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About this lesson
Learn how to create shared notebooks in Microsoft 365 to brainstorm ideas with your team.
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Quick reference
Work with OneNote Notebooks
Learn how to create shared notebooks in Microsoft 365
When to use
We can use Microsoft OneNote to create feature-rich notebooks to brainstorm ideas, keep notes, and plan projects. Notebooks can be shared with other people and integrated into Microsoft Teams.
Instructions
OneNote Online
- Click on the App Launcher
- Click OneNote
Open an Existing Notebook
- Click on the notebook to open
Notebooks consist of pages and sections. Each notebook can have many pages and each page can have many sections.
Create a New Section
- Right-click on an existing section
- Choose Section from the menu
- Enter a section name
- Click OK
We can access options for our new section by right-clicking. From here we can rename the section, delete the section, change the section color, add a new page, create another section, or copy the link to the section.
Create a New Page
- Right-click on the section
- Choose Page from the list
By default, new pages are named 'Untitled'. Right-click to rename the page.
Switch between Notebooks
- Click the drop-down arrow next to Notebook and select the notebook to switch to from the list
Add Content to Pages
Notebook pages are like scrapbooks for content. We can add text, images, tables, formatting, tags, video, and much more.
Type Text
We can click anywhere on a notebook page and add text. The text we type will be displayed inside a text box that we can move around the page by dragging and dropping.
We can format the text using the mini-toolbar or by using the font formatting options on the Home ribbon.
If we are working with OneNote on a tablet device with a stylus, we can take handwritten notes and add rules lines to the page from the View ribbon.
Insert Pictures, Tables, and More
Aside from text, we can add other types of content to notebook pages.
- Click the Insert ribbon
OneNote for Windows 10
OneNote now comes pre-installed with Windows 10 and Windows 11. It's a slightly different version to OneNote Online but the basic structure is the same.
- Click the Start button in the taskbar
- Search for 'OneNote'
- Click OneNote for Windows 10
OneNote Desktop
Much like Microsoft Teams, we can work with OneNote Online or we can download the desktop version of OneNote. The desktop version has the traditional ribbon structure and a few more features.
- Click the Start button in the taskbar
- Search for 'OneNote'
- Click OneNote
Share OneNote Notebooks
OneNote notebooks are stored in Sharepoint and OneDrive. That means we can access our team notebooks through both of these applications and share with others in Microsoft Teams.
Notebooks in SharePoint
- Open SharePoint from the App Launcher
- Open a SharePoint team site
- Click Notebook in the left-hand menu
- Choose the notebook to open
Share with Others
- Open a notebook
- Click the Share button in the top right-hand corner
- Click Share Entire Notebook
- Type the names of the people to share with
- Click Send
Add a Notebook to Microsoft Teams
- Open Teams from the App Launcher
- Go to a channel
- In the tabs area at the top, click the plus (+)
- Search for 'OneNote'
- Choose a Notebook to add
- Click Save
Hints & tips
- Tags can be added to anything on a page from the Home ribbon. Tags help us search for specific pieces of content.
- 00:04 Another application that you might find useful is OneNote.
- 00:07 And OneNote is available online through Microsoft 365 or
- 00:11 you can download the desktop version.
- 00:13 I'm going to show you the difference between the two versions in a moment.
- 00:16 Now, if you've never used OneNote before, it's basically a notetaking application.
- 00:21 So it allows you to collate and collect notes in pages and sections within
- 00:26 a notebook and then collaborate on those notes with colleagues.
- 00:30 And you'll find that OneNote notebooks are incorporated into many
- 00:35 parts of Microsoft 365.
- 00:36 And as you might have guessed,
- 00:38 you can incorporate a shared team notebook within Microsoft Teams.
- 00:42 So let's dive in and open up the online version and
- 00:45 just take a bit of a look as to how it all works.
- 00:48 So once again, we're going to the App launcher and
- 00:50 we're going to find OneNote in the list.
