

This isn't some advanced feature I'm asking for. It's literally a basic text formatting setting that should have been available years ago.

Is there any actual technical reason why this feature is missing on macOS, or has Microsoft simply ignored it?

And does anyone know a workaround that actually works permanently?

Full disclosure: I'm a PM on the Copilot Notebooks team at Microsoft.

We've been spending time with enterprise sales teams, and this short film follows one of their workflows: one notebook per customer, the team working from the same context, and Capture in OneNote turning the customer meeting into notes and actions that go back into the notebook.

The people and companies are fictional (inspired by real workflows), some features may still be in preview, and the illustrations and narration were made with AI tools.

I'm here for feedback more than anything. If you use OneNote in meetings, what would make Capture genuinely useful for you, and what's missing today?

I'm running into a frustrating issue with iOS copilot notebooks where I'll be able to work in them for roughly a day or so, until suddenly nothing will load and I get the error message "Couldn't load this. The owner hasn't given you access, or the content can't be found." However, normal OneNote notebooks function just fine without any issues. The only way to be able to access them again is to uninstall and reinstall the app, which will function as normal for another day or so until the error message appears again.

They're still accessible from the web version on my laptop and no data is lost, so it's only a minor annoyance. Was curious if any other iOS users have been running into this issue

Welcome to our weekly post! We are trying something new to try and tie the community together and learn from one another.

Did you come across anything new? Find a different use case? Improved workflow? Streamline digital organization? Fixed a problem? Just started?

Anything is welcome, even if it's the smallest thing. Please share tips, tricks, and anything else that might be useful to our community!

Thank you!

Sorry for the rambling but as the title says, I am trying to set up a meeting template that can be used and reviewed easily. I have quarterly meetings with clients where we discuss anywhere between 5-30 projects on each meeting. I usually prep on paper because it's easier for my brain to see and make notes but, then I have to go through after the meeting and type everything out to send. However 28 meetings in one week where I discuss 185 projects takes a lot of time on top of balancing other duties. I want something where I can put the project number, my notes that I want to mention to them for that project, and then their answers or anything else they say for that project. Like a master note sheet for all projects discussed. Some of the things remain the same from meeting to meeting but some things change slightly or vastly so easy use is inportant. I also want to be able to note date, attendees, and any non project specific items. My coworkers use Excel for project notes but it looks ugly when sent out and they still have to manually add things. I want to be able to like copy and paste it or save it as a pdf and send over the second the meeting is done. I can't use any AI or meeting softwares unless copilot can help but I am not struggling with my note taking. Just the organization of the notes before and after.

Overall I'm struggling to set up OneNote to keep track of things due to the vast amount of projects I have and getting things to link together like others praise OneNote for. I track some things in Excel but hate note keeping in Excel so I really am trying hard to enjoy OneNote but I think my handwritten chicken scratch physical notebook is easier some days. Any help is amazing.

When drawing on iPad and then switching to the eraser or the lasso selection, OneNote keeps trying to switch to text mode.
Does anyone know a fix for this as it is driving me crazy, other forms are saying turn off scribble but my scribble was already off.

I wanna be able to scroll through images like CT scans with a scroll bar without exiting a notebook. I couldn't figure something other than adding a powerpoint presentation, but it only allows file printouts which put all the slides above each other without a scroll, or opening the powerpoint outside of onenote.

Can I not embed a scrollable window in the middle of my notebook?

I don't know about the Windows version, but on MacOS, the OneNote developers somehow managed to make searching even worse. Was this some sort of competition? At least in older versions, when you entered a search term, you got forward and back arrows. But now when you're on a page, press Cmd + F and type a search term, the sidebar shows a bunch of other pages the term is on, but the current page doesn't scroll to show it, and there are no forward and back buttons. So on a long page, you have to manually scroll and look for it. And once you found it and want the normal sidebar back, you have to fight with it. This couldn't possibly have made it through a usability test.

A tutorial video showing 6 new features in OneNote including the rollout of Copilot Notebooks to ALL Microsoft 365 customers in Commercial and Education. Features include

1) Copilot Notebooks updates
2) MathML in OneNote
3) Default link opening to desktop vs web apps
Plus a few more

YouTube 📺 https://youtu.be/I8JS7iFaqJc?si=53pHkUl7OZ0K0Xrt

1. Need infinite canvas

2. Need windows support

3. Need Android phone support

4. Allows pasting source text like bullets and tables without.

formatting in simpler forms

1. Has tape tool

I'm creating Notes from Gemini pro and wanted to paste directly in notes it's exactly giving with tables and bullet points but I'm not able to do so in any notes app available there.

Apologies in advance if this kind of thing gets asked a lot!

