Anatomy of a OneNote Notebook

The basic design and function of OneNote sets it far apart from its siblings in the Office family. Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are all about creating documents containing similar data, each saved as a single file. OneNote allows you to collect data in a dizzying variety of types and organize all that data within a marvelously expandable program window that resembles a paper notebook. The notebook format is ideally suited for students, of course, but chances are you’ll find uses for it even if you never set foot in a classroom. And its organizational tools adapt to your personal style, whether you’re the throw-it-in-a-shoebox type or a neat freak who sorts and labels everything.

You’ll rarely if ever have to deal directly with OneNote data files. Instead, you create sections and add pages within the OneNote window, and it does the dirty work of creating files and indexing each notebook’s contents so you can find stuff when you need it. You never have to save a notebook—OneNote does that in the background, even creating backup copies at regular intervals to ensure that you never lose a scrap of information, a scribbled note, a screen clipping, or a snippet from a web page.