- 00:53 Now you can see here that I've already created a notebook for
- 00:56 the Project Alpha Team.
- 00:58 This is where you're going to see all of the recent notebooks that you've accessed,
- 01:01 and then we have various different headings across the top to filter
- 01:04 our list of notebooks.
- 01:05 So if we've pinned any notebooks by clicking on the pin icon,
- 01:08 we are going to be able to see them underneath here.
- 01:11 We have a My notebooks section, a section for notebooks that have been shared with
- 01:15 you and then we can also discover other notebooks.
- 01:18 Also, notice in the top corner, we have New notebooks.
- 01:21 So if you want to create a notebook from scratch, this is where you would go.
- 01:25 So let's start out by taking a look at an existing notebook.
- 01:29 Let's open up Project Alpha Team Notebook.
- 01:31 Now currently, I don't have a great deal in this notebook.
- 01:35 What I've done is created a section.
- 01:36 I've called it Meeting Minutes.
- 01:38 And then I have two separate pages for meeting minutes on different days.
- 01:42 Now if we have more than one notebook and we want to switch between those notebooks,
- 01:46 we can click the dropdown.
- 01:47 We'll see our notebooks listed here, or we can go to More notebooks, and again,
- 01:51 we have another Add notebook link just here.
- 01:53 Now, the structure of a OneNote notebook is that we have sections and
- 01:57 then we have pages within those sections.
- 02:00 So the way that I like to think of this is if you think of just a regular physical
- 02:04 folder, it's like that with tabs inside.
- 02:07 So if I wanted to create a new section, I can right-click and
- 02:10 I have Section just here.
- 02:12 I can give my section a name.
- 02:14 I'm just going to call mine Brainstorming.
- 02:16 It's going to add that new section there.
- 02:18 And again, if we right-click, we can rename the section.
- 02:21 We can delete it, we can change the section color.
- 02:23 So let's change this to magenta, and then we can add pages within that section.
- 02:29 So if I click on Page, you can see now I have two pages because you're always
- 02:34 going to get one page by default.
- 02:35 So if I click on the first page, you can see it's called Untitled and
- 02:39 I just need to give it a title up here.
- 02:41 And the same for the second page, we just click and we give it a title.
- 02:44 So we can add as many sections and as many pages as we like within our notebook.
- 02:50 If we click back on Newsletter ideas,
- 02:51 let's take a look at some of the things that we can do within our notebooks.
- 02:55 Now as you might expect, we can simply type text, and
- 02:58 this difference from Word in that we can basically click anywhere on this page and
- 03:02 you can see I can start typing.
- 03:04 And as soon as I start typing, I get this little text box which I can then drag and
- 03:08 drop wherever I like.
- 03:09 Now, notice when I hover over my text, I get this little arrow on the side.
- 03:13 If I click this it's just going to select all of that text for me.
- 03:16 So I can then utilize my formatting options, I can change the font,
- 03:20 I can change the size.
- 03:21 I can make it bold, I can change the font color.
- 03:24 So all the things that you might be used to when you're working in an application
- 03:29 such as Word.
- 03:29 And remember, we can always pick it up and we can move it wherever we want.
- 03:34 So we have things like bullet points, alignment.
- 03:36 We can spell check, we can do things like add tags.
- 03:40 So for example, if I click in front of this piece of text,
- 03:44 I could tag this as something.
- 03:46 So I could say that this is important.
- 03:48 It's going to flag that as important.
- 03:50 And then we can do things such as search across our notebooks for
- 03:54 all items that are flagged with that particular tag.
- 03:57 We have an Insert tab up here where we can insert tables, files, pictures, links,
- 04:02 audio, lots of different things we can insert.
- 04:05 We also have a Draw section just here so if you have a stylus, and I'm using your
- 04:10 mouse, this is going to be a bit messy, we can do handwritten notes here as well.
- 04:14 So there is my attempt at writing hello.
- 04:17 We have a View tab.