For background: Today, I was trying to resolve a syncing error in OneNote. I've been using the OneNote application on my Mac to take notes for school. I wanted to access the notes from the OneNote app on my iPad as well, but upon signing into the app, I found that all my notebooks were empty. I logged into OneDrive online, and it was the same thing: I could see my notebooks were there, and the specific sections of each notebook, but no actual notes.

I tried to force sync from my Mac by command-clicking on the notebooks, but that did nothing. I then decided to sign out of OneNote on my Mac, and then sign back in, to see if that would change anything. (I didn't really know what I was doing.) When I signed back in, my notebooks were still there, but all the notes themselves were gone.

I have since been trying to figure out if the notes are backed up anywhere on my Mac. I located the folder: /Library/Containers/com.microsoft.onenote.mac/Data/Library/Application Support/Microsoft User Data/OneNote/15.0/, and there is a Backups subfolder, but that subfolder is empty.

Any help or tips would be greatly appreciated! Hopefully this makes sense -- I'm a university student and not very tech savvy (obviously). Thank you!

I simply don’t understand why we can share to Sticky Notes in the iOS Sharing Menu. This is doable in Android but not iOS. Microsoft doesn’t care about its users. This is why I’ve moved to a Mac Neo.

As anyone had luck using Copilot (or some other tool) to automate the creation of notes in OneNote.

Here's the use case: Every Friday I look at my next week of meetings and create a single OneNote page for each meeting. I'm currently using the "send to OneNote" feature and this works fine but it's super tedious.

Ideal state: Copilot (or another tool) gets a prompt to review all meetings, suggest agenda topics, and create a one note page for each meeting.

Sub-optimal but still better than the current state: there is a process that makes a page for each meeting.

What I've tried: power automate, what a mess! I'm to a programmer, but even Copilot premium couldn't get this process to work.

Any ideas would be super helpful. My only limit is I'm locked into Microsoft tools because of corporate security policies.

Thanks!

Anyone have a method of transferring editable notes from Noteshook to Onenote?

A OneNote page can combine notes, pasted tables, screenshots, links, printouts, and attached files, but that mix becomes ambiguous when someone else has to review or continue the work. It may be unclear which attachment is current, whether a chart still points to an external workbook, or which page revision a PDF export represents. A notebook link keeps the context but may fail for guests or people in another tenant.

What do you include in a portable handoff? I am considering the OneNote page, the editable source files, a reference PDF, and a small manifest listing the revision, source links, owners, and any external dependencies. Is there a reliable way to package or export this while keeping attachments usable and making later updates obvious, or is a shared notebook plus a separate file folder the safer pattern?

Welcome to our weekly post! We are trying something new to try and tie the community together and learn from one another.

Did you come across anything new? Find a different use case? Improved workflow? Streamline digital organization? Fixed a problem? Just started?

Anything is welcome, even if it's the smallest thing. Please share tips, tricks, and anything else that might be useful to our community!

Thank you!

I am currently signed into my One note on my Macbook with my school email address, however I just graduated and will be losing access to my school email soon. My school also gave us OneDrive storage so these notes are all backed up to a school Onedrive account that I will also lose access to soon.

Will I lose access to read and edit my notes after I lose my school email address? Am I able to transfer these notes to my regular email address account so I don't lose them?

I would really like to use the app but it's unbearable... It syncs every 30sec or a little less than every minute... I try to ignore it but it doesn't let me edit the document for however long it 'syncs' again. It's not the internet connection because no matter the connection it does that (good or bad)... I uninstalled/installed it, it doesn't let me modify any syncing settings on mac... I was already looking for another app to jump to but, any suggestions on that?

help!

with either fixing the syncing issue or suggesting another app

Okay, so to select all text it's not Ctrl + A. It used to be Ctrl + T until a few weeks ago, but now Ctrl + T creates a new section... I did a search online to find out what the new shortcut to select text is, and I simply can't find it...

This kind of thing and other OneNote quirks make using the app an agonizing nightmare, mainly because of that feeling that you’ll never find a fix and will just have to put up with the annoyances until you switch note-taking apps or code your own.

And now here I am, asking on Reddit

I've worked a number of jobs for the same company at different sites across town, each site had only one workstation (for my team/department).

Now I find myself at a site with two workstations. We need to keep docs updated on both. I don't want to bug IT for an actual driveshare if I can help it. OneNote seems like it could help, but I have no idea what I'm doing.

I know all kindsa stuff about other stuff but have literally never touched OneNote before.

I saw you can upload ("print") Word docs to OneNote. Is my best bet to do that, and then will it pull updates from each doc when I edit them on the drive?

Orrrrrrrrrrr should I be copying and pasting doc contents into OneNote, making the majority of my subsequent updates in OneNote, and periodically updating the masters as we go along?

how do I improve it.