- 04:18 And again, these are things you might expect to see.
- 04:21 So we can do things like add rule lines, we can change the page color.
- 04:25 So it really is like working with a manual notebook.
- 04:29 Now, everything we've been doing so far is within the online version of OneNote.
- 04:33 But it's worth noting that there is a desktop version as well.
- 04:36 In fact, there are two.
- 04:38 If you have a Windows 10 or higher system,
- 04:41 OneNote now comes pre-installed with the operating system.
- 04:45 So if I search my system for OneNote, notice that I have the OneNote app, but
- 04:50 then I also have OneNote for Windows 10.
- 04:52 Now these two are different to the online version as well.
- 04:56 So there's kind of three different versions of OneNote.
- 04:59 They all work along the same lines, it's just the interface is slightly different.
- 05:03 So let's open up the desktop app.
- 05:05 And you can see that everything synchronizes.
- 05:08 So I've got Project Alpha Team Notebook open.
- 05:10 Here I have my Meeting Minutes tab.
- 05:13 The pages in this version are all the way over on the right-hand side.
- 05:16 You can see the two separate dates just here.
- 05:18 And then we have that Brainstorming section that we added with our notes.
- 05:23 So everything synchronizes between the online version and the desktop version.
- 05:28 Now once again OneNote notebooks are stored in SharePoint.
- 05:33 And if you're in any doubt of that,
- 05:35 you can see it at the top here in the URL bar sharepoint.com.
- 05:38 So that means we can access our team notebook through SharePoint, and
- 05:42 we can also add it to other applications like Teams.
- 05:45 So let's quickly jump across to SharePoint and take a look at that.
- 05:48 And if we go across to Project Alpha Discussion,
- 05:52 notice we have a notebook link in here.
- 05:54 So if I click on this and click the dropdown, and
- 05:57 you can see that I currently have three in here that are all named fairly similar.
- 06:01 I'm probably going to want to change the names on some of these.
- 06:04 But the one that we've just been working on is this one just here,
- 06:07 Project Alpha Team Notebook.
- 06:08 If we click on this, there are our notes.
- 06:11 So the point to take away here is that everything feeds through as you might
- 06:16 expect.
- 06:16 Now, of course, we can share this notebook with our colleagues as well.
- 06:20 So there are a couple of different ways we can do this.
- 06:22 Let's click on the team notebook, and notice in the top right-hand corner,
- 06:27 we have a Share button.
- 06:28 So we can share the entire notebook,
- 06:30 we can copy the link to the notebook and we can manage access.
- 06:34 Now if we go into manage access, you can see that currently,
- 06:37 I'm the only one with access to this notebook.
- 06:40 Now if we click on Share Entire Notebook,
- 06:42 this is where we get that same window that we've seen throughout this course.
- 06:46 We can then type in the name of who we want to share this notebook with.
- 06:50 So I could type in individuals or I could type in entire group, so
- 06:54 I could share it with Project Alpha Discussion.
- 06:57 Click on Send and
- 06:57 that's going to send an invite to all of the people who are a member of that group.
- 07:02 Another thing we can do is that we can add the notebook to a channel in
- 07:05 Microsoft Teams.
- 07:06 So let's scroll down to Project Alpha.
- 07:08 Let's click on the General channel.
- 07:10 Because what we can do here is much like we did with Planner,
- 07:14 we can add the OneNote app.
- 07:15 So I'm going to click the plus at the top.
- 07:17 There is the OneNote app.
- 07:18 Let's add this.
- 07:20 And then it's going to ask me to select what notebook I want to add.
- 07:24 So I'm going to add the Project Alpha Team Notebook.
- 07:26 Let's expand it just to make sure it's the correct one.
- 07:29 It is, we have our two sections, let's click on Save,
- 07:32 and that's going to add that at the top.
- 07:34 And now anybody who is a member of this channel can access the notebook and
- 07:40 collaborate on notes with everybody else.
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